Thrall

The status of slave (þræll, þēow) contrasts with that of the freeman (karl, ceorl) and the nobleman (jarl, eorl).

The term was borrowed into Irish as thráill, where it is used interchangeably with sclábhaí which is a cognate of the English slave (likewise for Slav is disputed).

The thrall represents the lowest of the three-tiered social order of the Germanic peoples, noblemen, freemen and slaves, in Old Norse jarl, karl and þræll (c.f.

[6] In 1043, Hallvard Vebjørnsson, the son of a local nobleman in the district of greater Lier, was killed while he was trying to defend a thrall woman from men who accused her of theft.

Once a thrall man was freed, he became a "freedman", or leysingi, a member of an intermediary group between slaves and freemen.

[9] While thralls and freedmen did not have much economic or political power in Scandinavia, they were still given a wergeld, or a man's price: there was a monetary penalty for unlawfully killing a slave.