Yet, Though One Of The
Richest Men In These Parts, He Had Only Twenty Head Of Cattle, Twenty
Sheep, And Twenty Swine; And What Little Land He Had In Tillage Was
Ploughed By Horses.
The principal wealth of the Norman chiefs in that
country consisted in tribute exacted from the Fins; being paid in skins of
wild beasts, feathers, whalebone, cables and ropes for ships, made from the
hides of whales or seals.
Every one pays in proportion to his substance:
the wealthiest paying the skins of fifteen martins, five rein-deer skins,
and one bear-skin, a coat or cloak made of bear-skin or otters skins, and
two cables or ship ropes of sixty ells long each, one of which is made of
whale hide, and the other from the skins of seals.
According to the description given to the king by Ohthere, Northmanna-land,
or Norway, is very long and narrow, all the land which is fit for pasture
or tillage being on the seacoast, which is very rocky in some places. To
the east of this, and parallel to the cultivated land, there are wild and
huge mountains and moors, which are inhabited by the Fins. The cultivated
land is broadest in the south[11], where it is sixty miles broad, and in
some places more; about the middle of the country, it is perhaps thirty
miles broad, or somewhat more; and where it is narrowest in the north, it
is hardly more than three miles from the sea to the moors.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 21 of 810
Words from 5630 to 5885
of 222093
