Many of them were giants, huge men, inured to the cold,
accustomed to war, and the labor of the oar,
raised from boyhood on steep,
isolated farms near the sea, grown strong,
and hard on work,  meat and cereals. Such men, from boyhood,
in harsh games, had learned to run,
to leap, to throw the spear, to wield the sword, to wield the axe,
to stand against steel, even bloodied, unflinching.
Such men, these, would be the hardest of the hard,
for only the largest, the swiftest and finest might
          win for themselves a bench on the ship of a captain,
and the man great enough to command such as they must be
first and mightiest among them,....

          Marauders of Gor, p 38.
 
 

Torvaldsland is a cruel, harsh, rocky land.
It contains many cliffs, inlets and mountains.
Its arable soil is thin and found in patches.
The size of the average farm is very small.
Good soil is rare and highly prized.
Communication between farms is often by sea, in small boats.
Without the stream of Torvald, it would probably be impossible
          to raise cereal crops in sufficient quantity to feed even its
relatively sparse population.
          There is often not enough food, under any conditions,
particularly in northern Torvaldsland, and famine is not unknown.
In such cases men feed on bark, and lichens and seaweed.
It is not strange that the young men of torvaldsland often look
          to the sea, and beyond it, for their fortunes.
 

         Marauders of Gor, p 54.
 
 

The stake in this challenge was the young man's sister,
a comely, blond lass of fourteen, with braided hair.
She was dressed in the full regalia of a free woman of the north.
The clothes were not rich, but they were clean, and her best.
She wore two brooches; and black shoes.
The knife had been removed from the sheath at her belt;
          she stood straight, but her head was down, her eyes closed;
about her neck, knotted, was a rope, it fastened to a stake in the ground,
near the dueling square. She was not otherwise secured.
"Forfeit the girl," said Bjarni of Thorstein Camp,
          addressing the boy, "and I will not kill you."
"I do not care much for the making women of Torvaldsland bond," said Ivar.
"It seems improper," he whispered to me.
          "They are of Torvaldsland!"

          Marauders of Gor, p 147.