─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── APPENDIX I.—FRANKISH CHRONICLES 536 APPENDIX II.—FACSIMILES OF SAGAS 544 APPENDIX III.—COINS FOUND IN SCANDINAVIA 551 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── INDEX 557 THE VIKING AGE. CHAPTER I. MARRIAGE. High position of women—Married women’s property—Marriage a civil compact—The suitor—Qualities looked for in a suitor—The bride’s dower—Runaway marriages—The marriage settlement—The givers away of the bride—The betrothal—Breaking a betrothal—Length of a betrothal—The wedding—The trousseau—Illegality of marriages without betrothal—Guardians of unmarried sisters—Marriage against the will of the parents—Age of majority—Widows—Marriage on insufficient means—Laws relating to marriage—The wedding feast—Valuation of property—Laws on kissing—Women’s rights. It is particularly striking, in reading the Sagas and the ancient laws which corroborate them, to see the high position women occupied in earlier and later pagan times. If we are to judge of the civilisation of a people in their daily life by the position women held with regard to men, we must conclude that in this respect the earlier Norse tribes could compare favourably with the most ancient civilised nations whose history has come down to us. A maiden was highly respected, and on becoming a wife she was greatly honoured, and her counsels had great weight; by marrying she became the companion and not the inferior of her husband. She held property in her own right, whatever she received by inheritance and by marriage being her own; though there were restrictions put upon her, as well as upon her husband, in regard to the use of her property. In a word, a retrograde movement in regard to the rights and standing of women took place after the extinction of the Asa creed. The high position they had occupied before was lost, and it is only latterly that they have striven, and in some countries with success, to regain the authority that once belonged to them in regard to property and other matters. From the earliest time we see the chivalrous regard that men had for women, and the punishment that any breach of its laws involved. Young men went into warlike expeditions to attain great fame, so that their acts of bravery could be known or extolled, and that they might become worthy of the maiden they wished to woo. The same spirit afterwards spread from the North to other countries in Europe, where, however, the opinion only of women of higher rank was valued. Among the earlier tribes of the North all were respected.