Customer Reviews

Laws of Early Iceland: Gragas II (U of M Icelandic Series)

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This second volume of the Laws of the Icelanders has now become available nearly a quarter of a century after Volume I appeared. Sadly, that first volume has now gone out print, although from taking with the publisher, I understand a new edition of Volume I will soon be ready.

Great news, because together these are tremendously important documents. They not only give wonderful insights into the medieval world, but also hold the seeds of much of English law that in turn would find its way into the quirky American legal system. If you believe legalistic thinking is a kind of insanity that often goes against common sense, you'll find lots of proof in these "Viking" laws, that seem to cover every possible worry of medieval man -- how a whale is to be divided, the punishment for composing unflattering poems, the fine for kissing someone else's wife, how murder is to be reported, and so forth. Eighty-year-olds slipping off and marrying without the permission of their kids was apparently a big enough problem that a special set of laws had to be made to cover that situation. There was one fine for a poke in the nose, another for a kick in the testicles.

Being a collection of laws, however, they're not easy reading and probably will need to be taken in small doses of a page or two at a time and thought about -- much like Donne's poetry, say. Many of the laws require some real untangling to be understood at all, while the meaning of others has likely been lost forever.

Just the same, the translators have done a super job of making the laws accessible. They've grouped them logically and provide plenty of footnotes for assistance, along with a dictionary of technical terms and a glossary with the original Icelandic vocabulary.

Obviously these are scholarly works meant for a specialized audience, but that audience should certainly extend to everyone in the legal profession and everyone with an interest in the Middle Ages, especially those who would hope to fully understand the Icelandic Sagas. Actually, anyone who likes to read should enjoy skimming these volumes. Even if you can't afford to own them yourself, you should encourage your local library to have them. They are priceless.

Like all legal codes, this is not an easy read. This is made all the more difficult by the attempts to leave some of the technical vocabulary intact in the manuscript. One often has to get the sense of how everything fits together to understand a given regulation (for example, the idea that one can have meadowland rights on someone else's property). At the same time, of course, leaving this technical side intact makes the book more useful.

This being said the book is an amazing treasure-trove of information. There are sections in this volume which deal with dog bites, tame polar bears, divorce, remarriage, and torts involving interfering with a marriage. The Icelanders had some sense of something like community property though it was not evenly divided (2/3rds of the community property belonged to the husband).

Moreover the sense of legal protections for vulnerable persons was very different in this system. For example, an individual has a right to search for stolen property on the land or in the houses of others with a band of up to 30 men, none of whom are free to refuse to help, but a search area must be contiguous, so all farms in between two suspects must also be searched. This seems to help reducing abuse by inconveniencing those who are legally required to render judgement (clearing verdicts done by a panel of five neighbors). Similarly, upon getting married, a man had to pay a "bride-price" to his bride, and if they divorced, she was entitled to keep this money. This was her money and not part of the community property.

Understanding how different societies solved social problems is immensely interesting in its own right but it is also important. By looking to how other cultures looked at issues, we are better prepared to look at the problems in our own time with a new set of eyes. This can be of help in understanding the social diseases of our day.

I'd highly recommend this work.