50 Norzijay and the Norwegians 



of Novthera Europe. It is not, I dare say, unkuown 

 to the reader how much the social constitution of 

 Germany and of England seems to point back to a time 

 when the separate communities — call them tribes if 

 you will — who occupied the locality and formed their 

 houses into a village, constituted within the limits of 

 that villaoe a sort of commonwealth, and held their 

 lands, or a portion of them, in common. The village 

 community, as it has been styled, formed a unit in the 

 constitution of almost every Teutonic nationality in 

 primitive days. This form of community existed 

 among all the nations on the shores of the Ijaltic, not 

 the North Germans alone, but the Swedes and Danes 

 likewise. But there is much less trace of it in Norway. 

 The greater portion of that land seems to have been 

 settled by individual emigrants in much the same way 

 that the AVestern States of America have been and are 

 being settled in our day. Some sturdy emigrant made 

 his way into the unknown land, taking his family, his 

 servants, his household gods, it may be, with him, and 

 he settled down in a farm of his own, choosing a spot 

 which promised well ; other houses grew up round his — 

 his own being many houses — occupied by his dependants; 

 but the land on which he dwelt was his own, not 

 common land, but held by free and allodial title. This 

 settler was in his way an aristocrat. He had his own 

 servants, but he served no man. His descendant, the 

 modern peasant proprietor, is stili the most genuine 

 and ancient aristocrat of Norway. The times of trouble, 

 of external war and Viking expeditions, raised up 

 another and more military aristocracy in the country ; 

 but behind this class always stood the class of freehold 



