This essay is about a deserted medieval habitation called Skyttsie Hage which is located in the south of Sweden in the Scania province where it lies on a moor on the Falsterbopeninsula. Remains of five to six larger buildings have been found here with a surrounding earthwork, although it?s not known for sure what kind of habitation they have been part of. Local folklore from the 17:th century states the area as a place where pirates lived, and that this was the reason for it?s devastation. Another says that there once stood a breedingfarm belonging to the danish crown. Archaeologists have made several speculations which includes a deer park, a royal estate, an isolated farm or a smaller village. The purpose of this paper is to try to see what the function of Skyttsie Hage might have been. While my theories include a medieval deer park and the use of woodland I have made an analogy with England because more research have been done there on those topics & therefore more literature exist. Scandinavia has very little written medieval sources from this period regarding parks and woods compared to England which explains why so little research has been done here on these subjects. I also account for Dalby Hage and Kungsmarken, two areas in Scania which are thought of as possible deer parks by Anders Andrén. The sources for this essay is mainly archaeological
while some are historic-ecological, ethnological or etymological. Due to the difficulty of obtaining english literature the internet have been used as a compliment source. I give an account of english, danish & swedish woodland & deer parks which I then compare with Skyttsie Hage in a discussion. Thereafter I draw what I believe to be the most likely conclusion. I find the most probable function for Skyttsie Hage to be a royal breeding farm with a deer park. The farm have probably also functioned as a royal hunting lodge where the forester resided. A royal forest have grown round Skyttsie Hage and the collecting of timber for the yearly market was probably controlled from here. Resources and control might be keywords concerning the function of the place while royal single establishments were common in large forest areas near a border. The king needed someone to control this land and these persons
were often violent beacuse of their vulnerable position. That might explain why the place was eventually laid waste. The gradually disappearing of the markets ...
