act* contains as usual numerous regulations respecting the manner in which the search is to be made, and mutual pledges, in the presence of competent witnesses, are to be given that no bodily injury should be inflicted by any of the parties concerned. Highway robbers or brigands might not only be killed with impunity, but those who killed them were entitled to a recompense.

These and numerous other enactments, in the Grágás, as well as the incidents related in the Sagas, show that a man's property was more secure in Iceland than his person. In an age, in fact, when every one went armed, when it was regarded as an act of cowardice to brook the slightest insult, and when a pecuniary compensation might be offered and received without dishonour for a bodily injury, a man's life must have been in daily jeopardy. The same causes would also, in a great measure, have rendered property equally insecure. Hence, although the Icelandic laws both for the protection and inheritance of property are much superior to those of the mother-country, and the Germanic states of the same period, a person skilful in the use of his weapons would, no doubt, frequently have braved their stringent regulations with impunity. This was particularly the case during the times of Paganism, but in the eleventh century legal right appears to have been much more respected. We think, however, that it would be erroneous to suppose, with some writers, that a sudden change of public opinion had been effected by the introduction of Christianity. A change there certainly was, but we should attribute it more to the knowledge of jurisprudence, and especially of judicial forms, which the Icelanders had acquired in the forensic circle of the Al-thing. An influential person had been taught by experience that he might crush his adversary more effectually, and with less bodily risk, by having recourse to legal chicanery, and underhand practices, than by meeting him with sword and battle-axe at a holmgang. In the tenth century a prudent man in Iceland was, no doubt, often deterred from enforcing a legal claim by reflecting on the personal risk he would necessarily incur, and the probability that any step he might take would only be the

Grágás, viii. 118.

commencement of one of those hereditary feuds that were the cause of so much bloodshed. In the eleventh, and especially in the twelfth and in the thirteenth century, he would be equally deterred by the certain prospect of involving himself and his family in a ruinous and interminable lawsuit. At the early period of the commonwealth the Icelanders acted on the principle-a principle which, as worshippers of Thor, was quite in accordance with their religious tenets-that might constituted right; but the proceedings in their forensic circles gradually effected a great change in their sentiments, and they appear to have finally arrived at the conviction that rights could only be maintained or enforced by legal astute

ness.

CHAPTER III.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ICELANDERS.

In our remarks on the Grágás, we purposely abstained from noticing the laws that define conjugal rights and regulate the intercourse between the sexes, it being our intention to give a brief outline of them in the present chapter, together with a few anecdotes from the Sagas, which will serve as their best commentary, and at the same time enable the reader to form a more correct idea of the state of society in Iceland during the earlier period of the commonwealth than any observations we could make on the subject. We should certainly be inclined to doubt whether some of the incidents related in these narratives actually occurred; but the same doubt exists when we read the chronicles of the middle ages or any of the numerous French memoirs of the last three centuries. Yet, where is the age of chivalry portrayed with such vivid colours as in the graphic pages of Froissart? Who presents us with a more truthful picture of the turbulent freedom of a mediæval Italian republic than Giovanni Villani? And do not the

memoirs of Saint Simon, and the letters of Sévigné, throw & greater light on the social state of France during the reign of Louis XIV. than the most elaborate history? Such kind of works should not be subjected to too severe a criticism. We should be satisfied when the author's statements and opinions,

taken as a whole, are sufficiently trustworthy to enable us to mark the principal traits in the national character of a people -the action of their civil and religious institutions on their social condition-the reaction resulting from the conflict of opposing interests by which these institutions are modifiedthe gradual development of principles destined to exercise a beneficent or baneful influence on future generations-to follow the statesman from the tribune to the council board-the brawling patriot from the clamorous arena of popular agitation to the confidential interview-the humble citizen from his daily avocations to the privacy of the domestic circle, and thus seize a few of the evanescent and ever-blending shades that diversify the chequered woof of human existence. The manners of a semi-barbarous people are certainly not so attractive as the polished refinement of modern civilization; but they show, at least, that man, in whatever circumstances he may be placed, is invariably guided by the same motives, and that, however the forms which his passions assume may differ in appearance, they will be found on closer examination to be essentially identic. Under this point of view, a sketch of Icelandic life in the olden time, while the deities, that ancient lore had symbolized into being from nature's varied phenomena, were still the objects of public worship*, will not be devoid of interest. In giving this sketch, we shall let the Sagas speak for themselves. These Sagas, it is true, were committed to writing upwards of a century, in some cases two or three centuries, after the events narrated are said to have taken place. Yet, notwithstanding this untoward circumstance, they bear internal evidence of being trustworthy records of the periods to which they severally refer. Each of the leading families or septs of Iceland had its Saga, and when we take into consideration the state of society at that period, we may readily admit that a family history might have been handed down by oral tradition for three or four generations without undergoing any material alteration. The statements of one Saga are also frequently corroborated by those of

