Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/641

 stage of development. Owing probably to the nature of the country, we find no trace of the village community which has played so important a part in kindred races. As far back as we can go the ground was owned by individual proprietors, who partly held it in their own use and partly let it out to men who were practically their dependents. These proprietors, with the hersir families at their head, formed something closely resembling a landed aristocracy. The most powerful members of the class, distinguished by their descent, possessions, and personal qualities, scarcely acknowledged a superior. They were surrounded by a band of dependents trained to arms, and were accustomed to foreign expeditions, which increased their wealth, power, and warlike habits. Nor did the law of equal succession which at all times prevailed in Norway at all break up the power of these great families. The more common practice seems to have been, not to divide the lands, but to give the younger and more restless members their share of the inheritance in movable goods and let them seek a settlement for themselves. After the lands were settled such a practice must eminently have tended to increase the readiness to undertake foreign expeditions, while at the same time the wealth and power acquired in these expeditions fostered the increase of powerful families at home.

About the end of the 9th century Norway first became a united kingdom, and from that time we have a comparatively full and authentic record of its history. On the west side of the Vik, the present Christiania Fjord, lay a

small district called Vestfjold, ruled over by a race of kings descended, according to a not very trustworthy legend, from the Swedish Upsala kings. The whole country round the Vik stood, as might be expected from its situation, in closer relation to Denmark and Sweden than the rest of Norway did. According to one version of history the Vestfjold kings occupied for a short time the Danish throne, while according to another they were tributaries of Denmark. There was a well-known trading-place within their territory; and probably at an early time they shared extensively in the traffic of the neighbouring seas and in the expeditions of the Danes. The first clearly discernible figure amongst these Vestfjold kings is Halfdan the Black, who, partly by family connexions and partly by conquest, included within his kingdom the country around the head of the Vik, and thence inland to Lake Mjosen. Halfdan died at a comparatively early age, leaving a son, Harold,

who afterwards bore the famous name of Harold Fairhair, and who, according to the commonly received story, succeeded his father in 860, being then ten years of age. Mr Vigfusson contends, however, with considerable probability, that Harold's reign, as well as the colonization of Iceland, has been antedated by nearly thirty years, and it seems, to say the least, improbable that the events during the first ten years of his accession could have taken place in his early youth. But, setting aside the question of chronology, the story of Harold's reign, as given in Norse history, appears to be substantially trustworthy. After obtaining a firm hold on his father's dominions, he went north through Gudbrandsdal and descended upon the country of Throndhjem, which he speedily brought to subjection; and in the three or four subsequent years he had subdued the whole country as far south as Sogne Fjord. He appears to have received material assistance from two great chiefs, Earl Hakon, whose descendants are conspicuous in subsequent history as the Hlada jarls, and Earl Rognwald of Mœri, the ancestor of the dukes of Normandy and the Orkney earls. The country south of Sogne Fjord was still unsubdued, nor was its conquest apparently attempted for some years later. It was the most warlike part of Norway, and from it probably issued the greater part of

the Norwegian viking expeditions, which were now in their fullest vigour. The western chiefs appear at length to have taken the initiative, and to have gathered together a great force, summoning aid apparently even from their kinsmen beyond the western sea. Harold sailed south to meet them, and a fierce battle took place at Hafrs Fjord, near Stavanger, in which he gained a complete victory; the hostile force was entirely broken, and from this time his rule over all Norway appears to have been undisputed. Every man was forced to own him as master; new taxes and obligations were imposed; the fylkis were put under the rule of earls, and the hersirs became or were replaced by the king's lendermenn,—a title which becomes familiar in subsequent history. These lendermenn, however, must not be mistaken for an official nobility deriving their main strength from the king. They became the king's men, bound to support him and to follow him in war, and they received lands from him in return, from which they derived their name; but they were still for a long time merely the old hersirs under another name, powerful local chiefs who were ready at any moment, if the occasion seemed to require it, to lead against the king their dependents and the free proprietors by whom they were surrounded. But many of the leading men refused to live in Norway upon these terms. They sailed with their families and dependents, some of them to Iceland, but many more to the Scottish islands, which had long been a favourite resort of the western Norwegians; and thence for years they kept up a series of raids upon Norway. Harold for a while endeavoured to encounter them on the Norway coast, but finding this interminable he at last crossed the sea with a great force and fell upon the vikings from the northern islands as far south as Man. Orkney, and probably the Hebrides, were placed under Norwegian earls, and from this time we hear comparatively little of marauding expeditions from these islands to Norway. Many of those driven out in this western expedition settled ultimately in Iceland, the colonization of which was completed during Harold's reign (see ). Harold in his later years divided his kingdom among his sons, giving a predominance among them to his favourite Erik Blood-axe. He died at an advanced age c. 933 On Harold's death Erik attempted to make himself sole king of Norway, and defeated and slew two of his brothers to whom vassal kingdoms had been assigned by their father; but his tyrannical and unpopular character fostered the reaction which naturally set in against the strong rule of

Harold. Hakon, a younger son of Harold, who was brought up at the English court, and was afterwards known as Athelstan's foster-son, was sent for from England. He was presented by Earl Sigurd, the son of Earl Hakon (Harold's early supporter), at a great thing at Throndhjem, and there, after promising that he would restore the old rights which his father had taken away, he was accepted as king. In the words of the saga, the tidings flew through the land like fire in dry grass that the Throndhjem people had taken to themselves a king like in all things to Harold Fairhair, except that Harold had enslaved and oppressed all the people in the land, while this Hakon wished good to every one and offered back the odal rights which Harold had taken away. The people flocked to him from all sides, and Erik soon found himself compelled to leave the country, and sailed west to the Orkneys. Hakon's reign was true to the promise of its commencement. In the Uplands and in Vik he left his kinsmen in possession of the vassal kingdoms; Earl Sigurd ruled under him in the north, and the rest of the kingdom he took into his own hand. The landowners were freed from the burdens and vassalage of Harold's days, although some of the least oppressive taxes appear to have been continued, and the Gula-thing and XVII. — 74