In accordance with his promise, the young king now set about the task which he had undertaken. He went northward with an army and conquered Orkdale and Tröndelag, the district about the Drontheim Fjord. In Naumdale, north of Drontheim, there were two kings named Herlaug and Rollaug. The former, when he heard of Harold's march of conquest, built a great barrow, into which he entered with eleven of his men and had it closed behind him. Rollaug, his brother, ordered his royal high-seat to be carried to the top of a hill, and an earl's seat to be placed below, at the foot of the hill. He seated himself in the royal seat, but when he saw Harold approaching, he rolled from the king's seat into the earl's seat, thereby declaring himself to be King Harold's vassal. Harold tied a sword about his waist, hung a shield about his neck, and made him Earl of Naumdale. Wherever he went, Harold pursued the same policy. The old kings who acknowledged his overlordship he reinstated as his earls in their former dominions. Those who opposed him be killed or maimed. The earls were really governors or representatives of the king's authority. They administered justice in the king's name, and collected taxes, of which they were entitled to keep one third on condition of entertaining sixty warriors, subject to the king's command. Each earl had under him four or more _hersir_ (sub-vassals), who held in fief a royal estate, of an income of twenty marks, on condition of keeping twenty warriors ready to serve the king. It will be seen that the feudal principle was the basis of Harold's state. He deprived the peasants of their allodium, and declared all land to be the property of the king. The cultivators of the soil, from having been free proprietors, became the tenants of the king, and in so far as they were permitted to retain their inherited estates, derived this privilege no more from allodial but from feudal right. It followed that the king could levy a tax on all land, and that every man who refused to pay the tax forfeited his title. Also a personal tax, which the peasants derisively called the nose-tax (because it was levied in every household according to the number of noses), is said to have been exacted by Harold, and to have caused much dissatisfaction. It is added that many of the former kings who accepted earldoms from him, found themselves in a better position, both financially and as to authority, than they had been before. And this is scarcely to be wondered at. Their royal title had conferred upon them no rights except such as their people voluntarily conceded to them, and their chief privilege amounted to a usage rather than a right to assume command in war, and conduct the public sacrifices. Still it was only in rare cases that they were willing to exchange this shadowy authority for the real power which Harold, by right of conquest, conferred upon them.