weregeld - Literally, ``money for a man.'' In Germanic
law most crimes were treated personally, with punishment meted out
directly by a person's family. The system of weregeld payments was orchestrated as a reaction to the heavy toll that was
sometimes extracted by grieving family members who wished to receive
retribution for their lost relative. Weregeld amounted to a
fine where the guilty party would pay a fixed sum in retribution to
the family of the victim. definition
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