that belonged to everyone
in his family. Sometimes there were two or three men of the same name in
a neighborhood. That caused trouble. People thought of two ways of
making it easy to tell which man was being spoken of. Each was given a
nickname. Suppose the name of each was Haki. One would be called Haki
the Black because he had black hair. The other would be called Haki the
Ship-chested because his chest was broad and strong. These nicknames
were often given only for the fun of it. Most men had them,--Eric the
Red, Leif the Lucky, Harald Hairfair, Rolf Go-afoot. The other way of
knowing one Haki from the other was to tell his father's name. One was
Haki, Eric's son. The other was Haki, Halfdan's son. If you speak these
names quickly, they sound like Haki Ericsson and Haki Halfdansson. After
a while they were written like that, and men handed them on to their
sons and daughters. Some names that we have nowadays have come down to
us in just that way--Swanson, Anderson, Peterson, Jansen. There was
another reason for these last names: a man was proud to have people know
who his father was.

_Drinking-horns._ The Norsemen had few cups or goblets. They used
instead the horns of cattle, polished and trimmed with gold or silver or
bronze. They were often very beautiful, and a man was almost as proud
of his drinking-horn as of his sword.

_Tables._ Before a meal thralls brought trestles into the feast hall and
set them before the benches. Then they laid long boards across from
trestle to trestle. These narrow tables stretched all along both sides
of the hall. People sat at the outside edge only. So the thralls served
from the middle of the room. They put baskets of bread and wooden
platters of meat upon these bare boards. At the end of the meal they
carried out tables and all, and the drinking-horns went round in a clean
room.

_Beds._ Around the sides of the feast hall were shut-beds. They were
like big boxes with doors opening into the hall. On the floor of this
box was straw with blankets thrown over it. The people got into these
beds and closed the doors and so shut themselves in. Olaf's men could
have set heavy things against these doors or have put props against
them. Then the people could not have got out; for on the other side of
the bed was the thick outside wall of the feast hall, and there were no
windows in it.

_Feast Hall._ The feast hall was long and narrow, with a door at each
end. Down the middle of the