[163]. St. Luke, x, 27.
[164]. A “kingsman” (konungsmaðr) was any one who had formally entered into the king’s personal service, whether he was actually employed at court or not. See below, cc. xxiv ff.
[165]. These “heathen lands” were probably the regions along the Arctic inhabited by the Finns; it is also possible that the author alludes to trading voyages to lands occupied by Esquimaux, though he makes no mention of these people anywhere in his work.
[166]. The “Birch-isle” code was originally a set of rules governing commercial intercourse. After a time it became a more elaborate law governing the municipality as well as the traders who were more or less permanently located there. It is believed that the name is derived from Birka, a trading center in eastern Sweden not far from the site of modern Stockholm. The “Birch-Isle” code is published in Norges Gamle Love, I, part iii, 303-336.
[167]. The mean retardation is forty-eight minutes.
[168]. This is within twenty-two minutes of the length of the lunar half-month.
[169]. The Northmen in medieval times had two hundreds, the great hundred, or duodecimal hundred, which counted 120 (12 × 10) and the ordinary hundred (10 × 10).
[170]. See Brenner’s edition, 20.
[171]. Error for ostenta; the ostentum, computed at one-sixtieth of an hour, seems to appear first in the writings of Rabanus Maurus (ninth century).
[172]. It is evident from this discussion that the author believes in a spherical earth; elsewhere, too, he speaks of the sphere of earth (jarðarbollr); see c. lvi.