The old inhabitants of the North entertained, therefore, a sincere affection for those institutions which gratified their proud feeling of freedom. Personal participation in the administration of justice, at a time when written laws did not exist, must have made every freeman a lawyer and a zealous defender of existing institutions, especially so far as regarded the main point, namely, the freedom they ensured. A general knowledge of the laws was still further promoted by the innate love of the Northmen for disputes and law-suits. Respect for the law was speedily carried to such an extent, and in the administration of justice at the _Things_ old established customs and usages were so strictly observed, that the slightest formal flaw was sufficient to ensure the rejection even of the most important cause. How deeply rooted the old national law was, is best shown by the fact that the Roman law, which had been adopted in the greater part of Europe, could never gain the supremacy in the countries of Scandinavia. The present Scandinavian law is by no means the offspring of any foreign code, but is founded on, and independently developed from, the law which already existed in the North in the days of heathenism. The powerful warriors, who in those remote times emigrated from the North, were, for the most part, men no less high-spirited and fond of freedom than their fathers before them. The old chronicles state, that among the warriors who came over to England with the conquerors Svend and Canute, there was not a single serf. The history of Iceland shows, even at an earlier period, that most of the colonists who went thither were descendants of kings, jarls, and other of the most powerful freemen of the North. These emigrants did not leave their paternal home because they were dissatisfied with their ancient hereditary rights and liberties, but because those rights and liberties were gradually threatened with restriction, and even annihilation, by ambitious and absolute monarchs. It was this that led them to undertake the conquest of foreign lands, and thus to acquire a freedom which might indemnify them for what they had been compelled to relinquish.