~ þjóðveldistímabilið: the commonwealth period
The story of the Icelandic free state really begins in medieval Scandinavia.
In 872 ce, a politically ambitious peer, the jarl Harald, made a Samson-like oath to refrain from cutting his hair until he'd unified all of Norway. They began to call him Hårfagre, the Fair-Haired, and he managed to unify a significant number of the counties of western Scandinavia under his rule, becoming that country's first monarch after his victory at Hafrsfjord. This was really the beginning of the final stages of the north's transition from early Teutonic tribal organization to medieval national feudalism, from territorial gangs to the corporate police state system which would soon come to dominate all of mainland European civilization. Suffice it to say, not all Norwegians were very happy with this prospect.
The volcanic rock of the northern Atlantic had been discovered by the Vikings twelve years previous, and named Ísland, "Land of Ice," in honour of its most obvious climatic circumstances. The only inhabitants were the descendents of some Irish pilgrims, who would be enslaved by the newcomers. Many Norwegians, fleeing the tyranny of Harald I, decided that Iceland provided the best prospect for a new, free society. On the steaming northern basalt shores, thirty thousand became free men.
There was no public land in Iceland in those days. For the first couple of generations, the new inhabitants of Iceland existed as nothing but private homesteads. Each homestead was loosely affiliated with a local parish, or goðorð. Each goðorð was nominally led by its goði, or chieftain-priest, who derived his authority from his connection to the æsir and from his wisdom rather than from force or legitimacy. The pagan folk of Iceland could switch the goðorð with which they would associate as easily as people today can change which independent church in their neighbourhood they attend – that's really all the goðorð were, after all. Each homestead was also a member of a hreppr, or municipal cooperative. These were groups of twenty or more nearby farms, and administered to the social needs of the members. Unlike membership in the goðorð, membership in the hreppr was mandatory and entailed certain financial responsibilities; this was the closest thing to government the Icelanders knew.
~ legislative branch of the free state
In 930 ce, the forty-five hundred or so independent homesteads of Iceland federated and established a constitutional law, which they named var lög or "our law." This law, after a few modifications by the lawmaker Njal Þorgeirsson, hero of Njálssaga, in 1005 ce, would remain in place for two hundred and ninety years.
Under the new law, the number of goðorð was officially fixed at thirty-six, with three goðorð constituting a þing, or local council, and three þingen constituting a fjórðung, or quarter. The four quarters met in a national lögrétta, or legislature, which was overseen by a lögsögumaðr, the "law-saying man" or speaker of the house of law. The lögrétta convened with all goðar, plus one other þingmaðr ("thing-man" or inhabitant) from each þing, plus two advisors each, for a total of one hundred and forty-four men from throughout Iceland. The highest court and congress was the alþingi, or republic, which was an annual meeting of all goðar, each accompanied by at least one-ninth of his goðorð.
The only public position in this scheme was the lögsögumaðr; every three years, lots would be drawn to determine which fjórðung's vote would determine the next logsogumaðr. Every man had to be represented by some goði – if he was challenged to name his goði he was expected by custom and under threat of possible abandonment by the goðorð to comply – but while the number of goðar and their particular powers within the þingen were fixed by law, the position itself was considered ecclesiastical, not civil.
Not only was a man's goðorð a matter negotiated between him and whatever goði he approached, but the actual position of goði could be bought and sold. Because the right to participate in the lögrétta and to appoint judges to different courts was associated so strictly with the goðorð, a private station, the legislative power of Iceland became property, subject to customs of inheritance, of giftgiving, of sale, or of joint control. On the other hand, if one goði retired and a newcomer bought his temple who was not supported as a representative (either of the people for the þing or of the gods for the congregation), any person could simply declare himself a member of a new congregation and, without moving his lands or property, be represented by a new goði and a new þing – even if they were geographically removed from the quarter of which his new goðorð was a part. The goðar had no police forces or executive to enforce their will; they only had authority insofar as they could convince freedmen to follow their lead.
~ judicial branch
The lögrétta decreed what harms would be tryable and what the punishments would be for liable parties. In this capacity, the goðar served as legislators. But the goðar also fulfilled the judicial needs of Iceland, too.
The first level of conflict resolution was private arbitration mediated by someone that might be considered wise and impartial by both parties, or by a goði. The goal here would be to try to find a consensus on a mutually agreeable solution. If no solution could be found at this level, the matter would be escalated to an established court.
In spite of the looseness of Iceland's election processes, its juridical processes were very strictly codified and formalized by custom. At all levels of arbitration, a citizen had the right to be heard by a panel of three dozen judges. The charges had to be worded very specifically, and had to be repeated exactly by the plaintiff and each of the jurymen several times before that person could participate in the trial; failure meant disqualification. The disqualification of a single juror was grounds for a mistrial, and there were several grounds on which a judge's presence on the panel could be challenged.
The 930 law established four levels of court; in 1005 ce Njal's reforms included the establishment of a fifth. No matter what the court, the citizen had a right to be tried in front of a panel of three dozen judges; the composition of the court varied according to its level. In disputes to be resolved at the level of the goðorð, the plaintiff and the defendent each chose eighteen jurors, for a total of three dozen. If this court failed to reach a satisfactory decision or if there were any procedural irregularities, or for cases between members of the same þing but different goðorð, the case would be passed to the varþing, in which each of the three goðar of the þing to which the litigants belonged would pick twelve judges. Above this court was the court of the quarter, the fjórðungsþing, which was the supreme court of the land until Njal's federal court was added in 1005 a federal court, unifying the whole country under one court system. This court was called the fimmtardómr, the fifth court.
