Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/203

 and of strengthening the family by collateral alliances through the new ties. We read of many instances of the kings sending their infants to influential bonders to be fostered; by which, no doubt, a great local interest and connection was secured to the foster-child. In the social state of those ages each family was a distinct dynasty, beholden for its security to its own strength in friends and followers, and its own power to avenge its wrongs, rather than to the guardianship and force of law. The system of fosterage was a consequence of this social state; and the custom lingered in England for a long time in the form of sending children to be brought up as pages in the families of distinguished personages. John Loptson appears to have been a person of more distinction than Snorro's own father. His grandfather was Sæmund him Erode, the contemporary of Are who first committed the historical sagas to writing; and Saemund himself was the compiler of the older Edda. John Loptson's mother, Thora, was an illegitimate daughter of King Magnus Barefoot. In such a family, we may presume the literature of the country would be cultivated, and the sagas of the historical events in Norway, and of the transactions of her race of kings, would be studied with great interest.

One would like to know how people of distinction in that age lived and were lodged in Iceland? What kind of house and housekeeping the daughter of a king would have there? We have no positive data to judge from; but we may infer from various circumstances that this class would be at least as well off as in Norway; that comparatively the comforts, luxuries, and splendour of life in the poor countries, would not be so much inferior to those of the rich countries as in our own days. Sugar, coffee, tea, silks, cotton, and all foreign articles, were almost equally out of reach and enjoyment in all the countries of the North.