Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 11, 2025
It must not be supposed that these warriors were kings in the ordinary acceptation of that term. They belonged to the class of "small" or petty kings, of whom there were great numbers in Norway in those days, and were merely rich and powerful free-landholders or udallers. Haldor the Fierce had a large family of sons and daughters. They were all fair, strong, and extremely handsome, like himself.
Of course there were many freeborn noble-spirited udallers who could not thus be tickled into the selling of their birthright; but Harald's tremendous energy and power, coupled with his rigorous treatment of all who resisted him, had the effect of reducing many of these to sullen silence, while some made a virtue of necessity, and accepted the fate which they thought it impossible to evade.
The owner is Sir Marcus Wardhill, who succeeded to his property by right of his wife, the Lady Margaret Brindister; one of the most ancient of our Shetland families, descended, so it is said, from one of the former chiefs, the Udallers of old. They are very great and important people, at all events when in their own castle, and of course have little communication with a man of my humble rank.
As we have here mentioned the three different classes that existed in Norway, it may be well to explain that the masters were peasants or "bonders", but not by any means similar to peasants in other lands; on the contrary, they were the udal-born proprietors of the soil the peasant-nobility, so to speak, the Udallers, or freeholders, without any superior lord, and were entitled to attend and have a voice in the "Things" or assemblies where the laws were enacted and public affairs regulated.
The udallers, such as Haldor, Ulf, and their children, were clad in finer garments, which were looped and buttoned with brooches and pendants of gold and silver, the booty gathered on those viking cruises, against which Hilda inveighed so earnestly. The work went on vigorously until the sun began to sink behind the mountain range that lay to the north-westward of the dale.
"On high the raven banner Invites the hungry kites, Red glares the sun at noon-tide, Wild gleam the Northern lights; The war-horn brays its summons, And from each rock-bound fiord Come the sea-kings of Norway, To follow Norway's lord. "The cloven arrow speeding, Fraught with war's alarms, Calls the ravens to their feast, The Udallers to arms.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking