Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/111

 masters, considered capable of acquiring and holding property of their own. When Asbiorn came from Halogaland in the north of Norway to purchase a cargo of meal and malt, of which articles King Olaf the Saint, fearing a scarcity, had prohibited the exportation from the south of Norway, he went to his relation Erling Skialgsson, a peasant or bondi, who was married to a sister of the late King Olaf Tryggvesson, and was a man of great power. Erling told Asbiorn that in consequence of the law he could not supply him, but that his thralls or slaves could probably sell him as much as he required for loading his vessel; adding the remarkable observation, that they, the slaves, are not bound by the law and country regulation like other men,—evidently from the notion that they were not parties, like other men, to the making the law in the Thing. It is told of this Erling, who was one of the most considerable men in the country and brother-in-law of King Olaf Tryggvesson, although of the bonder or peasant class, that he had always 90 free-born men in his house, and 200 or more when Earl Hakon, then regent of the country, came into the neighbourhood; that he had a ship of 32 banks of oars; and when he went on a viking cruise, or in a levy with the king, had 200 men at least with him. He had always on his farm thirty slaves, besides other workpeople; and he gave them a certain task as a day's work to do, and gave them leave to work for themselves in the twilight, or in the night. He also gave them land to sow, and gave them the benefit of their own crops; and he put upon them a certain value, so that they could redeem themselves from slavery, which some could do the first or second year, and "all who had any luck could do it in the third year." With this money Erling bought new slaves, and he settled those who had thus obtained their freedom on his newly cleared land, and