Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/68

 had a footing in the material interests of the people. To take an interest in the long-past events of history is an acquired intellectual taste, and not at all the natural taste of the unlettered man. When we are told of the Norman baron in his castle-hall, or the Iceland peasant's family around their winter fireside in their turf-built huts, sitting down in the 10th or 11th century to listen to, get by heart, and transmit to the rising generation, the accounts of historical events of the 8th or 9th century in Norway, England, or Denmark, we feel that, however pleasing this picture may be to the fancy, it is not true to nature,—not consistent with the human mind in a rude illiterate social state. But when we consider the nature of the peculiar udal principle by which land or other property was transmitted through the social body of these Northmen, we see at once a sufficient foundation in the material interests, both of the baron and the peasant, for the support of a class of traditionary relators of past events. Every person in every expedition was udal born to something at home,—to the kingdom, or to a little farm; and this class were the recorders of the vested rights of individuals, and of family alliances, feuds, or other interests, when written record was not known. For many generations after the first Northmen settled in England or Normandy, it must, from the uncertain issue of their hostilities with the indigenous inhabitants, have been matter of deep interest to every individual to know how it stood with the branch of the family in possession of the piece of udal land in the mother-country to which he also was udal born, that is, had certain eventual rights of succession; and whether to return and claim their share of any succession which may have opened up to them in Norway must have been a question with settlers in Northumberland, Normandy, or Iceland, which could only be solved by the information