TY - JOUR AU - Zachrisson, Torun PY - 1994/12/28 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - The Odal and its Manifestation in the Landscape JF - Current Swedish Archaeology JA - csa VL - 2 IS - 1 SE - Research Articles DO - 10.37718/CSA.1994.14 UR - https://publicera.kb.se/csa/article/view/1240 SP - 219-238 AB - <p>The concept odal can be regarded in a narrow sense, i.e. as the inherited&nbsp;landed property of a family. But here it is argued that odal should be viewed&nbsp;in a wide sense - as a mentality that is of great importance to the understanding&nbsp;of Late Iron Age society in Sweden. The article focuses on the&nbsp;material expressions which belonging to a family and possessing a farm could&nbsp;take in the individual farmstead in the Mälar Valley. The Viking Age is&nbsp;interpreted as a time period in which there was a need to make the odal&nbsp;visible. The acts of burying dead relatives on top of the graves of early ancestors,&nbsp;erecting runestones, and possibly also erecting mounds are regarded&nbsp;as ways of guarding, marking, and confirming the possession of the odal in&nbsp;the odal man's own eyes and in his neighbours' and consequently also the&nbsp;odal man's position in society.</p> ER -