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Law, and what the law outlived

Thraldom in the Norse polities: when the code allowed it, when anyone last saw it.

plotting 0 of 4 polities · 0.0%denominator · rows in thraldom_status

nothing is drawn on this plate

4 polities recorded. None carry coordinates.

4 polities recorded, none carry coordinates. thraldom_status names a polity - Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland - and nothing else spatial. A country centroid would be a coordinate this atlas does not hold, and a legal status is dishonestly drawn as a dot in any case: the claim is about a jurisdiction, not a place. The finding here is temporal and is shown as a timeline.

0 of 4 polities are plotted. The lane's finding is a distance between two dates, not a position on the plate.

ITwo reasons there is nothing on the plate

The first is the ordinary one: 4 polities are named and none carries a coordinate. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland — the table holds those four words and nothing else spatial.

The second survives the first being fixed. Even with four centroids in hand, a dot would be the wrong mark. The claim on every row is about a JURISDICTION — what a code permitted inside a legal boundary — and a legal status drawn as a point asserts that unfreedom happened at a spot. It happened wherever the code ran. An honest plate of this lane would be four filled countries, not four dots.

the route that exists and was not taken

A public-domain country geometry exists at war-atlas/tools/geo/countries.geo.json and would carry these four as filled jurisdictions rather than dots. It is deliberately NOT loaded here: it is a second geometry, and the suite shares one coastline. Noted as an available route, not taken.

IIFour lanes, one axis

There are four clocks in this table and they are not interchangeable. A conversion year is when the polity adopted the religion. A last attestation is the last time anyone writes about a thrall as EXISTING. A legal end is the last year the CODE still permitted one. What became of unfreedom afterwards is a fourth question, and every row answers it the same way — contractual tenancy.

The doctrinal story needs the first clock to predict the third. Put the four lanes on one axis and what emerges instead is the distance between the second and the third.

Thraldom in four Norse polities, drawn as four lanes on one year axis, with the 137 years between Iceland’s last attested thrall and the end of the code that permitted thraldom shaded across the figure.A timeline from 950 to 1350 with one lane per polity. Denmark converts about 965 and last attests an existing thrall in 1201; its lane then frays, because no year is held for the end of the Danish code. Iceland converts about 1000, last attests an existing thrall in 1133, and the code still permits thraldom until 1270 — the 137 years between those two marks are shaded from top to bottom of the figure, because they are the distance between what the law allowed and what anyone recorded. Norway runs to a code end in 1274 with no last attestation at all, and Sweden to a ban in 1335, also with none. Two conversion marks are drawn as dashed rings rather than discs: a second register in this atlas holds no conversion year for Norway or Sweden, and records Sweden’s 1164 as that polity’s archdiocese year rather than its conversion. One of four lanes yields a computable gap.137YEARS PERMITTED, NOT ATTESTED95010001050110011501200125013001350YEAR11331270DenmarkNO GAP COMPUTABLENO LEGAL END HELDCONVERTS965LAST ATTESTED1201IcelandTHE DISCRIMINATING CASECONVERTS1000LAST ATTESTED1133PERMITTED UNTIL1270NorwayNO GAP COMPUTABLECONVERTS?1030CONTESTED — NO CONVERSION YEAR HELDNO LAST ATTESTATION — THE GAP CANNOT BE MEASURED HEREPERMITTED UNTIL1274SwedenNO GAP COMPUTABLECONVERTS?1164CONTESTED — IT IS THE ARCHDIOCESE YEARNO LAST ATTESTATION — THE GAP CANNOT BE MEASURED HEREPERMITTED UNTIL13351 of 4 lanes yields a computable gap. The other 3 are missing one of the two dates and are left blank, never zeroed.A disc is a conversion year both registers hold. A dashed ring is a conversion year only this table holds — the other says there is none.A cross is the practice; a bar is the code. The shaded span is where the code still permits what nobody records as happening.The gap is subtracted here and checked against both stored values; all three agree.
thraldom in 4 polities — 1 measurable gap, 2 contested conversion dates

IIIThe gap that discriminates

Iceland · the only row where both columns are populated

Last attested as existing 1133. Permitted in law until 1270. 137 years apart.

Iceland permitted thraldom in law until 1270 but last attests an existing thrall in 1133: a 137-year gap between what the code allowed and what anyone recorded. A register that reads law codes as evidence of practice gets Iceland wrong by more than a century.

derivation · 1270 − 1133 = 137. The database stores 137; the exporter independently derived 137; this page subtracts it a third time and prints a number only because all three agree. They are compared at render, so a divergence would replace the figure with a refusal rather than quietly print the stored value.

1 of 4 polities can have the gap computed at all; the rest are missing one of the two dates. An uncomputable gap is left null, never zeroed - a zero would assert agreement between law and attestation that the rows do not support.

why each blank is blank

DenmarkMissing the legal end. No code date located that ENDS it. Absalon's will of 1201 manumits several of his own thralls; a letter between the Pope and Anders Sunesen is the other attestation. After the early 13th c. they stop being mentioned. ⚠ SEE rejected_value / the Codex Holmiensis contradiction.
NorwayMissing the last attestation. The shift in what the codes talk about IS the attestation: rules about former thralls displace rules about thralls.
SwedenMissing the last attestation. Taken by Brink as the final date for Sweden.

