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 440 REVIEWS OF BOOKS July The author seems in the main to accept the theory put forward by Alexander Bugge in his famous book on Vesterlandenes Inflydelse pact Nordboerne i Vikingetiden. that the special form of service in the king's expedition (pre- ferably naval expedition) called leding spread from Sweden to Denmark and Norway and thence to England through the ' Danish ' invasions. Whereas Scandinavian research, such as Professor Arup's latest interpretation of the leding as a defensive as well as an offensive force, 1 is fully utilized, Anglo- Saxon naval service is treated from older authorities, such as Freeman, Stubbs, and Dowell. The author might now have referred to Dr. Lieber- mann's Gcsetze der Angelsachsen, 2 where there is a complete collection of the Anglo-Saxon material as well as the recent literature on the subject. The examination of the Norwegian sources themselves starts with a comparison between the military sections of the two chief popular laws, the utger<Sar-bolk of the Gulatingslov and the utfararbolk of the Frostatingslov, the texts of which are quoted in full in a modern Norwegian version (cc. ii and iii). As the titles of the two sections, laying stress the one on equipment, the other on personal service, would seem to suggest, the difference between the two organizations of leding in the territory of the Gulating, the Vestland, and that of the Frostating, the Tr^ndelag, chiefly consists in their different age. The Vestland leding, going back to the reforms of King Hakon the Good treated in the Sagas, viz. the Fagrskinna and Snorre's Heimskringla, and mainly reproduced still in King Magnus the Lawbetterer's code at the end of the thirteenth century, shows a careful development of the successive territorial division into fylker, fjerdinger, skibreder, and manngerder; a transformation into an annual imposition as early as the twelfth century ; and since the ' law revision ' of King Sverre in the beginning of the thirteenth century a considerable increase of its burden. The leding of the Tr^ndelag shows all these features in a rudimentary and belated shape, preserving the original military service of the boat of twenty oars as late as the thirteenth century. A chapter (vi) devoted to the frontier district towards Denmark, Viken, where the so-called Borgartingskristenret is silent on secular matters, corrects the opinion of Hertzberg, that this district by special favour of the Danish kings enjoyed an exceptionally light service, by proving that this holds only good of part of Viken, and that the part where Danish influence was strongest, the well-known Bahuslen and Smalenene, are characterized by the imposition of the so-called lide, an imposition as heavy as that of Vestland. The author's account of the ecclesiastical and feudal immunities from leding (c. ix) already leads on to, and indeed greatly elucidates, the gradual commutation of the service into a money tax (skat). Even the laws, privileges, and treaties regulating these exceptions, such as the Concordate of Tunsberg of 1277 or the contemporaneous Hirdsskra for the king's feudatories, distinguish between personal service in the royal expedition, which the ecclesiastical and secular dignitaries discharged in more modern and individual forms than the old popular leding, and the military tax, which tended to become a burden on real property in pro- portion as ever wider classes of persons were freed from it. Among the 1 Wansk) Hist. Tidssks. v. 8. 2 ii. 638 L t s. v. Schiff, 3-3 f.