Antiquity of class divisions in the North—Influence of education—The classes into which society was divided—The Jarl the progenitor of kings—Primogeniture—The thrall—Description of freemen—The freeman a farmer or bondi—Occupation of Jarl and his wife—High-born women—Marriage of the high born—Sons of Jarls—Divisions of the people at the close of the Pagan era—The Hersir or leader of the host—Customs of ancient chiefs—The Jarl in earlier and later times—The Lendirmenn the leaders and advisers of the bœndr—The position and power of the Bondi—The Haulld, a higher grade of bondi—The king—Grades of kingship—Sea kings—Consent of the Thing to the election of a king—Manner of selecting a king.
From very early times the people of the North were divided into classes. Men and women were educated from their childhood to believe in the superiority or inferiority of their own being, of the position inherited by them at their birth, and consequently to think themselves superior or inferior to the other people of the commonwealth. This belief was intensified by the education they received, their surroundings and their mode of life, as seen throughout from the day of their birth to the time when they were buried. The class that governed held that they were born to rule, and the slave to remain a slave. The lot of each had been hereditary, fate had so decreed.
This demarcation into classes was acquiesced in by the people of the land, for it could not have existed a single moment without their will, and formed an integral part of the social and political fabric throughout the whole history of the people.
But as will be seen in the perusal of these volumes, no man was allowed to rule over the people unless he excelled in many things.
The Rigsmál gives in a striking manner the mode of life of early times, and shows into how many classes society was divided: viz., the slave; the karl or bondi; the jarl, and the hersir.
In the first stanza of the Voluspa we have seen that all men are called the sons of Heimdall, of which we have an explanation in the Rigsmál. Heimdall travels about under the name of Rig, from house to house; first he goes to Ai and Edda (great-grandfather and great-grandmother), then to Afi and Amma (grandfather and grandmother), and then to Fadir and Módir (father and mother).
In the poem we see the ancestry of each class under a sort of developing system—how the jarl and hersir are the progenitors of chiefs and kings; and we learn of odal, or of primogeniture and entail; of the hersir we learn nothing, except that he existed.
It is told there went
Along the green paths
A mighty and old