Christianity was embraced by the Icelanders at the Al-thing of the year 1000, but they stipulated that the former religion should be tolerated, and the eating of horseflesh and the exposition of infants permitted. When the Al-thing broke up, the assembled multitudes went to the hot baths to be baptized, preferring for this rite hot water to cold.

another, and the Danish literati of the present day who have subjected these ancient documents to a critical examination, regard upwards of a hundred of them to be fully entitled to the claim of historical authenticity. Although we are inclined to suspect that the amor patriæ of these gentlemen has led them, on this occasion, as it usually does, rather too far, we should have no hesitation ourselves to admit that a few of the best authenticated Sagas, Njáls and Kormaks for instance, were fully equal in point of veracity to most of the memoirs that French vanity ever indited, an admission which certainly does not preclude a considerable degree of scepticism from prevailing in their perusal. However, such as they are, they furnish the best information that can be rendered available for our present purpose, and, we repeat, on the whole, give a faithful picture of the state of society during the most turbulent period of Scandinavian history.

The manners and customs of the ancient Scandinavians and Germans-people belonging to the same Teutonic race, and placed in much the same circumstances-could not have offered any very striking difference, and, although these customs must necessarily have undergone a considerable change during the lapse of centuries, several modern writers, as the reader will have remarked in the preceding chapters, have not scrupled to apply the glowing description which Tacitus has given of those Germanic tribes, that the Romans, in his time, were acquainted with, to all the nations of Teutonic origin, whether Germanic or Scandinavian, and that, too, from the earliest period of their history to their conversion to Christianity. The Germans of the second century, according to Tacitus, possessed all the virtues that adorn humanity. The men were distinguished for their courage and love of justice, the women for their chastity and conjugal affection. The golden age of primæval innocence still existed in the forests of Germania. This primitive simplicity continued to prevail in Scandinavia, according to M. Mallet, so late as the tenth century. The Icelandic laws, he tells us, "not only denounced very severe punishments against rapes and adulteries, but proceeded farther, expressly prohibiting even kissing or secret embraces."* Now all this

* See page 205.

is amazingly fine and very consolatory, but, unfortunately, only applicable to a state of society that never existed, and which we fear was never destined, at least not in this wicked world of ours, to be the lot of humanity. At all events, the reader will find that the customs of the Scandinavians of the tenth century, as they are depicted in the Sagas, were far less primitive than those which Tacitus thought proper to attribute to their Germanic brethren of the age of the first Cæsars. And this could not be otherwise. The Sagaman relates the actions of his fellow-citizens without attempting to draw a single conclusion from the facts stated. Tacitus, from hearsay and the few personal observations he was enabled to make among a people whose language was totally unknown to him, constructed a brilliant theory of primæval virtue as a contrast to the vices which civilization had necessarily introduced among the Romans. The Sagaman, in a word, dealt with every-day facts, with sober reality; Tacitus with theoretical fiction. We shall, therefore, proceed to lay before the reader the homely truths of the Norse chroniclers, and leave those who still imagine that a barbarous people can combine primitive simplicity of character with the refinement of civilization, to peruse the classic pages of Tacitus.

Polygamy may perhaps have prevailed in Scandinavia, at least among the wealthy, at a very early period, but in the ninth and tenth centuries it seems, if it had really ever been a general custom-which we very much doubt-to have fallen into disuse. At all events no mention is made in any of the Sagas relating to Iceland of polygamy. We only read of the mater familias, the house-wife, húsfreyja, and the husband, húsbóndi, though frequent instances occur of a man keeping, with the knowledge and sometimes consent of his wife, a frilla or concubine *. These frillas were frequently the cause of domestic quarrels. Thus, in the Laxdæla-Saga, we are informed

* Húsbóndi, pater familias, our husband, means literally house-dweller ; hús, house, and bóndi, contracted from bóandi, búandi, the participle of the verb búa, to dwell, to inhabit. Húsfreyja, mater familias, house-wife. The Old Norse word frú, Dan. frue, Germ. frau, Dutch, vrouw, is used both for woman and wife. In the Prose Edda, ch. 24, the word is derived from Freyja the name of the goddess of love, but in the glossary to the Poetical Edda, from frior, handsome, whence fridla, frilla, a concubine. Another derivation is given from the verb fria, Mæso-Gothic, frijón, to love, but all these words appear to be cognate.-See the word Freyr in our glossary to the Prose Edda.