Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/98

 those godars; but the sacerdotal function had become merged in the civil function of judge apparently long before the introduction of Christianity. The judicial functions and emoluments of judge descending by hereditary rights in certain families, as appertaining to their hereditary priesthood, could not be a popular institution, especially with no sacerdotal function to perform. True religion, as we see in Scotland and England, can scarcely maintain itself when it mixes up civil power or great wealth with the religious element in its establishment; and much less can a false religion. We may gather from the silence of the sagas on the point, that the godars had no sacerdotal or religious function in society; and did not, even in the earliest historical period, exist as priests, but as hereditary local judges only, each in his own godard or parish. At the Things at which Hakon Athelstan's foster-son, Olaf Tryggvesson, and Olaf the Saint, come in collision with the religion of Odin, and threaten and even put to death peasants and chiefs who adhere to Odinism, no priests or godars appear, or are spoken of. Their civil power, jurisdiction, and dues or emoluments, however, were derived from their hereditary succession to the priestly office in their respective godards; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that they, their supporters, and the religion on which they founded their rights, were not the popular side at the introduction of Christianity. Some indications may be perceived of its having been a political movement to adopt Christianity. The supporters of the old religion appear to have been the small kings, the rich bonders, and those who may reasonably be supposed to have been themselves godars, or connected with them. The support of Christianity, on the other hand, appears to have come from the people and the kings, and not from the kings alone. In Iceland, where the godars, with their civil powers, were trans-