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Viking Age Iceland (Penguin History)

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At a recent academic symposium about Viking culture, one member of the audience asked, "Why didn't the Icelanders protect their settlements in Greenland with police or the military?" From his point of view, it was a reasonable question -- except that he had missed the point completely about why Iceland, especially during its golden age from AD 870 through 1260, was a truly unique society.

Professor Byock in his excellent VIKING AGE ICELAND zeroes in on this period and answers the question why this society was like no other. Where mainland European societies were all ruled either by large or petty despots or by the Church, Iceland was governed more or less by the consent of the governed. There was some slavery, and people on the edges of society fared no better (or worse) than anywhere else -- but your average Icelandic freeman and even women had some protection from the rich and powerful.

Until its submission to Norway in 1260, Iceland was a country without an executive, without an army, without a navy. Instead, grievances were addressed by seeking powerful allies whose self-interest in the issue could result in some gain for them. If a neighbor or even a chieftain encroached on your property, you could bribe another chieftain to become involved on your side. You may lose some property, but keep the most part intact for your heirs. (On the continent, your life AND property would both be forfeit.) Chieftains had no clearly defined territory, but only adherents -- and adherents could at any time align with competing chieftains at any time. Any disputes that showed signs of getting out of hand were ultimately resolved at the althing, an annual meeting of the chieftains and their adherents at Thingvellir in the southwest of Iceland.

Byock takes the sagas as his principal source and carefully shows how conflicts were resolved in such a way that life and property were protected. That is not to say that bloody, long-lasting feuds did not erupt -- but the damage was limited by the intercession of chieftains so that the feud would not divide society at large. As Njal Thorgeirsson says in NJALS SAGA: "With laws must our land be built, or with lawlessness laid waste."

Some of the features of Icelandic society are difficult for us hieratic Europeans and Americans to comprehend. Byock provides detailed and lavishly illustrated examples to make his points clearly and convincingly. Indeed, in few historical works that I have ever seen has there been such superb illustrative maps and charts. Additional support is provided by comprehensive notes, bibliography, appendices, and index. This is at the same time a scholarly and an eminently readable work -- and by far the best study of Icelandic society to date.

This is an excellent book about the society that produced the great Icelandic Sagas. This is not a narrative history but an effort to describe the essential features of Icelandic life. While the period covered spans centuries, there is strong continuity in Icelandic culture during this time and the basic features of Icelandic culture were largely unchanged from the settling of the island to the establishment of Norweigian royal domination. Written by a leading scholar of Icelandic literature and history, this volume describes the material basis for Icelandic life, provides a good deal of information about the ecologic impact of the settlers, and provides an outline of the major historical events in the period from the settling of Iceland to the beginning of Norweigian lordship. The center of the book, however, is a detailed and lucid discussion of the unique political and legal structure of Iceland. Iceland was settled by Norse fleeing the emerging powers of monarchs in mainland Scandinavia. The near subsistence nature of Iceland's economy required dispersion of people across all the viable portions of the island and the absence of useful cash crops and other sources of exports prevented concentrations of power. Iceland had no central government, no towns, and a legal system based on relative equality. Iceland was not a feudal state, there were no overlords, and even after the conversion to Christianity, the Church had little power. Governence and justice were essentially private matters, worked out by individuals either informally or through a sophisticated legal system that ostensibly was based on equality. The key figures in this system were chiefs who commanded authority by virtue of family and political ties, legal skill, wealth, and charisma. These positions were not hereditary and were based partly on ability to command allegience of smaller farmers. Failure of chiefs to lead well could lead to desertion by followers. Excessive success by Chiefs in amassing power could lead to local violent reactions and the antagonism of other chiefs, preventing the emergence of regional leaders who could have become overlords. This system for centuries maintained a relatively egalitarian society very distinct from feudal mainland Europe. Byock does an excellent job of describing this society and tracing its ecological and historic roots. Byock provides also a very interesting and cogent analysis of feuds, which appear as central elements in many Sagas. While most commentators and readers are often impressed at the violence in the feuds, Byock points out the many ways in which feuding was channeled into non-violent ways of resolving disputes. In Byock's analysis, the manipulation of feuds is a cardinal example of the ways in which the highly individualistic and competitive Icelanders prevented serious damage to the social fabric. For Byock, the overarching theme of Icelandic culture during this period is the channeling of individual passions and resentments into non-destructive results, a remarkable goal in a society without formal government in our sense and entirely private means of seeking justice for grievances and disputes. It may also be this unique feature that gives the Sagas their great appeal. Byock uses effectively many quotations from different Sagas to illustrate his points. In so doing, he shows how the Sagas exemplify the cultural focus of Icelandic society.
It is surprising that a group of stories devoted largely to personal and legal conflicts among a group of Medieval farmers continue to command a large audience. The skilful composition of the best Sagas explains some of their appeal but other forms of Medieval literature do not attract this many readers. The underlying theme of conflict between individual impulses and social cohesion is tremendously appealing to modern readers.
This book contains a number of excellent additional features including good maps illustrating the locations of the major Sagas and other important aspects of Icelandic life.

