Finally the feudalism of Charlemagne was imitated by Harald Harfagr in
Norway; and, against that, Norse independence revolted and rebelled.
The true Viking would be no other man's man, and to secure Harald's
feudal power he was driven forth from Norway by an organised navy
manned by those of his countrymen who had agreed to accept King Harald
as feudal overlord and to pay him tribute. Defeated, as we have seen,
at the naval battle of Hafrsfjord in 872, the rebel remnant of the
Vikings found their return to Norway barred; and those of them who
became pirates in Orkney and Shetland and raided Norway as such,
were, in their turn, assailed in these islands by King Harald, and
destroyed. Others of them colonised Ireland, the Hebrides, and the
Faroes; and from all these islands as well as from Scotland and Norway
issued the swarms that settled in Iceland, and afterwards gave us a
code of law, our system of trial by jury, much of our legal procedure,
and, when crossed with Gaelic blood, produced the glorious literature
of the Sagas. But in their exodus, whencesoever they started, what
all alike sought was liberty; which, for them, meant the right to do
exactly as they pleased to others, and freedom from paying "scat" or
dues to a superior lord.
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