Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/65

 Christianity the use of written documents, and the diffusion, by the church establishment, of writing in every locality, the scald must have been among the pagan landowners what the parish priest and his written record were in the older Christianised countries of Europe. In these all civil affairs were in written record either of the priest or the lawyer; and the scalds, in these Christianised countries, were merely a class of wandering troubadours, poets, story-tellers, minnesingers, entertained, like the dwarfs, court-jesters, or jugglers, by the great barons at their castles, for the entertainment which their songs, music, stories, or practical jokes might afford. Here, in this pagan country, they were a necessary and most important element in the social structure. They were the registrars of events affecting property, and filled the place and duty of the lawyer and scribe in a society in which law was very complicated; the succession to property, through affinity and family connexion, very intricate, from the want of family surnames, and the equal rights of all children; and in which a priesthood like that of the church of Rome, spread over the country, and acquainted more or less with letters, the art of writing, and law, was totally wanting. The scalds of the north disappeared at once when Christian priests were established through the country. They were superseded in their utility by men of education, who knew the art of writing; and the country had no feudal barons to maintain such a class for amusement only. We hear little of the scalds after the first half of the 12th century; and they are not quoted at all in the portion of Magnus Erlingsson's reign given by Snorro Sturleson within the 12th century.

Besides the payment of scatt, and the maintenance of the king's household in the royal progresses, the whole body of the landowners were bound to attend