Geographically the Frankish group is sufficiently compact. The other is widely extended and scattered. Frisians and Saxons remain in their ancient homes. The Alamannic, Bavarian, and Burgundian tribes have wandered far away from theirs. But in their northern home they may have been once sufficiently contiguous to have shared many common customs and among them a common wergeld of 160 solidi.[172] Settled in their new quarters, the Rhine and its tributaries seem to have been the great highways of commercial intercourse and the connecting links between them. Immigrants from them all met as strangers (_advenæ_) in the Ripuarian district, and, as we have seen, we owe our knowledge of some of their wergelds very much to the recognition of them in the Ripuarian law. [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII. _THE TRIBAL CUSTOMS OF THE OLDEST SCANDINAVIAN LAWS._ I. THE MONETARY SYSTEM OF SCANDINAVIA. The facts needful for the understanding of the monetary system of the Scandinavian tribes need not detain the reader very long. The weight system applied to gold and silver was that evidently derived from the Eastern Empire. [Sidenote: Marks, ores, and ortugs. The ortug the Greek stater or ox-unit.] It consisted of the mark, the ore, and the ortug. The mark was divided into eight ores or ounces, and the ore or ounce into three ortugs, which were in fact staters or double solidi. The ounce being the Roman ounce of 576 wheat-grains, the ortug contained 192 wheat-grains, and was the exact counterpart in wheat-grains of the Greek stater, _i.e._ Professor Ridgeway’s ox-unit. Reckoned in wheat-grains, two Scandinavian marks of 8 ounces were, as we have seen, exactly equal to what the early metrologists called the (light) _Mina Attica_, which consisted of 16 Roman ounces or 9216 Roman wheat-grains. Four gold marks thus made a _heavy_ gold mina, traditionally representing a normal wergeld of 100 head of cattle. But this heavy gold Mina of four marks had been seemingly twisted from its original Greek character to bring it into consistency with Roman methods of reckoning. It was divided no longer into 100 staters, but now into 96 ortugs, so as to make the ortug double of the solidus and one third of the Roman ounce, thus throwing it out of gear, so to speak, with the normal tribal wergelds of 100 head of cattle. It was thus made to contain only 96 ox-units, although in actual weight its 32 Roman ounces really did contain, so long as the standard of the Roman ounce was adhered to, 100 Attic staters or ox-units. That the light mina of two marks or 9216 wheat-grains had found its way by the Eastern trade routes into Scandinavia appears from its survival in the monetary system of countries on both sides of the Baltic to quite modern times. [Sidenote: The pound of two marks.]