Asgaut Steinnes

Who was Asgaut Steinnes?

Asgaut Steinnes was a Norwegian archivist and historian who specialized in the Middle Ages.

Steinnes was born in Klepp, District of Stavanger, Norway on 11 October 1892. He was the son of a farmer, teacher and cantor. He earned his Ph.D. in 1928 with a dissertation on the tax system in the Middle Ages. From 1933 to 1960 he was the National Archivist of Norway. From 1961 he was a statsstipendiat.

Steinnes was one of the pioneers of the agrarian tradition in the research of Norwegian history research. His major contributions were primarily detailed studies of taxation, property and settlement in earlier times. Insights from them were used to shed light on major historical issues such as the reasons why Norway ceased to be an independent state in the Late Middle Ages, the impact of the Black Death and the growth of royal power. The method of Steinnes was a thorough and exact analysis of place names, land books, legal documents, financial statements and cadastres, etc. His systemic efforts to map the actual dimensions of units of size, weight and money in the Middle Ages became the model for all the subsequent analyses of the economic history of the ancient times.