“A lawfully born mother is the heir of her child, and then a lawfully born father’s sister. “A _prisung_[83] and a thrall-born son, and a _hornung_,[84] if freedom is given to them, take the same inheritance, and each of them inherits from the other. “A mother’s father and daughter’s son both take the same inheritance, and each inherits from the other. “A mother’s brother and sister’s son both take the same inheritance, and inherit from each other. “Men who are sons of sister and brother both take the same inheritance, and inherit from each other. “Sons of two sisters take the same inheritance, and inherit from each other. “It is decided and decreed in the laws of men that if a man slays a man in order to inherit from him, he has forfeited his inheritance, and it shall be given according to law as if the man did not exist who slays another for the sake of inheritance” (Frostath. viii. 1–14). By the so-called _ættleiding_, or leading into the family, i.e. adoption, a person could give the illegitimately born the right of inheritance, or at least a right to a certain part of the inheritance, together with the legal heirs, the consent of the latter being always necessary. The ceremony appears from different laws to have been the same all over the country, and its primitive form seems to indicate great antiquity; a shoe was placed alongside the _skapker_, the large vat into which the beer was poured in the banqueting hall, and from which the smaller vats and horns were filled and carried round among the guests. The ceremony which followed is thus described:— “It is a full adoption, when a father leads into his family his son, and those men assent who are the next heirs of the one who adopts his son. Ale from three measures of grain shall be made, and a bull three winters old be killed, and the skin be flayed off its right hind-leg above the hough, and therefrom a shoe be made. The father shall let the one to be adopted step into it, and have in his arms those of his sons who are not of age, but those of his sons who are full-grown shall step into that shoe. If he has no inheritance-born sons those who are his nearest heirs shall step into the shoe. The adopted man shall be led into the embrace of the man and the wife. Women shall be witnesses as well as a man to a full adoption, as well as to the shoe if it is kept. The thrall-born son to whom liberty is given shall be adopted if either father or brother, or whoever is nearest heir, whether he is young or old, gives him his liberty, and those being the nearest heirs of the man who wants to adopt him assent. The son of a freed woman shall be adopted like that of a thrall-woman” (Earlier Frostathing’s Law, ix.).