Early Medieval Scandinavia was fundamentally a rural place. While there were religious (like Old Uppsala) and trade centers (such as Birka, Hedeby, Ribe and Kaupang) and forts (such as Aggersborg and Trelleborg) or legendary places (such as Jomsborg), the vast majority of viking era Scandinavians lived at single farms spread out over a very rural landscape.

Now, farms varied a lot in size - from single extended family dwellings far from other farms to estates that encompassed a smaller village, either as the property of a Great Man or as part of the Husby system, which were a series of larger royal estates spread out over a territory to support the local petty King, who would move with his Hird (personal guard), family and servants from one estate to the other, using up the resources gathered there by a local fogde or caretaker before travelling onwards to the next estate.

Rural Scandinavia was largely self-sufficient, growing and raising their own food, making their own cloth and clothes from wool and flax (linen), their own tools from bog iron and their own building materials from the forest and animal dung and mud.

The people travelled, sometimes far, to trade their surplus cash crops (such as cattle, hides, butter, pork, charcoal, tar, hemp, amber, iron ingots, fur, woollen or linen cloth or other products) to buy things they could not make themselves (such as salt, spices, glassware, weapons and armour, silk and dyed cloth and other things). They would usually combine business when traveling and meeting - politics (such as election of law-handlers, great men or Jarls or even a new King, the calling of a Ledung and other issues) and legal matters would be handled at the thing, religious ceremonies and sacrifices conducted and trade would happen at the market.