Politics and Courtly Culture in Iceland, 1200-1700 (original) (raw)
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Scandinavian Studies, 2016
would have made it an even more enjoyable read. it was particularly appreciated that the author understood just what i needed to know and when. For example, she explained that “dóttir” (daughter) was usually used in a patronymic, not a matronymic, which helped to clarify the confusing plethora of similar surnames such as Jónsdóttir (John’s daughter). Seawomen of Iceland’s contribution to scholarship lies in its thoroughness, freshness, depth, and breadth; it will be an exemplary text in the study of women’s maritime pasts for decades to come. the clear success of its style means that in the future those writing about women’s maritime history will more easily be able to emulate its readable first-person style and thereby eventually generate a way of writing that is not constrained by the masculine maritime history tradition of maintaining a scholarly distance. Moreover, the book offers a voyage that many people, like me, will want to repeat just for the pleasure of traveling with Mar...
No Longer a Feuding Society? ― Legal Practice and Kingship in Late 13 th -Century Iceland
skemman.is
The Icelandic Free State (c.930-1262) is well known as a model of ‘a feuding society,’ due to its unique social system based on the principle of feuding without any jurisdiction by a king. Iceland came under the rule of a Norwegian king in the early 1260s, and it is generally thought that feuds in Iceland came to an end as a result of the royal legislation introduced from 1271. This paper reconsiders this assumption and aims to reveal the legal practice under kingship in late 13th-century Iceland and its relation to the state formation there. Although the information available to us is limited, it does indicate that people kept on feuding long after submitting to the rule of the king. At the same time, the king’s policy was executed by his representatives through institutions such as the summons to Norway or the oath of fidelity, which were based on the new royal law-code. However, the king did not delegate his power to the Icelandic king’s men as much as he did to Norwegian representatives; the Icelandic king’s men also worked for the king, but they did not become the receiver of the oath of fidelity to the king. There was also discrepancy on the matter of the subjects’ obligation between the king and Icelanders: the king, as rex iustus, began to demand absolute obedience from his subjects, but Icelanders were not always aware of it. They maintained their traditional ways of participating in decision making with their ruler, such as feuds or negotiations at assemblies, and the king could not readily prevent them. In the period of the 1270-80s, Iceland was no longer a purely feuding society, and the centralisation of legislative and judicial power in the hands of the king was actually progressed; nevertheless, it should be noted that Icelanders tended to retain their traditional ways, regardless of the demands of the Norwegian king.
Wild-Goose Chase: History in Medieval Icelandic Law
The legal collection Grágás (‘wild goose’ or ‘grey goose’) has long since held an indeterminate reputation. In the world of the sagas, where many of the stories and events are shaped by convoluted legal proceedings and court cases, a comprehensive corpus of coeval code would be of invaluable help to the scholars. However, despite all the emphasis the literal sources place on the importance of the law in early medieval Iceland, our knowledge about it is fragmentary and the historical sources supporting said knowledge are scarce. This is partly due to the relatively late arrival of the writing tradition to Iceland in the eleventh century, and partly to the presumable loss of manuscript material. In this essay I examine the sources on the law-forming processes in early medieval Iceland, analyse the Grágás collection in the form we know it, and attempt to determine its usefulness and credibility as a historical source.
Sæmundr fróði and his work. The development of an authority in medieval Iceland (MA Thesis)
2021
Sæmundr Sigfússon inn fróði, "the Learned" (1056-1133), is one of the most controversial figures of the Icelandic eleventh and twelfth centuries. Sæmundr has been heralded, at different times, as the alleged author of the Poetic Edda (and other poems), the first Icelandic historian, a legal reformer, a powerbroker in twelfth-century politics, and the founder of a major school, among other claims with varying probability of truth. While the sources are well-known and the scholarship vast, this thesis will focus on the medieval texts which directly reference Sæmundr, to review what can be discerned of him among the extensive tradition that has formed through the centuries, and what to make of his authoritative presence. Discussion will steer clear of the study of Sæmundr as an Icelandic folk-hero, a mostly post-medieval development which bears little relation to the historical and literary texts explored here. The first part of the thesis focuses on the written tradition about Sæmundr‘s life. Special attention is dedicated to his residence in Oddi and the educational activities that may have taken place there, as well as to Sæmundr‘s involvement in the institution of Christian laws in Iceland. The second part centers on Sæmundr‘s nickname of fróði and how he developed as a figure of authority in Icelandic textual culture, at several levels: historiographical, literary, and even legal and political. The references to his purported works are discussed, bearing in mind the ultimate impossibility of verifying those claims. It is argued that there is not much that can be stated with certainty about the medieval priest or his work. Nevertheless, he probably developed as an authority within the Icelandic textual culture as early as the second half of the twelfth century, and went on to play an important role in the processes through which later textual witnesses construe their own past and its historical representation.
The invention of tradition in medieval Icelandic literature
2012
The purpose of my paper is to analyse the influence of medieval European literature on the composition of the Icelandic Sagas. The literary production in medieval Iceland becomes especially important when an antimonarchical, anti-courtly faction of intellectuals appears on the mostly monarchical European stage. The search for a cultural identity has a fundamental effect on the world of literary creation. The fundamental question of the invention of tradition in Iceland in the Middle Ages works as a trigger for the observation of the problematic involved in its literary production. Pre-Christian myths, Latin literature, old poetry and beliefs crystallized in the so called by Meulengracht Sørensen “paradox, of a copious and highly developed literature in a remote country” . The explanation given by now to this paradox from a literary and sociological approach is to consider that an exceptional society, formed in exceptional circumstances, as is the case in medieval Iceland, produced an exceptional literature. Beyond the isolating terms implied in this conception, this “exceptional” character will be our actual matter of work. Considering it not as a solitary development rooted in ancient times, but as a “response” to its contemporary European scenery. A courtly literature would have had no reception in a small farming population, organized far from a kingly structure. It is this exceptional sociological and political situation, in contrast to the birth of European kingdoms, a great companion for the creation of a literature in terms of invention of tradition. Challenging the theory of a self-constructed isolated literature, we will reveal within the texts of the sagas how the different voices from the Viking Age are set to dialogue with its contemporary European text-context referent. Bibliography: Meulengrachr Sørensen, Preben, “Social institutions and belief systems of medieval Iceland (c. (70-1400) and their relations to the literary production”, p. 10, in Clunies Ross, M. Old Icelandic Literature and Society, Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Reconstructing the past in medieval Iceland
Locating and dating sagas is a difficult but still important task. This paper examines the relationship between the Sagas of Icelanders, which are concerned with tenth- and eleventh-century events, and the contemporary sagas of the mid-thirteenth century. Drawing upon models from anthropology, it looks at how contemporary ideas permeated these historicizing texts and how genealogy and geography act as structures around which the past is remembered. The many political relationships which occur in Laxdæla saga are analysed in relation to those from contemporary sagas from the same area of western Iceland. Since it appears that there is relatively little in common between the political situations depicted in Laxdæla saga and those portrayed in the contemporary sagas, it is likely that Laxdæla saga and the contemporary sagas were actually written down in different periods. It is possible, therefore, that the Sagas of Icelanders give us a view of the past which originates earlier than is usually suggested.