The writer takes first the case of an award of six marks of gold and describes how it is to be divided, and then the case of five marks of gold, and so on. [Sidenote: Division of it in silver marks at ratio of 1:8.] The division is throughout made in _silver_ marks, ores, ortugs, and penningar. But when the items are added up, the total in silver divided at the ratio of 1:8 brings back the result as nearly as may be to the number of _gold marks_ from which the division started. Thus in the clause describing the division of the wergeld of six marks of gold, the silver items add up to 48 marks exactly, and the division of this by 8 brings back the amount to six marks of gold. And so in the clause dividing five marks of gold, the items seem to add up to one ortug only less than 40 silver marks, and again a division by 8 brings the amount sufficiently near to five marks of gold. [Sidenote: The group of Bauga men. The other group of Nefgildi-men.] In each case, however, the writer adheres to the same scheme of division. When he has 6 gold marks to divide he first assigns 18 silver marks to _Bauga_ men (_i.e._ the near group of kinsmen of male descent on the paternal side only), and then he adds half as much (_i.e._ 9 marks) to a group of _Nefgildi-men_[180] among whom are included, with others, kinsmen of descent through females on both paternal and maternal sides. So that these two groups of Bauga men and Nefgildi get 27 marks. In all cases he makes the group of Nefgildi receive only half the amount received by the Bauga group, the whole amount being reduced according to the number of gold marks to be divided. After the amount allowed to these two groups, the remainder is made up of additional payments some of which he expressly declares were not included under old law. Thus (in clause 6) he adds an amount which he says was ‘not found in the old Frostathing book’ and justifies it by saying that there would be danger to the slayer if it was not paid. And so again (in clause 9), there are additions for half-brothers, half-brothers’ sons, &c., of the same mother. And these additions are included in the six marks of gold ‘according to new law.’ Evidently, therefore, we must not take these wergelds of six and five marks of gold with their divisions as representing the ancient customary wergelds of this class or that in the social scale, but rather as showing the extent to which the system of wergelds had become somewhat arbitrarily expanded and elastic in later times. The total amount with additions was apparently increasing as time went on. [Sidenote: Later statement in the Gulathing law.]