Killing the Elderly

[ingemar at NORDGREN.SE]

It may be not a fancy but a reasonable assumption since in fact there are more examples of kings having sacrificed themselves for the best of the people, notably the story of king Frode. Maybe this  is just a story, but  definitly earlier in the Antique world and most presumably also in the North the original priest kings were killed after, as normally suggested, 7 years. Check the Golden Bow by Frazer. In the North we have this mentioned in the Helgi kvidae were Helge all the time is sacrified. 
Concerning the idea that old people were thrown down a cliff steep, ättestupa, it is definitely pure fiction established via Rolf's saga and there is no other confirmation of this. Unwanted children, however, were put out into the wilderness in times of famine and also relatively late in modern time we have examples.
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