What is the value of The Saga of the People of Laxardal as a source for the historian on feud in Viking Iceland?

Even readers who know very little of Old Norse literature will mostly have heard of the Icelandic sagas. The most celebrated is the so-called ‘family sagas’. These such sagas constitute a literary genre unique to Iceland and they all have one common denominator: fictional or historical, fantastical or naturalistic, native or translated, religious or secular, they are all continuous prose narratives about the past. For this reason they are a valuable historical source to the historian as they allow a glimpse at the cultural and social history of Iceland at the time. Although sometimes it is hard to distinguish between a fictional narrative and a historical account, they are key to our understanding of how Viking society functioned and progressed, as saga authors relate in a naturalistic, even matter-of-fact way, the day-to-day life of these ninth, tenth and eleventh century Icelanders. The past in which the sagas are set is the first few decades after Christianity, around 1030. During this brief period, Iceland established itself as a nation, and its settlers set up a strong and workable parliamentary and legal system. Iceland functioned as an imperfect but extraordinary precocious democracy, with elected judges and legislators. Essentially, Iceland was a scattered but cohesive community of independent farming settlers, pioneers fighting for survival in the face of harsh climate and recalcitrant landscape. These two contrasting contexts – a sophisticated political and intellectual milieu together with a very basic fight for physical survival – form the backdrop to the events of the family sagas. Much of the substance of the sagas is an exploration of personal and social relations, of how neighbours form alliances or foster lethal feuds, of how families develop into invincible kin groups through generations, or fragment under the pressures of life in Iceland. As one might expect, disputes both between and within families arise over land, livestock or vital food supplies, and we can begin to see that the theme of feud is a common one throughout the Icelandic works. In this essay I will endeavour to portray the value of feud in The Saga of the People of Laxardal. An amalgam of historical fact, myth, epic, romance, anachronism and literary invention, this saga is, in essence, a dramatization of the circumstances surrounding a blood feud between two sides of a great dynasty. In its second and decisive portion, it treats a love triangle that re-ignites the feud and its adjoining intrigues.

Feud is difficult to define and in order for us to fully understand the importance of the saga as a valuable source for the historian on feud, it is vital that we understand what exactly a feud was, what it means and what it entailed for the people of Iceland. In law professor Willian Ian Miller’s book Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, the blood feud system of medieval Iceland is examined in a legalistic way. Although most of us would prefer to think that a blood feud society is a result of a simplistic, perhaps near-anarchistic legal code, the notion could hardly be more false. Medieval Iceland had thousands of laws covering all aspects of society, and woven throughout almost every section of the legal code are rules of how the blood feud affects and is affected by that part of life. Icelanders took great pride in their system of laws, and they were the only medieval European nation without a monarchy. Therefore, the lack of executive power meant that there was no means for preventing men from taking the law into their own hands. Feud became used as a controlling method, and was governed by the rules and norms of society. It was the invisible hand of the law. Miller tells us that feud was in the air, it was part of the natural order of things. It involved careful score keeping, an alternating rhythm of giving and taking, inflicting and being afflicted. Unlike ad hoc revenge killing that can be an individual matter, feuding involves groups that can be recruited by any number of principles, among which kinship, vicinage, household or clientage are most usual. Similarly, unlike war, feud does not involve relatively large mobilizations, but only occasional musterings for limited purposes. Violence is controlled; casualties rarely reach double digits in any single encounter. There was a sense of balance in the Icelandic feud. Feuds also involved collective liability. It gave avengers the opportunity to decide who was ultimately liable for an attack. The target need not be the actual wrongdoer, nor, for that matter need the vengeance-taker be the person most wronged. A notion of exchange governs the process, a kind of my-turn/your-turn rhythm, with offensive and defensive positions after each confrontation. As a corollary to the preceding item, people kept score. Honour appears to be the prime invoker, with people who feud believing that honour and affronts to it are the prime motivators of hostilities. Cross-culturally, there appears to be a correlation between the existence of feud and culture of honour. Feud is also governed by norms that limit the class of possible expiators and the appropriateness of responses.

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Feuds could erupt over any number of reasons such as land issues, inheritance rights, honour, or of course, over the love of a woman. By studying The Saga of the People of Laxardal, we can begin to see these very issues causing feuds throughout the text. For this reason it is possible for us to gain an insight into the social and legal history of Icelandic society. Miller argues that the Icelandic Saga’s are historical in form, but fictional in substance. However, this does not deter from their value in any way, for the value lies not in the ...

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