The late medieval agrarian crisis is characterized by a sharp decline in population which caused farm abandonment and mass death. The crisis arose due to a lack of access to arable land and insufficient food production in relation to the growing population. However, there is evidence of villages and farms surviving the crisis by adapting to new conditions through the development of sustainable structures. Studying the literature from a resilience theoretical perspective, this paper discusses existing opportunities to study the agrarian crisis, opening avenues for future research. More specifically, this study contributes to the literature by examining studies on abandoned and surviving farms from Jämtland, Östergötland, Småland, Värmland and Skåne, concerning the interpretive possibilities of the farm's survival. The results suggest that Medieval archaeology excels in increasing knowledge about human behaviour and the relationship to the environment from a long-term perspective. Resilience theory can provide an interdisciplinary framework, increasing the understanding of social-ecological systems, therefore ensuring the sustainability of ecosystem services. Moreover, the findings of this thesis suggest that pollen analysis and dendrochronology are commonly used in research on the agrarian crisis. The methods reveal that common survival strategies consisted of introducing less labour-intensive farming methods or taking over the lands of desolate farms. Additionally, farms that had access to natural resources, cooperated with other farms on open land and had larger households most often survived the crisis.

In several medieval written sources an area called Ragundaskogen (Eng: Ragunda Forest) is documented in eastern Jämtland. The references in the sources are general and lack specific information about location, meaning and the extent of this area. This thesis uses a theoretical framework based on niche construction and a method employing written sources, place names and archaeological remains to better understand the medieval concept of the Ragunda Forest. The study will reconstruct and discuss the area’s geography, but also provide insight into the people who lived there, their relationships with each other and places in the landscape, as well as their relationship to the church in Uppsala and the monarchy in Norway. The Ragunda Forest was a niche in a border area and during certain periods seems to have had a certain form of independence. The Middle Ages are a period characterised by a series of crises due to climate change and diseases such as the plague. The Ragunda Forest will be used as a background to discuss how the medieval population and landscapes were affected. The thesis suggests that interdisciplinary studies of delimited and local landscape spaces are an effective method for better understanding historical human-environment relations. / I flera skriftliga källor från medeltiden omnämns Ragundaskogen i östra Jämtland. Hänvisningarna i källorna är generella så det är svårt att avgöra Ragundaskogens exakta betydelse, läge och utbredning. Denna uppsats använder ett teoretiskt ramverk som bygger på nischkonstruktion och en metod som omfattar skriftliga källor, platsnamn och arkeologiska lämningar för att bättre förstå det medeltida begreppet Ragundaskogen. Studien kommer att rekonstruera och diskutera områdets geografi, men också ge insikt till människorna som levde där, till deras relationer sinsemellan och till platser i landskapet, samt till deras förhållanden till kyrkan i Uppsala och kungamakten i Norge. Ragundaskogen var en nisch i ett gränsområde och verkar under vissa perioder också haft en viss form av självständighet. Medeltiden är en tidsperiod som kännetecknas av en rad kriser till följd av klimatförändring och sjukdomar som pesten. Ragundaskogen kommer att användas som en bakgrund för att diskutera hur medeltidens människor och landskap påverkades. Uppsatsen föreslår att tvärvetenskapliga studier av avgränsade och lokala landskapsrum är en effektiv metod för att bättre förstå historiska människa-miljö relationer.

Esta tesis doctoral examina las repercusiones de la llamada "Gran Depresión" de finales del siglo XIX sobre la sociedad rural catalana a partir del análisis del que puede ser visto como uno de los síntomas más característicos de cualquier crisis agraria: la pérdida de derechos de propiedad sobre la tierra o sobre otros inmuebles de carácter rural como consecuencia de reclamaciones de deudas, promovidas por particulares o por el Estado, que culminaron en subasta pública.El trabajo ha sido dividido en dos secciones. En la primera se analiza la desposesión causada por procedimientos ejecutivos impulsados por la Administración de Hacienda por impuestos impagados. En la segunda se ha estudiado la actividad judicial que concluyó en subasta pública de bienes inmuebles, y se han mostrado sus relaciones con la situación agraria, especialmente en los sectores del trigo y de la vid. / This Doctoral Thesis examines the repercussions of the Great Depression of end of the 19th century on the Catalan rural society from the analysis of the one that can be seen as one of the most characteristic symptoms of any agrarian crisis: the loss of property rights on the land or on other real estate of rural nature as a consequence of claims of debts carried out by individuals or by the State that culminated in public auctions.The work has been divided in two sections. In the first, the dispossession because of administrative executive procedures by unpaid taxes that took place in Catalonia in this period is analysed. In the second, we have studied the judicial activity that finished in public auction of real estate goods and we tried to relate it to the agrarian situation, especially in the wheat and the wine sectors.