Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/135

 cannot be constructed of such building materials without great labour, time, and command of cement. Limestone is not found in abundance in Norway, and is rare in situations in which it can be made and easily transported; and even clay, which is used as a bedding or cement in some countries for rough lumps of stone in thick walls, is scarce in Norway. Wood has of necessity, in all times and with all classes, been the only building material. This circumstance has been of great influence in the middle ages on the social condition of the Northmen. Castles of nobles or kings, commanding the country round, and secure from sudden assault by the strength of the building, could not be constructed, and never existed in Norway. The huge fragments and ruins of baronial castles and strongholds, so characteristic of the state of society in the middle ages in the feudal countries of Europe, and so ornamental in the landscape now, are wanting in Norway. The noble had nothing to fall back upon but his war-ship, the king nothing but the support of the people. In the reign of our King Stephen, when England was covered with the fortified castles of the nobility, to the number, it is somewhere stated, of 1500, and was laid waste by their exactions and private wars, the sons of Harald Gille—the kings Sigurd, Inge, and Eystein — were referring their claims and disputes to the decision of Things of the people. In Normandy and England the Northmen and their descendants felt the want in their mother-country of secure fortresses for their power; and the first and natural object of the alien landholders was to build castles, and lodge themselves in safety by stone walls against sudden assaults, and above all against the firebrand of the midnight assailant. In the mother-country, to be surprised and burned by night within the wooden structures in which even kings had to reside, was a fate so common, that some of the kings