Viking Age Iceland covers much of the same territory as Byock's earlier Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power; however, it also includes some more detailed information about how the sagas reflect the society that created them.

Byock attempts to show how the (mostly) fictional sagas can still be used for historical study. Hidden within the fanciful tales are many details of Icelandic history and culture. Because of this, it is a mistake to dismiss the sagas when researching Icelandic history. That's Byock's premise anyway, and he argues it convincingly with numerous examples from the sagas that illuminate everything from the Iceland's legal system to the food the Icelanders ate to survive the long winters of isolation.

The book was worth its price for the maps of saga locations alone. There were also a number of sections that helped me to understand the social and personal motivations behind feuds and other elements in the sagas that were unclear to me without the better understanding of the way Iceland's society operated that I got from this book.

Whether you want to better understand the sagas or would like to know more about the history and culture of the Viking period, this is a must-read. The writing is clear and engaging, and the information presented by Byock is fascinating and seems to be very well researched.

This is an excellent book about Viking society in Iceland, and Jesse Byock is a great authority on the topic.

Byock describes an Icelandic society that valued "order more than justice," and we see numerous examples of what he means by this as he examines how Icelanders kept feuds from getting completely out of hand.

Still, the book already is worth getting simply for the explanations of where all the action takes place in the Sagas, complete with useful maps, the descriptions of what Icelandic houses looked like, complete with archaeological house plans, and the depiction of Icleandic society as almost completely rural, with virtually nothing in the way of a town. As well as an important explanation of the Althing and its structure.

Plenty of us read one or more Icelandic sagas. But these sagas were written for people who knew quite well where Iceland was and where the various parts of it were located. They knew what an Icelandic house looked like, and they knew something of the terrain and the weather in the land. They knew how Icelanders obtained food and what resources the country had. And they knew all about the Althing (basically, their parliament). To understand these sagas, we need to know some of this as well. And Byock is wonderful at giving us this very valuable information.

There is a good description of how justice worked in Iceland. Blood vengeance was an option, but not a necessity. Compromise was preferred. Those who got too far out of line, say, with multiple murders, were outlawed. That left enforcement of penalties up to others. The system worked fairly well.

Two things about Icelandic society made the strongest impression on me. First, for many reasons, Icelandic society had enormous respect for truth. Their writings have plenty of facts. But more important (maybe because they were not numerous and lived on an island), there were very few secret felonies! Most people confessed to murders at once, to try to avoid blood vengeance. As Byock says, "rarely was there true secrecy" about who the guilty parties were.

In any case, I think Byock has confirmed that in Icelandic society, perjury was a worse crime than murder. That is very different from modern nations, where people on trial generally are expected to tell plenty of lies under oath and get away with it, and where government officials are expected to lie as well. I got the feeling that Viking society happened to value truth very much indeed.

Second, in spite of the value on truth, Icelanders valued pragmatism even more. I think Byock makes the point about Icelandic pragmatism in his description of the Icelandic conversion to Christianity. I see this event a little differently than Byock, but I have no problems at all with what he says about it.

