FadeTheButcher
11-07-2004, 05:40 AM
Some of my old research. Me and Perun were discussing this on Yahoo IM earlier.
"Bondmen in ancient Scandinavia appear to have been treated very much as were the Negro slaves in the United States. The high-spirited Northern people so loved freedom as to have, as a rule, a lively contempt for those who were not in enjoyment of it, even though the later were in servitude because of no fault of their own. Before the law, slaves were not persons, but property, like livestock; and when they were hopelessly sick or too old to work, they might be turned out to die, like the other domestic animals."
Mary Wilhelmine Williams, Social Scandinavia in the Viking Age (New York, 1971), p.38
"Slaves were perhaps also frequently required to follow their masters and mistresses to their graves, through being put to death on the funeral pyre. The life of a slave was always held lightly, and his master might maim or kill him with impunity - unless the act took place at certain holy periods - but the law required that the killing be publically announced upon the day on which it took place. If a man killed the bondsman of another, he must pay damages, as for other property, and if such payment were made within thirty days, the owner might not seek revenge, unless the slave were put to death to secure revenge on the master. Except in rare cases, no slave might be a witness or take an oath; hence, like the African slave of antebellum days in the United States, he had no rights which the master was bound to respect. A person who was in temporary thralldom for debt was treated like other bondsmen, except that he might be sold or driven to work with blows, unless he were stubborn."
Mary Wilhelmine Williams, Social Scandinavia in the Viking Age (New York, 1971), p.39
"Even in heathen times masters often voluntarily freed their slaves; and the emancipation movement was accelerated by the introduction of Christianity in the North."
Mary Wilhelmine Williams, Social Scandinavia in the Viking Age (New York, 1971), p.41
“They came in great numbers from the British Isles, either caught in the dragnet of the Viking raids and invasions or as straightforward objects of commerce; they came from all other countries where Viking power reached; and above all they came from slave-hunts among the Slavonic peoples whose countries bordered the Baltic. The very name Slav (Sclavus) became confused with the medieval Latin sclavus, a slave. Droves or human cattle came to the pens of Magdeburg, ready for their transfer west; there was a big clearing-house later at Regensburg on the Danube; and Hedeby in southern Jutland was well sited for its share of this northern traffic in men. Southwards the burghers of Lyons grew fat on slaves. The demand from Spain and the remoter Muslim World was insatiable: men and girls for labour and lust, eunuchs for sad service. By 850 the Swedes had opened up the Volga and Dnieper as slave-routes to the eastern market. And just as the slave-trade was essential to Viking commerce, the slave himself was the foundation-stone of Viking life at home.”
Gywn Jones, A History of the Vikings (Oxford, 1968) p.148
“. . . When they have come from their land and anchored on, or tied up at the shore of, the Volga, which is a great river, they build big houses of wood on the shore, each holding ten to twenty persons more or less. Each man has a couch on which he sits. With them are pretty slave girls destined for sale to merchants. A man will have sexual intercourse with his slave girl destined for sale to merchants. A man will have sexual intercourse with his slave girl while his companion looks on. Sometime whole groups will come together in this fashion, each in the presence of others. A merchant who arrives to buy a slave girl from them may have to wait and look on while a Rus completes the act of intercourse with a slave girl.
. . . When the ships come to this mooring place, everybody goes ashore with bread, meat, onions, milk, and nabid [an intoxicating drink, perhaps beer] and betakes himself to a long upright piece of wood that has a face like a man’s surrounded by little figures , behind which are long stakes in the ground. The Rus prostrates himself before the big carving and says, ‘O my Lord, I have come from a far land and have with me such and such a number of girls and such and such a number of sables,’ and he proceeds to enumerate all his other wares. Then he says, ‘I have brought you these gifts,” that you would send me a merchant with many dinars and [i]dirhems, who will buy from me whatever I wish and will not dispute anything I say.”
