Söldner:
All-but landless peasant.
(Duby, Georges. Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West, 555)
See http://www.netserf.org/Glossary/s.cfm

Cottager:
A peasant of lower class, with a cottage, but with little or no land.
(MEDIEV-L. Medieval Terms)
Related terms: Cottars
See http://www.netserf.org/Glossary/C.cfm#416

"A Söldner in the above context is a Taglöhner (day labourer) or Häusler, and not a mercenary. It is a man, a cottager, who has a very small farm house (cf. your above quote of "Sölde"), or lives on a bigger farm in one or two rooms. He owns a little land, a small garden, and perhaps some animals, so a small farmer. As all this is not enough to support him and his family, he works small extra jobs by the day."
See http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/BADEN-WURTTEMB...

"The man is described by Feyerabend as a Soldner, which can mean either 'cottager' or 'mercenary' (cf. Feyerabend, Ottenbeuren Jahrbucher, m, 61, for an instance where Soldner unequivocally means 'cottager') The latter reading does gain support from the man's assumption of military leadership, but the two possibilities are hardly mutually exclusive Not only were mercenaries disproportionately recruited from the humbler ranks of rural society, but Feyerabend's own source, the 'Chronologia Ottoburana' of Gallus Sandholzer (c. 1600) explicitly describes the man as 'a poor Soldner from Sontheim' ('ain armer soldner von Sontheim') StAA, KL Ottobeuren 8 (Mu. B ), 717-18"
See http://past.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/171/1/30.pdf
:)