{"id":10894,"date":"2026-02-24T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/martinroe.com\/blog\/?p=10894"},"modified":"2026-02-23T22:27:38","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T21:27:38","slug":"svartedauden-norway-black-death-population-deserted-farms-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martinroe.com\/blog\/svartedauden-norway-black-death-population-deserted-farms-sources\/","title":{"rendered":"The Black Death in Norway (Svartedauden): population collapse, social change\u2014and how we glimpse it in the sources"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Black Death is often described as a single, terrible event. In Norway, it was both an event and<\/strong> the beginning of a long, uneven era of recurring plague. The Black Death reshaped Norway’s population, land, and power in profound ways.<\/p>\n

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The first wave of the Black death reached Norway in 1349\u20131350<\/strong>, and later outbreaks continued to shape society for centuries (Store norske leksikon, n.d.; Lille norske leksikon, 2026). What makes Svartedauden so important for Norwegian history is not only the loss of life. It is also the way that loss rewired the relationship between people, land, and power<\/strong>. It also explains something genealogists learn quickly: before about 1600, sources are comparatively scarce<\/strong>, yet there are<\/em> earlier source types that can still give us meaningful glimpses into families, farms, and local communities. I will come back to these sources in a future article.<\/p>

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In this article<\/div>\n
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