HOW TIII-: i..\\n 



S J)ivi]>i:i>. 



479 



summoned Havar and Bersi (the fathers of the two young men) 

 to him, and told them that the people Hisliked their sons. 



"'Thou, Havar,' he said, 'art a man not belonging to the 

 herad, and hast settled here without permission. We did not 

 object to thy living here till thy son Thorgeir caused dissen- 

 sion ; we want thee to break up thy residence and depart from 

 Isafjord ; but Bersi and his son we will not drive away, for 

 they are heradsmen ' ' (Fostbroedra Saga). 



Odal. We find a great part of the land divided into Odal 

 i.e., the title to which was absolute, and not dependent on a 

 superior but how this was acquired we do not know. The 

 probability is that in the beginning of the migration or con- 

 quest each head of a family took, or had allotted to him, a 

 certain amount of land as odal the extent of land being 

 proportionate to the size of his family or to his rank. Then 

 the settler became a buandi l (a dweller), that is, of the Herad 

 of which he formed an integral part. The word bondi is still 

 applied in Norway to odal men, who own farms in their own 

 name. To this day there are odal farms in Sweden and 

 Norway which have remained in the same family almost from 

 time immemorial ; and such were the safeguards in olden times 

 against alienation of land, that it has been impossible for those 

 estates to be gradually absorbed into the hands of comparat- 

 ively few men, as has been unfortunately done in some other 

 countries ; and as no conquerors have come to dispossess the 

 original owners, and give large tracts of land to their followers, 

 the land in many parts of Scandinavia, with the exception of 

 Denmark, has remained much divided to this day. Besides 

 odal there was ~kaup land, the latter being freehold land that 

 could be bought, and loose property. 



The Gulathing's Law enumerates seven ways in which landed 

 property could become odal : - 



" 1. W T hen it had descended through four generations in 

 unbroken succession. 2. When the land had been given as 

 u-ereyild? 3. When it had been got by so-called brandert'L 



1 Buandi, plural buendr ; bond!, plural 

 bcndr ; boandi, plural bdendr. These are 

 different forms of the same name ; the 

 transition from buandi to boandi anil 

 then to bondi is easily traced. The form 



to-day is bonde. The original meaning 

 is a dweller; the verb to dwell is butt 

 bjd buid. 



- Indemnity, see p. 544. 



