Sedentary settlement in Scandinavia was predominantly agrarian during the Iron Age and the Middle Ages. Grain cultivation and animal husbandry were the basic means of providing sustenance, but were complemented, according to local conditions, by various forms of hunting, fishing and gathering. Most of the medieval sedentary population of Scandinavia based its existence on a combination of agriculture and animal husbandry. The systems of cultivation and the tillage technology that were employed at the end of the Viking Age had parallels in west and central Europe. Different patterns of settlement have existed in the Nordic countries from prehistoric times. There were farms grouped in villages of different sizes whose resource areas were more or less clearly separated from each other. There were also individual farms corresponding functionally and legally to villages in the sense that they had their own resource territories. Throughout the first millennium AD Danish agrarian society was marked by the continual relocation of rural villages and hamlets.