218 The purpose of the present paper is to establish whether or not the ledung in Denmark was organized in the same way as that in Sweden and Norway and if materials available for research in Denmark would permit an opinion on the subject of its origin. An excellent analysis of the Danish ledung system was published in 1898 by the historian Kr. Erslev, who concluded that the Danish holding that was called hoi in the earliest documents and in Danish mediaeval laws, had in fact been the basis of the ledung organization in Denmark and as such had represented the equivalent of the Swedish hamna and the Norwegian hamla, in Denmark being called havne. Erslev assumed that the oldest ledung ship in Denmark would have had 30 or 40 oars and that the districts corresponding to the ship, called skipe in Denmark, would have been grouped together in herred-åxsivlcis, every herred counting 120 bols. The present writer has put forward the hypothesis that the Danish bol was the equivalent of the mansus which existed in the Frankish kingdoms of the 9th century, and of the Anglo-Saxon hide {aratrum, ploughland) of the 10th century. 1/8 of the bol, called otting in the mediaeval terminology of the Danish administration, would more or less exactly have been the equivalent to the Swedish attung and the Norwegian 6-sålding in terms of the ledung-system. But, according to the present writer, it could not have been the whole of the bol —or eight ottings —that was the equivalent of one Danish havne, as suggested by Erslev, instead, it was probably either four or three ottings, depending on whether the ledungship in question had 30 or 40 oars, the total territorial basis for a Danish ledungship, a skipe, in all circumstances amounting to 15 bols or 120 ottings. These 120 ottings would have represented the total crew of a Danish ledung ship and were identical with 120 men, probably divided into four teams of 30 men or three teams of 40 men, depending on whether the ship had 30 or 40 oars. An Icelandic source from the middle of the 13th century, the so called Knytlinga saga, gives the number of ships of the whole Danish ledung fleet as 850, specifying the number of ships in each of the eight mediaeval bishoprics of Denmark and giving the number of ships, owed by the bishopric of Lund, including Skåne, Blekinge and Halland — since 1658 Swedish territories — as 150. The statements of the Knytlinga saga in respect of the number of ships have been accepted by Danish research in general as being fairly correct. According to the hypothesis put forward by the present writer and mentioned above, a Danish fleet of 850 ships would have had a total crew of (850X120) 102.000 men, corresponding to the same number of ottings and to 12.750 bols.
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