I can come with some information regarding slavery in Scandinavia and the Norse colonies.

Firstly, the way into slavery where many. The most well-known way was to be captured in a raid. Another way was to be sold into slavery. Both of these required being captured by a hostile force trying to earn some money, and it was therefore likely that you would be split from your family and friends. These were not the most usual way of becoming a slave, or a thrall. The most usual way of becoming a thrall, was being born as one. In fact, the laws encouraged thralls to have many children, for example by giving a thrall some rights to own possessions, which he would then use to take care of his children. It was also usual for the lord of the farm to impregnate to get more thralls in the future. The children that where a result of this would usually just be more workforce for the farm, but if their ruler(father) desired so, they could also inherit the farm, or kingdom if the ruler was the king.

A thrall had no rights of his own. In the laws they are treated like animals that can be bought and sold at will. The owner of a thrall could also kill or otherwise harm their thralls without worrying about any legal repercussions, except the fact that they had to announce that they had killed their thrall. If someone harms a thrall, the thrall has no right to defend himself and if someone commits an offence against a thrall, it is to be recognized as an offence against his owner, and his owner is therefore to receive the reparations, not the thrall. Furthermore, the thrall has no right to marry nor to their children, meaning that they could be separated at any time, if their owner wished to.

The thralls also had the hardest and most degrading work. This included making fences, watching goats and pigs and fertilizing the fields. This, combined with the generally poor living conditions, resulted in the thralls dying earlier then the free farmers. It also resulted in higher child mortality rate.

Slaves were also punished a lot more severely than the other members of the society. Theft could be punished by lashing, but cutting of ears and noses was also used as a punishment. People that where caught fleeing could suffer the same fate, but they could also be killed, if it was necessary to make a point. Capturing escaped thralls was also a collective responsibility of all free men, and therefore escaping was unlikely. Punishing thralls was also a collective responsibility, and if the owner does not punish a thrall then the “Årmann” will do it, so there was no hope of having a nice or considerate owner. The “årmann” was a man appointed by the king, and was responsible for collecting taxes.

People of the Norse world looked down upon thralls. They were considered to be cowards, naïve and stupid. In addition, they behave childish and are easily fooled. Many of these characteristics is shown in a part of Gisle Surssons Saga. Here Gisle is followed by men trying to kill him. He also has one of his thralls with him. The thrall is named Tord Lettskremt, a name that it itself shows some of the stereotypes around thralls, as Lettskremt means someone who is easily frightened. To get away from his pursuers Gisle gives his cloak to Tord and tell Tord to take his spot in the sled. He is pretending that it is a reward for Tord’s loyalty and hard work, but to the readers it is obviously an attempt to use the thrall as a bait and fool the pursuers. Despite this Tord happily accepts the gift and feels quite elegant in his new cloak, totally oblivious to the fact that he is risking his life. Naturally the story ends in the death of Tord and with Gisle managing to escape his pursuers. Another important thing that comes out of this story is that sacrificing a thrall to get an advantage is not a bad thing. In the saga Gisle is applauded for his ingenious and shrewd use of the situation to get away from his captors, even though it cost the life of his thrall.

Leaving slavery was hard, but not impossible. The first way was to be granted freedom from your owner. In addition, a thrall that killed an enemy while defending his farm was according to the law granted freedom. Lastly you could also leave slavery by managing to escape, but as I have previously mentioned the probabilities of success was low, and the punishment for failure severe.

As for the statement that the trend towards nuclear families resulted in lowered demand for slavery, I would argue the opposite. The trend toward the nuclear family, with a husband and wife and their children, meant that each farm little workforce in its free inhabitants, therefore they had to get thralls to supplement for this and get enough workers to utilize all the land. At the same time there was a massive expansion in the amount of farmed land in the early Viking age, and the demand for slaves would therefore be high. Snorre Sturlason also claims that Erling Skjalgsson owned as many as thirty thralls. There are two things to note about this statement. Firstly, Erling Skjalgsson was a very rich farmer, and therefore he is probably the exception rather than the norm, but the fact that you could own such a large amount of thralls would imply that they would not be too expensive. Secondly, Snorre is not the most reliable of sources, but that generally affects exact historical information, such as battles and so on, and to more general information like this, that tells us more about the way they thought and behaved, nonetheless the number of thirty may be an exaggeration and the real number may be smaller. As for numbers on slaves in the Norse society, some Norwegian historians have estimated that between a quarter and half of the Norwegian population was thralls, although it is extremely hard to make good estimates.

In the end I will like to thank you for reading, and apologize for my bad English. English is not my first language, nonetheless I hope it was understandable and that it interesting to read. If you have any follow-up questions I would happily try to answer them.