The character of the land which was available for the necessary but supplementary agriculture was all important. It consisted, as it does still, of small isolated strips of cultivatable soil at the feet of the mountains where they plunge into the sea. On such land it was impossible for the family to retain the form of a patriarchal community. The fertile areas were too small to support such communities, and the individualistic form of family was inevitably evolved. On each small plot of cultivatable land a little farm was formed, a homestead in which lived a family restricted to father, mother, and children. As the children grew up, it was impossible to support them on the one small farm or to divide it among them; one son alone was chosen as the inheritor of the paternal farm; and each of the others had to seek a new piece of land, build a new homestead, and acquire his own boat. Thus, the family was forced to become the individualistic family; and the home of each such family was necessarily isolated, widely separated from that of every other, owing to the scattered distribution of the little areas of fertile soil. Thus were formed the first homes in the English sense of the word; the home in which the father rules supreme over his own little household, brooking no interference from outside; the home in which the children are brought up to look forward to establishing, each child for himself, similar independent individualistic homes. Such homes have been established by the Northmen in every part of the world in which they have settled; and they are peculiar to them and their descendants. It is obvious that all the very limited domains of the Scandinavian coasts must have been fully occupied in the way described in a comparatively few generations after the process of settlement began. This seems to have occurred about the fourth or fifth century A.D. Then the younger sons, for whom there was no place at home and for whom there remained no spots suitable for homesteads in their native land, were sent out into the world to seek their fortunes. They banded themselves together to man single boats, or formed fleets of boats; and, leaving their parents and women-folk behind, set out to conquer for themselves new homesteads. Large numbers, sailing to the southern shores of the Baltic and up the Weser and the Elbe, settled on the plains of Saxony; and from this new centre they again spread, as the Anglo-Saxons to England, and as the Franks to Gaul. Others settled directly in northern France and became the Normans. Others, the Varegs, penetrated the plains of Russia and established themselves as princes over the Slav population.