IV. THE CLASSES OF FREE MEN AND THEIR RELATION TO LAND.
The odalman or hauld.
Following again the clue of the statements of the ‘personal right’ of the different classes, and commencing with the bónde or ordinary freeman settled upon land and presumably having in some sense, as in Wales, originally tribal rights to share in the land or its use, the next class which claims attention above the bónde is the odalman or odalborn man or hauld, whose wergeld of 96 or 100 cows was taken as that of the full and typical freeman.
Now, in the Frostathing law there is a statement as follows:—
Engum manni verðr iörð at óðali fyrr en .iij. langfeðr hafa átt, oc kemr undir hinn .iiij. samfleytt.
(XII. 4.) No man’s land becomes an odal to him until three forefathers have owned it and it falls to the fourth in unbroken succession.
And again in the Gulathing law is the following:—
Nu scal þær iarðer telia er óðrlom scolo fylgia. Sú er ein er ave hever ava leift.
(270.) Now shall the lands be told that are odal. The first is the one which grandfather has left to grandfather.