Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/69

 derived from such a class as the scalds. Before the clergy by their superior learning extinguished the vocation of this class among the Northmen, the scalds appear to have been frequently employed also as confidential messengers or ambassadors; as, for instance, in the proposal of a marriage between Olaf King of Norway and the daughter of King Olaf of Sweden, and of a peace between the two countries to be established by this alliance. The scalds, by their profession, could go from court to court without suspicion, and in comparative safety; because, being generally natives of Iceland, they had no hereditary family feuds with the people of the land, no private vengeance for family injuries to apprehend; and being usually rewarded by gifts of rings, chains, goblets, and such trinkets, they could, without exciting suspicion, carry with them the tokens by which, before the art of writing was common in courts, the messenger who had a private errand to unfold was accredited. When kings or great people met in those ages they exchanged gifts or presents with each other, and do so still in the East; and the original object of this custom was that each should have tokens known to the other, by which any bearer afterwards should be accredited to the original owner of the article sent with him in token, and even the amount of confidence to be reposed in him denoted. We, with writing at command, can scarcely perhaps conceive the shifts people must have been put to, when even the most simple communication or order had to be delivered vivâ voce to some agent who was to carry it, and who had to produce some credential or token that he was to be believed. Every act of importance between distant parties had to be transacted by tokens. Our wonder and incredulity cease when we consider that such a class of men as those who composed and transmitted this great mass of saga literature were evidently a necessary element