Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (3.1976/1979)

SULA
AN ANCIENT TERM FOR THE WHEEL
PLOUGH IN NORTHERN EUROPE?

By
Axel Steensberg

In TOOLS AND TILLAGE Grith Lerche
published a survey of medieval plough parts
found in Jutland bogs (Lerche 1970, 6). She
emphasized that the essential part of the frame
of a wheel plough was the bifurcated branch of
which one part constitutes the horizontal sole
and the other the upright sheath (fig. 1). In the
island of Zealand another ploughing imple-
ment of which the sole and sheath was also in
one piece had been found about 1870. Unfor-
tunately only a drawing of this item is pre-
served, in the National Museum in Copen-
hagen (Steensberg 1968). But Grith Lerche
also drew attention to Polish parallels
(Frankowski 1929, Moszynski 1929).
The normal Jutish term for the plough
sheath is sule, or in the northern part of Jut-
land syl (Feilberg 1904-11), the general mean-
ing of which is a column or pillar. Therefore in
Jutland a sule could also be a support for the
well-sweep and the post which supported the
ridge-beam inside a house. In both cases its
upper end was forked in order to contain a
horizontal beam. In some places the vertical
part of the cradle of a scythe was also called
sule (Vendsyssel), and on the waggon there
might be stay-braces, named suler, linking the
tips of the axles and the top body (Kalkar
1881-1918), cf. Swedishhakkesula or sulkapp
(Rietz 1867).
I am indebted to Professor P. Skautrup for
some other examples of the same kind: In
Falster the plough-stick or “crook”-stick

ended in a sule (fig. 2). Here as well as in
Lolland and Langeland this means a forked
stick. The term was also used in Zealand. The
learned minister of Birkerod north of
Copenhagen, later bishop of Viborg, Henrik
Gerner, wrote in a note to his translation of
Hesiod “when (the sheath) is separate from
the sole it is called a suule, but when sole and
sheath are connected they are together called
plough-head. A clever peasant can make those
if necessary and a suitable piece of wood can
be provided. It is then made of a crooked piece
of wood in the fashion of a Latin L, which
constitutes the sheath and sole together”. So
in 1670 he confirmed the existence of the
branch-construction in Zealand mentioned
above though only its upright part was called
suule. Already in the 17th century the
plough-beam was called “as” like the ridge-
beam of the house. However, the plough-
beam was never supported by the “sule” rest-
ing in a forked branch like the ridge tree in a
house. Consequently it is likely that the
“sule” of the plough originally meant the
sheath and sole in one piece.
In all Nordic languages sule or sula seem to
indicate a support originally constructed as or
ending in a forked branch. In Hymiskvida,
written in Iceland c. 1100, the giant Hymir
looks so intensely at the MLz at the gable of the
house that the ridge beam bursts into pieces.
In Norway sula was either a fork as on a tree
or on certain tools, or it could describe the