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"It's a hard job being king," they say, "but somebody has to do it" ("they" often being kings themselves, of course). But there were those in the First Middle Ages who doubted anyone had to do it, who went out and deliberately founded a society with no king and no feudal aristocracy - the Norse settlers of Iceland. Two especially distinctive elements of the unique culture of Iceland were its literature and its politics; I've written about the literature in these essays before, now about the politics.
According to the Icelandic national origin myth, the migrants left Norway in the late 800's for love of independence, to escape from the tyranny of an emerging national monarchy. (While that was certainly among the factors, others should not be overlooked: many went seeking land, some fleeing vengeance). Whatever their motivations, within a couple of generations they had created the government known as the Icelandic Commonwealth, or the Free State. At the base of the system was the contract between the individual free farmer and his gođi. His what?, you ask. His gođi (pl. gođar). It's a position that can be hard to explain, because there's no exact cognate either in medieval Europe of the time or in modern mundane America. It's usually translated as "chieftain," but they were not a separate social class, not a land- or clan-based aristocracy. It's also translated as "priest," but we have very little idea what religious duties they performed in the pagan period, and the title was kept in its political sense after the country converted to Christianity in 1000. They were grouped geographically - every cluster of three gođar defined an assembly district - but they did not represent territorial units. They represented their constituents in the government, but they were not elected to their position. The office was treated like a piece of property: it could be inherited, yes, but it could also be bought and sold, loaned out, or shared. Think of it less as a political office, and more like a franchise. Every free farmer chose a chieftain who lived in the same Quarter to represent him, to be his agent in the political system. He didn't have to go to the nearest chieftain, or decide based on degrees of kinship, but was free to choose on the basis of reputation, influence, or personality. In return for political support (and some financial) the chieftain would act on the farmer's behalf in political and legal affairs, broker settlements for him, and generally be his advocate at the local and national assemblies. The local assemblies, called "things," were held in the spring. There were 13 of them, distributed fairly evenly around the inhabited parts of the island - three each in the West, South, and East Quarters, and four in the North - and they functioned as courts, to adjudicate disputes between neighbors. They were presided over by the three local chieftains, and all their "thingmen" (the farmers contracted with them) attended as well. The chieftains did not judge cases themselves; instead they appointed the judges - 12 each, for a total panel of 36, what we would call more a jury than judges - from among their thingmen, leaving themselves free to act as plaintiff, defendant, or arbiter in cases before the assembly. At the top of the system was the Althing, the national assembly, the annual meeting of all the chieftains. The Althing met for two weeks every June, at Thingvellir in the southwestern quadrant of Iceland. I've been there: a lava plain between a broad lake and a deep volcanic gorge, Thingvellir is a wonderfully dramatic place for an open-air parliament. Hundreds of people came to the Althing - not just the chieftains and their thingmen, but "peddlers, brewers of ale, tradesmen, and young adults advertising for spouses." (Byock) Most people just pitched tents, but the chieftains and other important attendees had booths to camp in - structures of three permanent turf walls that could be roofed over to make a more solid camp. The Althing was very public, as medieval government went: the judges were ordinary citizens, and any respected individual could speak and be heard, not just the chieftains. For example, in Njal's Saga, Njal frequently advises the Althing even though he himself is not a chieftain (but note that the saga's account of how he instituted the Fifth Court is not historically accurate). As a national government, the Althing consisted of: |
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the Quarter Courts, where lawsuits were heard; the cases were brought to the court for the defendant's home Quarter, but the farmers empanelled as judges in each court came from all over the country; |
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the Fifth Court, which judged cases appealed from the Quarter Courts, and cases of procedural fault; |
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the lögrétta, the legislative assembly consisting of each chieftain and two designated advisors (though only the chieftain actually voted), which reviewed old laws and made new ones; |
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and the Lawspeaker, chairman of the lögrétta, elected to a three-year term during which he was to recite the entire body of law once through (one-third each year), and otherwise to advise on fine points of law. |
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It should be pointed out that the Icelandic judicial system was designed to encourage out-of-court settlement between parties. The courts - local assemblies as well as the Althing - determined blame but could not impose any sentence save that of outlawry, and they could only decide cases by near or complete consensus. (In order to provide some hope of closure, the Fifth Court - which handled appeals - decided by simple majority.)
The politically astute reader may be thinking that the Althing performed judiciary and legislative functions, but no executive. This is correct. As a government, the Althing didn't do much: it didn't enforce laws or execute criminals, it didn't administer a bureaucracy or command an army, it didn't collect taxes or coin money. Those were things kings did, you see, and as Adam of Bremen said, "Among them there is no king, but only law."
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In the Current Middle Ages Often, when the question of electing kings (or sometimes barons!) in the SCA comes up, someone cites the Althing and the Lawspeaker as period precedent for democratic elections. I have to say that it's not really a very good argument for the kind of election these people are usually thinking of. For one thing, the positions are fundamentally different. Our kings are ceremonial leaders: they receive homage and fealty, bestow honors and recognition, lead us in war and pageantry, and generally provide a focus and an exemplar of our group self-image. Although the Lawspeaker was the only "national-level" official of the Free State, he was not a head of state in any meaningful sense. Remember, the Icelanders were deliberately avoiding any very king-like position in their government. For another thing, Iceland was not at all part of the continental medieval mainstream: it was as peripheral culturally as it was geographically. Cardinal William of Sabina called it "beyond belief that that land was not subject to some king, as were all the others in the world." Remember my essay on "the exception that proves the rule" - if the Icelandic system was "beyond belief" to the cardinal, that makes it an inappropriate model for recreating medieval European society in general. And lastly, the Althing just wasn't an especially democratic institution, certainly not one along the modern, mundane American lines of "one person, one vote." The chieftains were not elected by their thingmen, nor were their votes (when they did vote) meant to represent the will of their constituents. Just because they were anti-king, doesn't mean the Icelanders were modern democrats. I like the Althing as a government model; I think that to the extent the Carolingian Great Council works, it works for the same reasons: the open meetings, where anyone may speak even though relatively few have actual votes, and the close relations between the representatives and their constituents. But it simply is not an example of universal suffrage.
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Further Reading I've had to grossly over-simplify the workings of the Free State to fit things into the space available here. To learn more about the details and how the system actually worked, as well as about saga-period Iceland in general, I highly recommend Jesse Byock's Viking Age Iceland (Penguin, 2001), an excellent and comprehensive overview of the culture as a whole with particular emphasis on government, influence, and advocacy. A couple of interesting chapters analyze what's really going on politically in a number of famous sagas. While I say the Icelandic political system was not especially democratic, Duke Cariadoc of the Bow (writing as David Friedman) describes it as strongly free-market libertarian - indeed, he has said that "medieval Icelandic institutions…might almost have been invented by a mad economist to test the lengths to which market systems could supplant government." He presents and develops this view in his article "Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: a historical case" (Journal of Legal Studies 8 (1979), or on the web here). The same material also appears in chapter 44 of his book The Machinery of Freedom (Open Door, 1989). And Njal's Saga is, of course, the greatest of the Family Sagas; it also shows the Althing alive and working better than any other. Many scenes take place there: lawsuits and settlements, marriages arranged and also divorces, support sought and insults exchanged, all climaxing in the most riveting courtroom drama in medieval literature. I recommend the Penguin Classics edition, by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson (1960) as a great and readable translation, easily available.
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| text copyright 2002 by Caleb Hanson (e-mail) |
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