particular is fairly typical of the kind of services that slaves would render to a master in the Old Norse world. Thus, the use of slave tropes and the focus on labor can be read as descriptive of the typical lifestyle of the lower class, whether slaves or simply lower-class laborers. The middle class of freemen, who are descended from Karl, are less easy to pin down, but the scholarly consensus seems to be that Karl ″represents the class of free-born peasant proprietor called ′bondi′ or ′bui,′ ... a kind of hereditary aristocracy, self-governed, and absolutely independent.″ Specifically, Karl is described as fairly prosperous, given that he and his family are landed proprietors or freeholders who own the farm building on the land they work. Additional details reveal the relative comfort of his life: his mother, Amma’s stylish shoulder ornaments and the free distribution of gold rings to the guests at his wedding. Karl therefore represents a class who, while they are farmers, are able to maintain a comfortable life with material pleasures and luxuries. Finally we are presented with the class of Jarl or earl, who represents ″the idle aristocrat ... whose sole occupations are raiding, hunting, and swimming.″ Born to parents who live in even more luxury than those of Karl, Jarl has bright eyes and shining hair and he lives a life of success, able to conquer and distribute his spoils to his dependents very much in the style of ancient Viking heroes. The poem also presents Konr as representative of the special class of kings and in examining what his character represents, scholar Thomas Hill's view was: Although the poem is concerned with the origins of kingship, it seems to reflect a specifically aristocratic rather than royalist view, in that the king who begins to emerge in the final stanzas of the poem is not set apart by birth from the other sons of Jarl, and is in fact the youngest son. In fact, Konr gets his power directly from Ríg, and the idea of a king is therefore of a man who is blessed by the gods, though not necessarily descended from them in the strict patrilineal fashion typical of Western monarchies. Given the very different ways in which these three classes are represented both physically and in terms of their activities, the etiological myth of Rígsþula can be seen as implying that the three