Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/110

 and Thorolf as his share of the booty; but Astrid was separated from her son Olaf then only three years of age. Klerkon thought Thorolf too old for a slave, and that no work would be got out of him to repay his food, and therefore killed him; but sold the boy to a man called Klærk for a goat. A peasant called Reas bought him from Klærk for a good cloak; and he remained in slavery until he was accidentally recognised by his uncle, who was in the service of the Russian king, and was by him taken to the court of Novogorod, where he grew up. His mother Astrid, apparently long afterwards, was recognised by a Norwegian merchant called Lodin at a slave market to which she had been brought for sale. Lodin offered to purchase her, and carry her home to Norway, if she would accept of him in marriage, which she joyfully agreed to; Lodin being a man of good birth, who sometimes went on expeditions as a merchant, and sometimes on viking cruises. On her return to Norway her friends approved of the match as suitable; and when her son, King Olaf Tryggvesson, came to the throne, Lodin and his sons by Astrid were in high favour. This account of the capturing, selling, and buying slaves, and killing one worn out, is related, as it would be at present in the streets of Washington, as an ordinary matter. Slavery among the Anglo-Saxons at this period, namely, in the last half of the 10th century, appears to have become rather an adscriptio glebæ—the man sold or transferred with the land—than a distinct saleable property in the person of the slave; at least we hear of no slave markets in England at which slaves were bought and sold. In Norway this class appears to have been better treated than on the south side of the Baltic, and to have had some rights. Lodin had to ask his slave Astrid to accept of him in marriage. We find them also in the first half of the 11th century, at least under some