This essay discusses the width of the late medieval desertion of farms in Sweden from an archaeological perspective. The object of the essay is to investigate if archaeological investigations and research during the last 10-15 years have changed the view of the late medieval desertion in relation to the Scandinavian research project on deserted farms and villages. The essay also deals with questions on causes to the desertion and when desertion occurred. An ambition of the essay is also to give a general picture of archaeological investigations during the last 10-15 years considering the late medieval desertion. The analyses-material consists mainly of reports from archaeological investigations. Most of the investigations analysed in this essay are investigations of single farms. Because of this it is natural these investigations do not say much about the width of the desertion. As long as an archaeological investigation is not a part of a large project, where the purpose is to show the width of the desertion, one cannot expect that one single investigation will give much information or knowledge about the width. However, if the ambition is to obtain a complete picture of a medieval deserted farm or village, this essay confirms that an archaeological investigation is necessary, willingly in an interdisciplinary cooperation.

This study examines landscape change in the Province of Jämtland during c. 1000–1750 AD. Settlement and arable cultivation are two of the most important sources in this study. They are therefore treated in depth, particularly farmsteads that were deserted during the late medieval agrarian crisis, so-called ödesbölen, and their fossil field-traces. The dissertation contains four major investigations. In the first investigation 610 possible ödesbölen were identified. The desertion was estimated at 50 per cent. The second investigation had its focus on the geographic location, and the conclusion was that the ödesbölen may have been deserted when the climate turned colder in the 14th century. The third investigation concerned medieval agriculture. Using historical maps and detailed mapping of fossil field traces it was established that the annually cultivated acreage decreased from the High Middle Ages until early modern times. This probably means that the agrarian crisis caused a change in the agrarian regime, from predominant arable farming to predominant stock-raising. The fourth investigation was whether the ownership or the use of the ödesbölen created obstacles to recolonization when the crisis subsided. This turned out not to be so in the case of ownership, but may have been so with regard to communal forest grazing. According to historical maps the ödesbölen in Jämtland were finally recolonized about 200 years later than for example in southern Sweden. The reasons probably were wars and a worse climate. The dissertation is capped off with both a model and a description of landscape change in Jämtland. Characteristic for the development of the landscape has been fluctuations in settlement. The ödesbölen are part of a pattern in which they are colonized, deserted, recolonized and again deserted in a cyclical course of events. The openness of the landscape is not part of this course of events.