Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/136

 appeared to have lived on board ships principally, or on islands on the coast.

This physical circumstance of wanting the building material of which the feudal castles of other countries were constructed, and by which structures the feudal system itself was mainly supported, had its social as well as political influences on the people. The different classes were not separated from each other, in society, by the important distinction of a difference in the magnitude or splendour of their dwellings. The peasant at the corner of the forest could, with his time, material, and labour of his family at command, lodge himself as magnificently as the king,—and did so. The mansions of kings and great chiefs were no better than the ordinary dwellings of the bonders. Lade, near Drontheim,—the seat of kings before the city of Drontheim, or Nidaros, was founded by King Olaf Tryggvesson, and which was the mansion of Earl Hakon the Great, and of many distinguished men who were earls of Lade,—was, and is, a wooden structure of the ordinary dimensions of the houses of the opulent bonders in the district. Egge—the seat of Kalf Arneson, who led the bonder army against King Olaf which defeated and slew him at the battle of Stikkleslad, and who was a man of great note and social importance in his day—is, and always has been, such a farm-house of logs as may be seen on every ordinary farm estate of the same size. The foundation of a few loose stones, on which the lower tier of logs is laid to raise it from the earth, remains always the same, although all the superstructure of wood may have been often renewed; but these show the extent on the ground of the old houses. The equality of all ranks in those circumstances of lodging, food, clothing, fuel, furniture, which form great social distinctions among people of other countries, must have nourished a feeling of independence of external cir-