(i) The king's first care should be the kingdom, not gain or glory.
(ii) Peace with a strong ally does not weaken but strengthens the kingdom.
(iii) The work of the folk strengthens the kingdom more.
(iv) Warriors stand guard over the folk.
(v) The law should be upheld so that men will turn to it before turning to the sword.
(vi) It is sometimes necessary to take up arms but this is not what life is for.
(vii) Think about how you will be remembered.
Frodi replies that he himself will be remembered "'With honor...'" (War Of The Gods, p. 264) and Hadding ends the conversation.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Hadding's teachings, as Poul Anderson summarizes them, seems surprisingly sophisticated and ADVANCED for fifth century barbarians. My question, did any barbarians truly think liked this and was this reliably recorded?
Sean
Sean,
I suspect that Anderson's Hadding has deeper insight because of his divinity.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That makes sense, I agree. A god would obviously see more deeply than merely a man.
Sean
Paul and Sean:
The Norse DID have a law code to which they were MEANT to turn before reaching for swords. David Drake wrote a trilogy, *Northworld*, about the Eddas playing out on a colony world where SOMETHING had given some of the colonists godlike powers. In his afterword to the third book, he mentions "a highly-developed legal system in Dark Age Scandinavia," with "[c]ourts, compromise, and the reduction of injuries to money payments" as "tools of the Law."
Hi, David!
Yes, you are correct, the Scandinavians did work out a code of law and custom which put some limits on human quarrelsomeness and the too common tendency of rulers to become despotic. I even wondered if the Elder Edda showed any signs of these laws.
The only caveat I would make to Drake's comment would be to wonder if the system he described had been developed so thoroughly in the fifth/sixth centuries. After all, most of what we know of Norse law came from after the Danes, Norse, and Swedes learned to write, CENTURIES later. I can easily think most of what we see in Scandinavian law came fairly late, three centuries or so before AD 1100.
But, I can see how the BEGINNINGS of such a law system can go back to the fifth century!
Sean
Sean:
True. I happened to visit Drake's website just a few minutes ago, and came across an amusing (for a certain value of "amusement") quote:
"...one lay of the Elder Edda contains the wisdom Odin gained when he hung for three days on the tree. (An example of this Viking wisdom: ‘Don’t bandy words with a poor man in Parliament; just draw your sword and cut him down.’)"
They may have had a law code, but they were still bloody-handed barbarians at heart.
Hi, David!
Grimly amusing, this bit quoted by Drake from the ELDER EDDA. It makes me go back to my original comment, that Hadding's wisdom seems far too advanced and sophisticated for the fifth/sixth centuries!
Sean
Sean,
Remember, though, that Anderson, following his source, Saxo, is writing an admittedly anachronistic narrative.
Paul.
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