Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/114

 fluence in the country, and are its highest class, and, although without family aggrandisement by primogeniture succession, retain family distinction and descent, and even family pride, but divide their properties on the udal principle among their children, it would express more justly what the bonder class were than the words landholder, yeoman, statesman, peasant-proprietor, or peasant. In the following translation of the Heimskringla, where the word peasant is used for the word bondi, the reader will have to carry in mind that these peasants were, in fact, an hereditary aristocracy, comprehending the great mass of the population, holding their little estates by a far more independent tenure than the feudal nobility of other countries, and having their land strictly entailed on their own families and kin, and with much family pride, and much regard for and record of their family descent and alliances, because each little estate was entailed on each peasant's whole family and kin. Udal right was, and is to this day in Norway, a species of entail, in realty, in the family that is udal-born to it. The udal land could not be alienated by sale, gift to the church, esheat to a superior, forfeiture, or by any other casualty, from the kindred who were udal-born to it; and they had, however distantly connected, an eventual right of succession vested in them superior to any right a stranger in blood could acquire. The udal-born to a piece of land could evict any other possessor, and,