And they ordained, if a man should be slain we estimate all equally dear, English and Danish, i.e. at viii half-marks of pure gold except the ceorl who sits on gafol land and their [the Danish] lysings, they also are equally dear, either at 200 scillings.
And gyf man cynges þegen beteo man-slihtas. ⁊ he hine ladian durre. do he ꝥ mid xii cynges þegnas ⁊ gyf mon þone man betyhð þe bið læssa maga. ladie hine xi his gelicena ⁊ anum cyninges þegene.
And if a man accuse a king’s thane of manslaying and he dare to clear himself, let him do that with 12 king’s thanes, and if any one accuse that man who is of less degree let him clear himself with 11 of his equals and with one king’s thane.
Now, in the first place, it is evident that this text describes the wergeld of two classes or ranks of persons.
Dane and Englishman of the first class are to be held equally dear at eight half-marks of pure gold.
The other class embraces the Saxon ‘ceorl who sits on gafol land’ and the Danish lysing. These also are equally dear at 200 scillings.
Englishman put on a level with the Norse hauld, at the normal wergeld of 200 gold solidi or 1200 scillings.
Let us look at these two classes separately. The first class of Dane and English men without other definition are to be paid for by eight half-marks of gold. The money is Danish. Eight half-marks contained thirty-two ores. And this, as we have seen, at the Norse ratio of 1:8 was the same thing as 32 marks of silver. The wergeld of the hauld of the Gulathing law we found to be most probably 30 marks of silver. The Danish man of this clause thus seems to be represented in Norse law by the hauld. In other words, Guthrum from his point of view took the hauld as the typical freeman, just as we found him so taken in the Gulathing law.
It will be remembered that this wergeld of the hauld was equated with 96 cows and that in its gold value reckoned in wheat-grains it amounted to 200 Merovingian gold solidi.