thereto. Therewith that way of defence was closed against the brothers. Then Asmund and his kin followed up the suit .with much eager ness, and nought was good to them but that the brothers should be made guilty. Arisen saw that one of two things was to be done, either to set on with many men, not knowing what might be gained thereby, or to suffer things to go on as they might; and whereas the brothers were safe on board ship Arison let the suit go un heeded. Thorgeir was outlawed, but for the other brother was taken were-gild and he was quit. By this blood-suit Asmund the Greyhaired and Thorstein his kinsman were deemed of men to have waxed much. But when Thorgeir heard of his outlawry he said: "Fain am I that those who have made me an outlaw shall have full pay ere all be over."
So ends the story of this old-time trial, and though the law of the strong-arm still obtained, as where Thorstein naively remarks that the plaintiffs can muster enough strength of kin to obtain judgment in their favor, yet much of our modern procedure is foreshad owed in this suit of our grim forefathers. The venue of the action was Iceland, which had been then only recently settled by Vi kings, fleeing from the might of Harold the Fairhaired, then conquering and Christian izing Norway, all for the love of a maiden who had flouted him. As alternative to a "blood-suit," was the "blood-feud," by vir tue of which the kinsman of a murdered man would slay the murderer summarily and begin a vendetta which would last until one family or the other was wiped out. But Asmund, as a law-abiding citizen, preferred the legal method by which the accused, if found guilty, were condemned to outlawry and could be lawfully killed at sight, if the kin of the murdered man refused to take "were-gild" or blood-money for his death. The trouble first began in a dispute over a species of wreck, in which the murdered man's position was clearly the legal one. En passant may be noted the quaint law in re
gard to stranded whales that afterwards ob tained in England in the reign of Edward the Second, and which, as far as the writer has been able to discover, has never been re pealed. As reported by Fleta, it reads as follows : Also the King has wreck of the sea through out the whole realm, whales and sturgeons taken in the sea or elsewhere. Of the sturgeon it is the rule that the King shall have the whole of it But of the whale it is enough if the King has the head and the Queen the tail.
The suit was commenced in the conven tional way by Asmund, a kinsman of Thorgils, who first summoned witnesses to the wounds. By these witnesses, in order to make out a prima facie case, it was necessary to prove the wrongful infliction of the wounds by the defendants and the death of the de cedent. It will be observed that this differs in no respect from the modern rules of evi dence in regard to the corpus delicti now in force in most of our states, viz., the establish ing by direct testimony of the death and the commission of a wrongful act by the defend ant. The case was one outside of the local ju risdiction of the Thing, or town-meeting, one party residing in the middle district or Midfirth, the other in the western district or Westfirth. The suit was accordingly brought in the Althing, or state-meeting, which had a jurisdiction resembling that of the Federal Courts over residents of different districts. Having taken these necessary preliminary steps, Asmund astutely joined the most war like of Thorgils' remaining kinsmen with him as a co-plaintiff to be prepared in case the defendants resorted to arms. In the mean time the latter obtained as attorney, Arison, the most powerful of their kin. In Viking days there was no profession of law in the modern sense and a man acted as attorney for another purely as a labor of love or duty. Arison's first step, as befitted a prudent attorney, was to attempt to settle
