and were sold for use
chiefly in vice.[842] Here we see again the great contempt for slaves.
It was a proverb in Scandinavia: "Put no trust in the friendship of a
thrall,"[843] although in the sagas there are many cases in which the
heroes profited by trusting them. Yet the sagas are also full of stories
of persons who fell into slavery, e.g. Astrid, widow of King Trygve
Olafson, who was found by a merchant in the slave market of Esthonia and
redeemed.[844] A thrall was despised because he feared death, and when
it impended over him hid, whimpered, begged, wept, lamented to leave his
swine and good fare, and offered to do the meanest work if he might
live. A hero bore torture bravely and met death laughing.[845] When hero
children and thrall children were changed at birth, the fraud was
discovered by the cowardice of the latter and the courage of the former,
when grown.[846] In the heroic age a conqueror could set a princess to
work at the _qvern_. In Valhalla the hero set thralls to work for his
conquered victim, to give him footbath, light fire, bind dogs, groom
horses, and feed swine. Thrall women became concubines. They worked at
the _qvern_, and wove. Love could raise them to pets. Thralls were
obtained in the lands raided, but even after they became Christians the
Scandinavians raided and enslaved each other. The Roman law system, as
the church employed it, and especially tithes, were means of reducing
the masses to servitude.[847] Beggars could be arrested and taken before
the _Thing_, where, if they were not ransomed by their relatives, they
were at the mercy of the captor.[848] Magnus Erikson ascended the throne
of Sweden, Norway, and Skona in 1333. Two years later he decreed that no
one born of Christian parents should thereafter be, or be called, a
thrall.[849]

+302. The sale of children.+ In the Germanic states it remained lawful
until far down in the Middle Ages for a man to sell his wife or child
into servitude, or into adoption in another family in time of famine or
distress. The right fell into disuse.[850]

+303. Slavery and the state.+ The reason why there was little slavery in
the Middle Ages is that slavery needs a great state to return fugitives
or hold slaves to work. The feudal lord was at odds with such a state
as existed, and could not get its aid to restore his slaves. Hence the
extension of the state made the slaves worse off, e.g. in Russia and
parts of Germany.[851] Amongst the Franks "sla