f consanguinity, a certain interest in it. If the
Odelsmand should sell or alienate his land, the next of kin
is entitled to redeem it on paying the purchase-money; and
should he decline to do so, it is in the power of the one
next to him to claim his _Odelsbaarn ret._'

At the present time, the allodial right is acquired only by the
uninterrupted possession of the same person, his descendants or his
wife, during a period of at least twenty years, and it is lost if the
property has been in strange hands for three years. Testamentary
dispositions, in the case of persons leaving issue, are now limited to
one quarter of the testator's property; whereas before 1854, a testator
could not bequeath anything individually. Since the year 1860, also,
there is perfect equality between the two sexes in the division of real
and personal property. At the period when Mr. Laing visited Norway, the
division of land among children had

'not had the effect of reducing properties to the minimum
size that would barely support human existence. One sells to
the other and turns his capital and industry to pursuits
that would enable him to acquire the necessaries of life.
The heirs who sell, very often, instead of a sum of money,
which is seldom at the command of the parties, take a
life-rent payment or annuity of so much grain, the keep of
so many cows, so much firewood, a dwelling-house on the
property, or some equivalent of that kind. Few properties
have no such burthens.' He argued that 'in a country where
land is held, not in tenancy merely, as in Ireland, but in
full ownership, its aggregation by the death of co-heirs,
and by the marriages of female heirs,[5] will balance its
subdivision by the equal succession of children; and also,
that in such a condition of society, the whole mass of
property would be found in such a State to consist of as
many estates of 1000l., as many of 100l., as many of 10l. a
year, at one period as at another.'

'Norway,' our author urges, 'affords a strong confutation of
the dreaded excessive subdivision of land. Notwithstanding,
the partition system, continued for ages, it contains farms
of such extent that the owner possesses forty cows.'

On the whole, the farms appeared to him to be of various sizes: many so
large that a bell was used to call the labourers to or from their w