I think that what Byock says is consistent with my feeling that the Icelanders knew that Christianity was at best a perverse fraud and an untruth but accepted it anyway for pragmatic reasons. However, I think the Vikings went too far here, and that a society with so much respect for truth that accepts a known lie as a rule to live by has simply destroyed itself. If one accepts such a lie to preserve one's society, what is left to preserve?

I recommend all of Byock's books. I truly enjoyed reading this book, which may be his best.

The strength of this book is that it uses the sagas as a tool to learn more about viking age Iceland rather than ignoring it as folk lore as other historians have in the past. This approach also makes the book a lot more readable and enjoyable for those who do not like a dry history book with facts and dates and people names. In addition, I also enjoyed the details about how they built their houses and the lay-out of their houses.

However, the author seems to fall short in the area of icelandic marraige and relationships between the men and women, other than in terms of feud or law. The book seems to focus a great deal on law and not so much on the personal family life of these individual icelanders.

To make up for it, the book does site passages from the sagas about different people in a political context.

But if you buy this book, you really don't have to bother buying medieval iceland. These two books pretty much cover the same ground.

This book contains scholarly information, but, it is written in such a way that the common fan of history can enjoy it, too. The author definately knows his stuff! The book contains interesting illustrations whicb are very useful and interesting. The book is well-researched! I would recommend it to anybody who is interested in reading about the vikings and the viking age!

With the publication of this great work & similar tomes by other scholars, the Norse people of the early Middle Ages are finally getting their due. Instead of the marauding, pillaging hordes that traditional history has depicted them as for centuries, we are shown a more sympathetic view of their society & culture. The term "Viking" itself is a misnomer for the majority of these Norse people. A Viking was the name originally given to those men, predominately Norse, who preyed on defenseless ships, villages, and monasteries. It's interesting to note that it was contemporary foreigners, particularly Anglo-Saxon sources, who first labeled these men "Vikings". By the time that the great Icelandic Sagas were written several hundred years after the fact, the Norse authors were freely using the term. In retrospect, these men were seen as mighty warriors & great adventurers. To be called a Viking had evolved into a badge of honor to a culture that had gradually been assimilated into Christian European. Unfortunately in the process, these remarkable people & the society they had created became little more than villians & despoilers to the "civilized" world in which they existed.

Professor Byock seeks to renounce these false ideas & does a remarkable job of it. By using the Icelandic Sagas as his reference point, he ties in both the Norse contemporary stories with modern historical & anthropological research. These sagas, originally thought to be nothing more than a collection of Icelandic folktales, have now taken on a more scholarly role in understanding these people. While some of the characters, family connections, and incidents recorded might be questioned, the total picture of daily life, culture, values, and society are being proved accurate by modern analysis. Professor Byock provides this analysis within these pages.

Yes, we are treated to tales of mighty warriors fighting against great odds, but we are also witness to the legal maneuverings of the Thing courts. We see political connections being forged & broken as these men sought influence & power from the fellow Icelanders. By placing the human participants depicted in the sagas into his discussion of Viking Age Iceland, Professor Byock has given the reader a face & life that he or she can easily identify with. I applaud his efforts & success. If there is indeed such a thing as "Populist History", this book is an excellent example.

One needs only to thumb through the pages to appreciate the diverse amount of material covered. From "Resources & Subsistence" to "Aspects of Blood Feud", Professor Byock offers a well-researched & well-rounded view of Iceland and its people as a whole. The numerous maps included are of great help in understanding how geography affected & influenced life. The appendix depicting turf house construction was especially interesting & makes one appreciate how these people learned to live in harmony with the land & its sometimes harsh climate.

Professor Byock's writing style is very layman friendly but still detailed & authoritative enough to be referenced in serious research. In short, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book as purely escapist fare. Learning history is seldom this much fun or fascinating. I can not recommend it highly enough to either the casual reader of Norse/Viking material, lovers of the Icelandic Sagas who want to delve further into the factual basis of these stories, or the serious student. You will not be disappointed.

