Apologies if this isn't a suitable question.
I have done a good bit of googling, and also checked out the archives of /r/norse and this sub, but haven't found anything definitive.
I so far have the three main groupings of people as Thralls (slaves), Karls (farmers), and Jarls (aristocracy) - with a "Kongungr" or king at the top of all of that, but I have found various suggestions for occupations/classes within the three strata, including (with my understanding of what they are)
Thralls / former thralls:
Karls:
Jarls:
I've also found these ranks/roles in my travels, which seem to be more military than social
All of which I'm perfectly willing to believe is completely misguided...
Can anyone help me sort out which of these are valid terms, ranks, roles - which, which, if any, intersect with each other (can you be both a leysingi and a bondi, for instance?), and perhaps order them in some sort of order of importance?
I don't have alot of time for a reply but i'll see what I can put out.
yes, you can sorta be both leysingi and bondi, it is just generally rare.
if you were a thrall, you could be freed by being bought or given your freedom because you fought for your owner or were a tradesmen.
If you were freed for helping or saving or fighting for your owner, depending on what happened you could be a freed thrall on the land of the owner and then move up to to basically a sharecropper. there are even stories of one dude going from a slave/freed slave and in three generations his family was marrying into his previous owner's family(I am sorry, i wish i could give you specifics... at work... so maybe a fellow nord lover could help)
if you are specifically looking at the family group(a lot of viking society was built around the family) and their farm, a good place to look is Njal's saga. it is basically a story of two buddys, they get married to women but the women hate each other. So petty household grievances turn into murdering the whole way up the chain(they have some pretty good legalistic definitions of what a man is worth because in the story the go out of the way to give more than that to remain friends).
I wrote my B.A. major paper on Njal's saga and the legal frame work around the societal levels of people and what they were worth. I called it, "you don't have to apologize, if I kill you"
ha
There always some confusion with these terms since usually english, danish and swedish all have different names for the titles. But Ill try to add some information from sources in english and swedish.
Thegn and dreng Members of the kings household who acted as advisers, administrators and commanders. But linked to the kings military organization. The term "thegn" is disputed, the main alternatives is either a warrior within the kings hird or a free man working as a farmer and owing his own land.
Bryti
Thrall who had received a higher responsibility, often over other thralls. The female title was "deja". But a bryti could work for a jarl or the king and in that case he had more of a stewards role. Maintaining the lands and properties. Here is an example of kings bryti who carved a runestone after himself and his wife.
Skeppare
Means skipper and has the same meaning in modern swedish
The other terms are new to me but "leysingi" sounds like old norse or icelandic. Usually the viking village hierarchy is:
Cheif or hersir-> Jarls->"Free men" (craftsmen, traders and farmers)->thralls
Sources: Runes and Their Origin, Denmark and Elsewhere, by Erik Moltke (The National Museum of Denmark, 1985)