Following again the clue of the statements of the ‘personal right’ of the different classes, and commencing with the _bónde_ or ordinary freeman settled upon land and presumably having in some sense, as in Wales, originally tribal rights to share in the land or its use, the next class which claims attention above the bónde is the _odalman_ or odalborn man or hauld, whose wergeld of 96 or 100 cows was taken as that of the full and typical freeman. Now, in the Frostathing law there is a statement as follows:-- Engum manni verðr iörð at óðali fyrr en .iij. langfeðr hafa átt, oc kemr undir hinn .iiij. samfleytt. (XII. 4.) No man’s land becomes an odal to him until _three forefathers_ have owned it and it falls to the fourth in unbroken succession. And again in the Gulathing law is the following:-- Nu scal þær iarðer telia er óðrlom scolo fylgia. Sú er ein er ave hever ava leift. (270.) Now shall the lands be told that are odal. The first is the one which _grandfather_ has left to _grandfather_. [Sidenote: His grandfather’s grandfather had the land.] The odalborn man inherits land from his grandfather’s grandfather. The son of an odalman who claims odal as odal by inheritance counts four or five forefathers who had the land before him. In Gulathing law c. 266 is a description of the mode of settling a claim as to land. It describes the sitting of the open-air court, from which both bauggildsmen and nefgildsmen and relations by marriage of the claimant are excluded as ineligible, the calling of witnesses all to be odalborn men of the same fylki as that in which the land lies, and so on. The validity of the claim is made to rest according to this statement upon the ability to count up _five forefathers who have possessed that land, while the sixth possessed it both by ownership and by odal_. Þeir scolo telia til langfeðra sinna .v. er átt hava, en sá hinn sétti er bæðe átte at eign oc at óðrle. (266.) They [the men who claim odal] shall count five of their forefathers who have owned [the land] and the sixth having it both in ownership and odal. [Sidenote: The odalmen were of full kindred on the land.] If, then, at the time of the laws we look at the class of landowners who were prominent as odalmen or haulds--typical men with wergelds originally of 100 cows--they were not only men of full _kindred_ whose full pedigree of freedom went back the necessary nine generations, but their grandfather’s grandfather must have possessed the land. The sixth generation of owners were the first to hold land _both in ownership and odal_. The steps in the rank of Norse aristocracy were marked, therefore, as in the case of the more dependent class, by the number of the generations of ancestors through whom they could claim their landed rights. [Sidenote: The odal land was held by a family and subject to family divisions.]