Nor in the case of the odalborn man any more than in the case of the leysing must we look upon the odalman or hauld merely as a detached individual landowner owning his own separate estate like a modern country squire. Such a conception would be far indeed from the truth. It must be remembered that holdings in odal were subject to rules of division. Moreover, indications appear in the laws that the division was not merely one between the heirs of a single holder, but something more like what took place between the group of kinsmen in the case of the Cymric gwely and ‘_tir gueliauc_.’ How otherwise can this clause be read? _Um óðals iarðer._ Nú scal þær iarðer telia er óðrlom scolo fylgia. Sú er ein er ave hefir ava leift. Sú er önnur er gollden er í mannsgiölld … þær scolo óðrlom fylgia, oc allar þær er í óðals skipti hava komet með bræðrom oc með frændom þeim [_sic_]. Allar aðrar aurum. (G. 270.) _Of odal lands._ Now the lands shall be told which _are odal_. One is that left by grandfather to grandfather. Another is that paid as wergeld.… These shall be odal and all those _which have come under odal division between brothers and their kinsmen_. All other lands shall be counted _aurar_ [money]. [Sidenote: The odal-sharers must consent to a sale of odal land.] At the time of the laws owners of odal had, it appears, certain powers of selling their odal, but even then it was not an uncontrolled right of a man to do what he would with his own. His first act must be to ‘go to the “thing” in autumn and offer it to his _odal-sharers_’ (_odalsnautr_, one who has odal-right to land in common with others). (G. 276.) If a man buys without its having been thus offered, then ‘the odal-sharers may break that bargain’ (G. 277). Even when the sale and purchase have been made by the public ceremony of _skeyting_, _i.e._ by taking earth from the four corners of the hearth and from under the ‘high seat,’ and where field and meadow meet, and with witnesses at the ‘thing’ (G. 292), the _odal-sharers_ of the seller have the right to redeem it within a twelvemonth (G. 278). [Sidenote: The odal-sharers have rights to keep it in the family and to prevent its passing to females.] Take, again, the case of two brothers dividing odal, and observe how careful law and custom had been to prevent either of the odal-shares going out of the family. The odal rights between them were maintained for as many generations as must pass before the shares could be united again by a lawful marriage between a son of one family and a daughter of the other (G. 282). One is tempted to say that here again there may be something very much like the Cymric gwely and to suppose that marriage was forbidden within the gwely, _e.g._ between second cousins, and that the odal sharing continued so long as the gwely held together.