IVTwo of these conversion dates are disputed inside the atlas

The lanes above are drawn from thraldom_status. A second register in this same database, polity_conversion, is already published on the thraldom appendix — and it does not agree. The conflicts below are not written down anywhere: they are computed by joining the two payloads when this page renders, so a pass that settles one makes it vanish from this list without anybody editing the page.

Norwayconversion yeardrawn as a dashed ring above

thraldom_status · 1030

polity_conversion · missing

NOT IN THE SUBSTANCE for this lane. Item 6 gives Norway's ARCHDIOCESE (1154) and no conversion year. The archdiocese is institutional consolidation, not conversion, and substituting one for the other would manufacture a date.

Swedenconversion yeardrawn as a dashed ring above

thraldom_status · 1164

polity_conversion · missing

NOT IN THE SUBSTANCE. Item 6 says only that Sweden HELD OUT LONGEST -- politically fragmented, with deep-rooted pagan strongholds such as Uppsala -- and gives no year. The 1164 archdiocese is a DIFFERENT CLOCK and is not a conversion date.

That number is its own archdiocese year (1164) — a different clock, recorded as a different clock, and carried into this table as a conversion date.

Neither contested date is deleted and neither is silently used. They are drawn as dashed rings on the figure, which is the difference between a plate that publishes a manufactured conversion year and one that publishes the fact that two registers disagree about it.

VThe four rows, in full

Denmarkgap not computableT2
converts965
last attested1201 — Bishop Absalon's will, 1201 — last attested EXISTING thralls.
permitted untilnot held here — No code date located that ENDS it. Absalon's will of 1201 manumits several of his own thralls; a letter between the Pope and Anders Sunesen is the other attestation. After the early 13th c. they stop being mentioned. ⚠ SEE rejected_value / the Codex Holmiensis contradiction.
the gapnot held hereleft null, never zeroed — a zero would assert agreement between law and attestation that these rows do not support
what it becamecontractual tenancy
sourceBrink, Thraldom (Oxford 2021); Absalon's will

🔴 DENMARK IS NOT THE DECIDING CASE AND I SAID IT WAS. Conversion order and economic-integration order are the same order here, so with n=3 both hypotheses predict identically. Withdrawn as a discriminator in v48.

Icelandgap computableT2
converts1000
last attested1133 — Kristinna laga thattur, 1122-1133 — the last text mentioning slavery as EXISTING. No existing thralls appear from the late 12th c.
permitted until1270 — Slavery remains PERMITTED under Gragas, which applies until 1270.
the gap137 years
what it becamecontractual tenancy
sourceGragas (Finsen); Kristinna laga thattur

🟢 THE DISCRIMINATING CASE. Converted within a generation of Norway and finished ~a century earlier, so conversion is not doing the work alone. And the 137-year gap between legal permission and last attestation is a finding in itself: a register reading law codes as evidence of practice gets Iceland wrong by more than a century.

Norwaygap not computableT2
converts1030contested — see IV
last attestednot held here — The shift in what the codes talk about IS the attestation: rules about former thralls displace rules about thralls.
permitted until1274 — Magnus Lagabote's landslov, 1274 — no slavery recognised. Phase-out runs from the late 12th c., the law texts increasingly dealing with the status of FORMER thralls rather than existing ones.
the gapnot held hereleft null, never zeroed — a zero would assert agreement between law and attestation that these rows do not support
what it becamecontractual tenancy · 1274
sourceMagnus Lagabote's landslov 1274; Gulathing and Frostathing collections

leysingi -> leiglendingi is the same movement as thrall -> tenant.

Swedengap not computableT2
converts1164contested — see IV
last attestednot held here — Taken by Brink as the final date for Sweden.
permitted until1335 — Officially banned 1335 by Magnus Eriksson; phased out through the 13th c.
the gapnot held hereleft null, never zeroed — a zero would assert agreement between law and attestation that these rows do not support
what it becamecontractual tenancy · 1335
sourceBrink, Thraldom (Oxford 2021)

Converted last, abolished last — consistent with EITHER explanation, which is exactly why it does not discriminate.

Every row became the same thing. That is worth noticing on its own: the measurable question in this lane is not when slavery ended — nobody agrees — but when unfreedom stopped being heritable and became contractual, and on that the four rows are unanimous.

The lanes are read from war-atlas db/export_map_suite.py, exported 2026-09-08. The contested conversion dates in IV are computed at render by joining that payload against thraldom.generated.json — two exports, two tables, one page, and no hand-written contradiction list.

Built from the war-atlas database, the hand-maintained coordinate gazetteer and the public atlas payload. Seshat and Cliopatria are CC BY-NC-SA (non-commercial) and are NOT used here: admin_capacity and variable_confound are denied by name, not by source-string scan.

basemap · Natural Earth 110m land, public domain. Natural Earth is public domain and publishes. Caveat carried openly: no script in war-atlas/tools emits this file, so the source string is a self-assertion with no reproducible provenance.

gate · 10 tiered rows examined, 1 excluded at the unsourced tier — religion_thraldom:id=6 druidry-ancient. ⚠ That row is not one of the four on this page. Every thraldom row is graded T2, so the tier gate had nothing to catch HERE and its passing says nothing whatever about this lane. The check that does bear on it is the join in section IV, and the gap check in section III — which was run against a deliberately wrong stored value and correctly refused to print a total, so the number above is a tick that has been watched to fail.

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