oo Norway and the Norwegians 



v3 



(as it in fact was) for which they would consent to 

 abandon their right of revenge. 



Other changes rehated to the free holding of land. 

 Free possession, or what was called odal or udal right, 

 only vested in a family which could establish its pos- 

 session of the soil on which it lived through a number 

 of generations ; failing that, the land by Harald Fair- 

 hair's law theoretically belonged to the king. He might 

 bestow it upon any among his servants or nobility, and 

 it was in this wise that some of the greater estates had 

 been acquired, and the powerful landed aristocracy of 

 lendermen had been formed. By Magnus' law sixty 

 years' possession established a title to an odal estate. 

 This law limited the power of the crown. But it also 

 tended to reduce the power of the aristocracy. The 

 result of all these reforms was that the greater aristo- 

 cracy of Norway (the Icndermanclsaetter) practically 

 disappeared, and the lower aristocracy {holdernesactter) 

 became little distinguishable from the peasant class. 



In Denmark and Sweden the yeoman class had 

 separated from, and raised out of itself an aristocratic 

 order; and this, in these countries, had in its turn 

 reduced the bonder class to a lower level, a level not 

 much above that of the peasants of Germany. In 

 Norway, on the other hand, the peasant class had 

 absorbed or re-absorbed the aristocracy which a warlike 

 age had evoked from it. 



The future history of Norway alters little in this 

 social condition of things, For though after its union, 

 first with both Sweden and Denmark, afterwards with 

 Denmark alone, these countries imposed upon it some 

 of their own political and social ideas, their influence 



