But FRODE (known also to the compiler of "Beowulf's Lay", 2025)had, in the Dane's eyes, almost eclipsed Sciold as conqueror and lawgiver.His name Frode almost looks as if his epithet Sapiens had become his popular appellation, and it befits him well.Of him were told many stories, and notably the one related of our Edwin by Bede (and as it has been told by many men of many rulers since Bede wrote, and before).Frode was able to hang up an arm-ring of gold in three parts of his kingdom that no thief for many years dared touch.How this incident (according to our version preserved by Saxo), brought the just king to his end is an archaic and interesting story.Was this ring the Brosinga men?
Saxo has even recorded the Laws of Frode in four separate bits, which we give as A, B, C, D.
A.is mainly a civil and military code of archaic kind:
(a) The division of spoil shall be -- gold to captains, silver to privates, arms to champions, ships to be shared by all.Cf.
Jomswickinga S.on the division of spoil by the law of the pirate community of Jom.
(b) No house stuff to be locked; if a man used a lock he must pay a gold mark.
(c) He who spares a thief must bear his punishment.
(d) The coward in battle is to forfeit all rights (cf.
"Beowulf", 2885).
(e) Women to have free choice (or, at least, veto) in taking husbands.
(f) A free woman that weds a slave loses rank and freedom (cf.
Roman Law).
(g) A man must marry a girl he has seduced.
(h) An adulterer to be mutilated at pleasure of injured husband.
(i) Where Dane robbed Dane, the thief to pay double and peace-breach.
(k) Receivers of stolen goods suffer forfeiture and flogging at most.
(l) Deserter bearing shield against his countrymen to lose life and property.
(m) Contempt of fyrd-summons or call to military service involves outlawry and exile.
(n) Bravery in battle to bring about increase in rank (cf.the old English "Ranks of Men").
(o) No suit to lie on promise and pledge; fine of ?gold lb.
for asking pledge.
(p) Wager of battle is to be the universal mode of proof.
(q) If an alien kill a Dane two aliens must suffer.(This is practically the same principle as appears in the half weregild of the Welsh in West Saxon Law.)B.An illustration of the more capricious of the old enactments and the jealousy of antique kings.
(a) Loss of gifts sent to the king involves the official responsible; he shall be hanged.(This is introduced as illustration of the cleverness of Eric and the folly of Coll.)C.Saxo associates another set of enactments with the completion of a successful campaign of conquest over the Ruthenians, and shows Frode chiefly as a wise and civilising statesman, making conquest mean progress.
(a) Every free householder that fell in war was to be set in his barrow with horse and arms (cf."Vatzdaela Saga", ch.2).
The body-snatcher was to be punished by death and the lack of sepulture.
Earl or king to be burned in his own ship.
Ten sailors may be burnt on one ship.
(b) Ruthenians to have the same law of war as Danes.
(c) Ruthenians must adopt Danish sale-marriage.(This involves the abolition of the Baltic custom of capture-marriage.That capture-marriage was a bar to social progress appears in the legislation of Richard II, directed against the custom as carried out on the borders of the Palatine county of Chester, while cases such as the famous one of Rob Roy's sons speak to its late continuance in Scotland.In Ireland it survived in a stray instance or two into this century, and songs like "William Riley"attest the sympathy of the peasant with the eloping couple.)(d) A veteran, one of the Doughty, must be such a man as will attack one foe, will stand two, face three without withdrawing more than a little, and be content to retire only before four.
(One of the traditional folk-sayings respecting the picked men, the Doughty or Old Guard, as distinguished from the Youth or Young Guard, the new-comers in the king's Company of House-carles.In Harald Hardrede's Life the Norwegians dread those English house-carles, "each of whom is a match for four," who formed the famous guard that won Stamford Bridge and fell about their lord, a sadly shrunken band, at Senlake.)(f) The house-carles to have winter-pay.The house-carle three pieces of silver, a hired soldier two pieces, a soldier who had finished his service one piece.
(The treatment of the house-carles gave Harald Harefoot a reputation long remembered for generosity, and several old Northern kings have won their nicknames by their good or ill feeding and rewarding their comitatus.)D.Again a civil code, dealing chiefly with the rights of travellers.
(a) Seafarers may use what gear they find (the "remis" of the text may include boat or tackle).
(b) No house is to be locked, nor coffer, but all thefts to be compensated threefold.(This, like A, b, which it resembles, seems a popular tradition intended to show the absolute security of Frode's reign of seven or three hundred years.It is probably a gloss wrongly repeated.)(c) A traveller may claim a single supper; if he take more he is a thief (the mark of a prae-tabernal era when hospitality was waxing cold through misuse).
(d) Thief and accomplices are to be punished alike, being hung up by a line through the sinews and a wolf fastened beside.
(This, which contradicts A, i, k, and allots to theft the punishment proper for parricide, seems a mere distorted tradition.)But beside just Frode, tradition spoke of the unjust Kinge HELGE, whose laws represent ill-judged harshness.They were made for conquered races, (a) the Saxons and (b) the Swedes.
(a) Noble and freedmen to have the same were-gild (the lower, of course, the intent being to degrade all the conquered to one level, and to allow only the lowest were-gild of a freedman, fifty pieces, probably, in the tradition).
