Note 247 — Chapter IV · OF EARL BRÚSI.

In the Saga of Harald Harfagri it is stated (chap. vi.) that “King Harald made this law over all the lands he conquered, that all the odal possessions should be his, and that the Bœndr, both great and small, should pay him land-dues for their possessions.” Thus he put an end to odal right, in its pure and simple form at least, wherever he extended his authority; and the Bœndr, thus taxed and deprived of their odal rights, complained, with justice, that they were changed from a class of proprietary nobles into a class of tributary tenantry. Having assumed the ownership of the earldom of Orkney as his own by conquest, his heirs became the odal-born lords of Orkney, while the Earls were theoretically the liegemen of the Kings of Norway, though having also an odal right to the earldom which the royal prerogative could not set aside.