Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/64

 sation, appears to have been considered highly dishonourable. The revenues of the kings appear to have been drawn, in some considerable proportion, from this source. When not engaged in warfare they appear to have been subsisted, as their ordinary mode of living, on these royal circuits or progresses through the country. The kings had no fixed residence or palace in Norway; but had estates or royal domains in every district, and houses on them in which they could lodge for a time, and receive what was due for their entertainment in victuals from the neighbourhood; but these houses appear to have been no better mansions than the houses on any other estates, and the kings were usually lodged, with their courts, as well as subsisted, by the landowners or bonders. This usage of royal progresses for the subsistence of the royal household appears to have been introduced into England at the Norman, or rather at the previous Danish conquest; and the purveyance for it was a royal right, which continued to be exercised down to the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign.

Before the introduction or general diffusion of writing, it is evident that a class of men whose sole occupation was to commit to memory and preserve the laws, usages, precedents, and details of all those civil affairs and rights, and to whose fidelity in relating former transactions implicit confidence could be given, must of necessity have existed in society—must have been in every locality; and from the vast number and variety of details in every district, and the great interests of every community, must have been esteemed and recompensed in proportion to their importance in such a social state. This class were the scalds—the men who were the living books, to be referred to in every case of law or property in which the past had to be applied to the present. Before the introduction of Christianity, and with