sufferers, perhaps because they were representatives of a religion unfriendly to the divinities of the North as well as because they resisted the attacks of the heathen and tried to save their treasures. The enemy soldiers who fell into the hands of the vikings were usually put to death, sometimes by torture.47 There is no reason to conclude, however, that the Northmen were more cruel than the people of the foreign lands which they attacked. Furthermore, in the World War so many instances of hideous ferocity were displayed by Christian nations as to preclude any conclusion that the Northmen were unique. It should be remembered also that we have not the vikings' side of the story. For the details with reference to the viking raids we are almost wholly dependent upon the accounts written by the Christian monks. of the lands which the Northmen plundered. These writers hated and despised the invaders as heathen and barbarians just as they hated and despised the Mohammedans and Jews. This attitude did not tend to make them unprejudiced historians.48

Prisoners

In the latter part of the viking period the Northern warriors killed fewer and carried away more prisoners. People of prominence and wealth. were taken for the sake of the ransom which they might bring; many others, some, often men and

of War

in the air and caught them on their spears; but states that one of their number was so tender-hearted that he tried to stop the pastime, and thereby gained the nickname, Barna-Karl-"child-man," or "children's friend." Origines Islandicae, I, 225.

47 An especially cruel practice to which the Northmen at times resorted was to "cut a blood-eagle." Incisions were made over the ribs in the form of an eagle, and the lungs were pulled out through the opening while the victim was still alive. This form of torture, however, seems to have been practiced only upon the man who had killed one's father, if taken in war. Such an execution was a sacrifice to Odin, the god of war. "Blöðörn," in Cleasby and Vigfusson's Dictionary.

48 Collingwood, Scandinavian Britain, 63–64.

women of high rank, were made to serve as slaves in the land of their captors, or were sold in the great markets where traffic in human beings took place; frequently, also, women, especially beautiful ones, were taken to the North and became the wives or mistresses of their captors. With the prisoners were carried off trophies of victory -the banners of the enemy and the arms of their leaders, and also a rich collection of plunder. The bodies of their own dead, which must be left behind, the Scandinavians carefully buried upon the field of battle; but they displayed their scorn and contempt for the vanquished enemy by leaving the dead comrades of the latter unburied where they fell.49

49 Steenstrup, Normannerne, I, 369–371.

CHAPTER XVI

GOVERNMENT

With law shall our land be built up and settled; with lawlessness, wasted and spoilt.

Saga of Burnt Njal.

tive Evolu

IN very early times virtually every separate geographical unit of continental Scandinavia constituted an independent political entity; each river valley, coastal plain, peninsula, and island Administrahad a distinct governmental system. But tion with the passing of the centuries these individual units were gradually combined under one rule, sometimes through mutual agreement, but more frequently as a result of the successful military campaigns of ambitious chieftains or aggressive kings. In consequence of these centralizing activities, by the close of the ninth century Denmark, Sweden, and Norway had attained to approximately the territorial dimensions maintained during most of the Middle Ages; and each country was from now on usually under the dominion of a single sovereign.

The Icelandic commonwealth was a by-product of the movement towards political consolidation in Norway, which took place under King Harold Hairfair. Beginning about the year 874, large numbers of the best people in the land, unwilling to submit to the victorious king, fled to the bleak island far to the west, and here began life anew. For a few decades the exiles lived in scattered groups of tiny, independent democracies, more or

less separated by natural barriers, but the need for a central organization which could settle inter-community disputes and consider matters of common interest led, in 930, to the formation of the Icelandic republic, which functioned through the Althing, or general parliament. The political evolution requiring more than a thousand years in continental Scandinavia, was thus, through aid of example, effected by Iceland in fifty.

Administrative Divisions

Yet, after centralization had been completed, the boundaries of the earlier political units were largely retained and were employed for purposes of local administration. These subdivisions were, however, probably never identical even in continental Scandinavia, and as time passed they became more differentiated. The smaller units, most of which developed from the bygd, or original communal settlement, were usually called herads (héraðr) throughout the North, but there were various exceptions which probably had their origin in changed administrative conditions which seemed to call for a new terminology. In Denmark, Iceland, and southern Sweden, for instance, the herad was commonly found; but in the north of Sweden the corresponding division was known as a hundred (hundrað), while groups of the hundreds were in some cases called herads. The herad was very usual in Norway also, but the names fylki and fjórðungr were applied to some of the small political units; and still other terms were employed in individual cases.1

In the larger political grouping there was even less uniformity. In some parts of Norway, the fylki, instead of being identical with the herad, was composed of a

1 Tunberg, Sven, Studier rörande Skandinaviens äldsta politiska Indelning, passim; Hildebrand, Svenska Folket under Hedna Tiden, 216–220; Bugge, Norges Historie, vol. I, pt. II, 232

number of the last-named units; in others, the larger divisions were known as "lands" or "rikes"-dominions, as Haalogaland and Raumarike. In Denmark and Sweden the name "land" was applied to some of the provinces, but not to others, though all of the provinces appear to have been made up of groups of herads, or their equivalents. Much obscurity, however, surrounds the subject of local administration in continental Scandinavia, for there are many serious gaps in the existing evidence; and it seems impossible to form a clear conception of the administrative machinery as a whole.

Fortunately, this is not true with reference to Iceland, for which data are fairly adequate. And from our knowledge of local administration there it seems possible to gain a somewhat more satisfactory idea of the corresponding governmental units on the continent; for it appears likely that Iceland followed the political machinery of the mother land, except insofar as it interfered with the settlers' ideas of personal liberty and the needs of a commonwealth, as opposed to a kingdom.

In Iceland, the most important local unit was the godord (goðorð), which was politico-religious in character. The settlers were grouped into a large number of such divisions, each a little republic in itself, until the Althing was established and the Commonwealth formed, when the godords were reduced to thirty-nine and the island divided into four quarters, each containing nine godords, except the North Quarter, which, because of conditions peculiar to the region, was given twelve. For certain purposes of administration, three godords were counted as a political unit. Such a group was called a thriding (Þriðjungr), and bore a close relationship to the "riding" of northern England.2

2 Conybeare, Place of Iceland in the History of European Institutions, 46.