Ibn Faldan as quoted by Gywn Jones, A History of the Vikings (Oxford, 1968) pp.164-165
"Bondmen in ancient Scandinavia appear to have been treated very much as were the Negro slaves in the United States. The high-spirited Northern people so loved freedom as to have, as a rule, a lively contempt for those who were not in enjoyment of it, even though the later were in servitude because of no fault of their own. Before the law, slaves were not persons, but property, like livestock; and when they were hopelessly sick or too old to work, they might be turned out to die, like the other domestic animals."
Mary Wilhelmine Williams, Social Scandinavia in the Viking Age (New York, 1971), p.38
"Slaves were perhaps also frequently required to follow their masters and mistresses to their graves, through being put to death on the funeral pyre. The life of a slave was always held lightly, and his master might maim or kill him with impunity - unless the act took place at certain holy periods - but the law required that the killing be publically announced upon the day on which it took place. If a man killed the bondsman of another, he must pay damages, as for other property, and if such payment were made within thirty days, the owner might not seek revenge, unless the slave were put to death to secure revenge on the master. Except in rare cases, no slave might be a witness or take an oath; hence, like the African slave of antebellum days in the United States, he had no rights which the master was bound to respect. A person who was in temporary thralldom for debt was treated like other bondsmen, except that he might be sold or driven to work with blows, unless he were stubborn."
Mary Wilhelmine Williams, Social Scandinavia in the Viking Age (New York, 1971), p.39
"Even in heathen times masters often voluntarily freed their slaves; and the emancipation movement was accelerated by the introduction of Christianity in the North."
Mary Wilhelmine Williams, Social Scandinavia in the Viking Age (New York, 1971), p.41
“They came in great numbers from the British Isles, either caught in the dragnet of the Viking raids and invasions or as straightforward objects of commerce; they came from all other countries where Viking power reached; and above all they came from slave-hunts among the Slavonic peoples whose countries bordered the Baltic. The very name Slav (Sclavus) became confused with the medieval Latin sclavus, a slave. Droves or human cattle came to the pens of Magdeburg, ready for their transfer west; there was a big clearing-house later at Regensburg on the Danube; and Hedeby in southern Jutland was well sited for its share of this northern traffic in men. Southwards the burghers of Lyons grew fat on slaves. The demand from Spain and the remoter Muslim World was insatiable: men and girls for labour and lust, eunuchs for sad service. By 850 the Swedes had opened up the Volga and Dnieper as slave-routes to the eastern market. And just as the slave-trade was essential to Viking commerce, the slave himself was the foundation-stone of Viking life at home.”
Gywn Jones, A History of the Vikings (Oxford, 1968) p.148
“. . . When they have come from their land and anchored on, or tied up at the shore of, the Volga, which is a great river, they build big houses of wood on the shore, each holding ten to twenty persons more or less. Each man has a couch on which he sits. With them are pretty slave girls destined for sale to merchants. A man will have sexual intercourse with his slave girl destined for sale to merchants. A man will have sexual intercourse with his slave girl while his companion looks on. Sometime whole groups will come together in this fashion, each in the presence of others. A merchant who arrives to buy a slave girl from them may have to wait and look on while a Rus completes the act of intercourse with a slave girl.
. . . When the ships come to this mooring place, everybody goes ashore with bread, meat, onions, milk, and nabid [an intoxicating drink, perhaps beer] and betakes himself to a long upright piece of wood that has a face like a man’s surrounded by little figures , behind which are long stakes in the ground. The Rus prostrates himself before the big carving and says, ‘O my Lord, I have come from a far land and have with me such and such a number of girls and such and such a number of sables,’ and he proceeds to enumerate all his other wares. Then he says, ‘I have brought you these gifts,” that you would send me a merchant with many dinars and [i]dirhems, who will buy from me whatever I wish and will not dispute anything I say.”
Ibn Faldan as quoted by Gywn Jones, A History of the Vikings (Oxford, 1968) pp.164-165