Byock's study of Iceland during the Viking Age and the generations immediately following it, is not an exciting page turner, but is filled with information not easily available elsewahere. Nordic Iceland developed under extremely unusual circumstances. Unlike the subsequent discoveries of Greenland and North America, Iceland was uninhabitated. Usable land was scarce and was quickly filled with settlers. During the first centuries, civilization developed entirely without the presence of 'civis' [cities] and there weren't even any towns. The liveable parts of the island were subdivided entirely into farms.

Nevertheless there was was a society and that society was highly litigious--an alternative to lethal 'solutions'. This was also necessary because Scandinavians of the time were inclined to violence at the drop of a hat. Rules to direct these aggressive impulses into survivable channels were simply mandatory. It was also necessary because available land filled up quickly so there came to be an eternal jocking for land and postion in limited territories.

Although legalistic to a fault, Icelandic law had little--and much--in common with present law. Might pretty much made Right and there was a continual scamble for allies--interested allies, to be certain--to 'back' your position at the local Thing or Althing. You won if you could back your opponent and his supporters down, although this sometimes involved bloodshed and killing. Still, this 'decision' didn't always stick. If you reckoned that you had more to gain by a killing than peaceful acquiesence...well...you killed and hoped you judged the consequences properly. If not, you stood to be 'Outlawed' which meant ANYONE could kill you on sight. Police and military weren't necessary. Most individuals were evidently happy to participate in a free kill.

Although not included in this book, there is an instructive tale in one of the Vinland Sagas--Sagas primarily about Icelanders. Our Scandinavians are sailing down the coast or a river in North America and chance on some 'skraelings' sleeping under an overturned canoe supported by timbers. Our Europeans quietly land on the bank and kill the native-americans because they were obviously 'Outlaws' A free kill. A kill to be taken advantage of.

As rough as Icelandic Law was by our standards, it worked. If you think about it, present legal systems are very much designed to shortcut the more direct satisfaction of a killing duel. Amazingly, when religious push-came-to-shove in 1000 A.D.--and despite the fact that most Icelanders were Pagan--they abided by a decision that ALL would convert to Christianity, in the interest of order. To be certain, many people must have 'converted' entirely tongue-in-cheek but they converted nonetheless and Iceland became a more-or-less Christian nation. I say 'more-or-less' because Pagan prists became Catholic Priests and our primary knowledge of ancient Scandinavian religion was written down--quite proudly--by Icelandic Catholic priests about 200 years following this mass conversion.

I also enjoyed discussions about the legal status of women and children. They were IMMUNE from killing violence and protected from family violence. Although women couldn't personally prosecute legal cases [probably to protect them], their status was similar to their fathers, brothers and husbands. There was something like sexual equality which was not unlike that followed over much of the northern world, although obviously not in the rest of the world. Our present laws fixing female equality must therefore derive from northern law and tradition.

This study seems to have been written as a follow-up to Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power and covers much of the same territory. However, this is a somewhat different work as well. While "Medieval Iceland" focuses much more heavily on the legal sources, this book attempts to use the sagas to reconstruct social structures in the earlier centuries of republican Iceland. This book, along with the author's other works, should be in the library of anyone who seriously wants to learn more about the Viking-Age Norse cultures.

This book covers a wide range of topics, from the effects of human settlement on Iceland ecologically to the legal mechanisms that allowed blood feuds to play a stabilizing role on society. Along the way, he covers questions of how Icelandic society was stratified, the role of the chieftains/godhar, and the economics of the island. In an appendix he discusses the construction of turf buildings.

In terms of questions of the uses of the Sagas as sources for history, Byock discusses the problems of doing so and the changing debate among historians, covering a large number of viewpoints here. This section in particular is very helpful for those who may be trying to make up their minds as to whether the family sagas can be useful in the study of history.

The book is very detailed in what it covers and provides a compelling picture of early Iceland. Highly recommended.

Historians typically use journals, diaries, and estate and government records on which to base their theories. What do you do when these don't exist? You use what is available: oral traditions, the sagas, and archeology. Often what their enemies write them has endured and skewed our understanding of them. Those who write about the ancient Celts and medieval Gaels should take note of this academic's method.