There was no single presiding judge for court cases, and therefore interpretation of the law had to be kept to a bare minimum. The lögrétta defined all torts and all dues that would be payed to restitute the plaintiff. Because punishment was already defined, the judges of the jury panel had only to make a finding with regard to the specific claims and defence of the parties involved. Jurors were not expected to assess guilt or intent; instead, their responsibility was to determine whether the accusation and the defence had been properly expressed.
This expression could mean the difference between a tort and a crime – killing a man was punishable by a transfer of one hundred ounces of silver from the killer to the family of the victim, but only if the slaughter was publicly announced in front of the right witnesses and in due time; if the killer tried to hide his action and neglected to announce it, it was the crime of secret murder, and the punishment was being made an outlaw. The difference between tort and crime here has nothing at all to do with intent or reasonable expectations; instead, it's a procedural difference.
The only sentence the law delivered, other than a stipulated restitution (útlegð) measured in ounces of silver or in heads of livestock, was a "fine" (sekt): the declaration of outlawry. There were two kinds of outlawry: the lesser form, or fjörbaugsgarðr, removed the protection of law from the convict for three years; the greater form, skóggangr, removed it permanently and left the convict to the vengeance of his victim's family and friends. They had the right to kill him with impunity at any time later than three months from the time the sentence was delivered. An outlaw had all his property seized and redistributed to the victim and to those who helped enforce the will of the court; lesser outlaws were permitted to keep their land so that they could reintegrate into the community when their term was up, but greater outlaws also had their land seized and were effectively exiled. A greater outlaw could only be readmitted to the care of the republic if he declared and completed the execution of three other greater outlaws.
~ execution
The free state of Iceland had no executive branch of government. No police or bureaucracy enforced the will of the alþingi. The "government" of the commonwealth of Iceland, above the level of the local hreppr, existed in name only. The edicts of the lögrétta had force only insofar as the goðar could persuade their congregant-constituents to support them. The restitutions ordered by a court were to be handled between the litigants. If the losing party neglected to pay his dues, the victim could have the debtor declared an outlaw.
Goðar weren't obliged to defend their constituents, because they weren't obliged to keep the person in question as a constituent in the first place. As a result, the goðar were in a position to charge for their juridical services. Additionally, trial by combat was considered a valid form of process, and the party that declined to duel after having been challenged was considered the loser. On the surface, this might give the impression that the poor or weak would have no chance of ever receiving justice. The Icelandic system had a way of mitigating this problem, though: civil claims were considered a kind of debit, and like debit, could be transferred. Thus, wealthier parties could buy the rights to restitution from the poor victims; though the fee would be less than the útlegð that the new plaintiff would recieve if the court found in his favour, the victims would be saved the trouble of formulating an accusation or hiring a goði to represent them. This option would be attractive not just to the poor, either: the seller of the right is guaranteed some silver, instead of only having the chance to win a little more or none at all. Similarly, a weaker party challenged to a trial by ordeal could hire a fighter to duel on his behalf; though his winnings would be reduced in this way because of the cost of hiring the fighter, his odds of receiving those winnings vastly increase. In these ways, the poor and the weak could still receive some consideration.
Families provided most of the social safety net for Icelanders during the Commonwealth period. Social relief, when it was necessary, was handled through hreppar. Each hreppr was composed of at least twenty homesteads, and was overseen by a five-man committee. In addition to giving relief and loans to destitute members, the hreppar also provided a form of property insurance. If some kind of misfortune befell someone's farm, such as a fire or a disease among the sheep, the hreppr would contribute to his relief. Unlike membership in a goðorð, participation in a hreppr and contribution to its treasury was mandatory and based on geographical location; the consequences of this will be seen in the next section.
~ the end of the commonwealth
The alþingi was instituted in 930 ce, and for decades peace and prosperity visited the Icelanders. Violence was sporadic and casualties were minimal. During a fifty-year period when the Icelanders considered the local feuds to have reached a fevered pitch bordering on civil war, the yearly wrongful death rates were no higher, per capita, than modern yearly wrongful death rates in North American cities. Litigation and arbitration were better respected abilities than war, and Iceland, despite its harsh environment and dearth of natural resources, became a major trading power in the northern seas.
And yet, by 1220 ce, everything had begun to unravel. The feuds became more violent, and arbitration became less satisfactory to everyone. The goðar, having long abandoned their pagan religious pretensions, became pure politicians and began consolidating special privileges. By the middle of the thirteenth century, eighty percent of all land holdings were in the hands of five families. In the end, things had reached such a miserable state that the Icelanders saw no solution but to submit themselves to the crown of Norway, which they did in 1262 ce. It would remain a holding of foreign powers until 1918 ce.
Freedom had reigned in Iceland for nearly three hundred years, and the nation had remained independent for three hundred and thirty-two. What happened to turn this proud and once-free nation into a servile foreign satellite? There is much debate on this issue; many would like to paint a picture of the "anarcho-capitalist" Iceland collapsing in on itself as the landlord-aristocrat goði chieftains exploit the defenseless commoners using economic sanctions. In reality, however, the historical evidence seems to indicate that it really was the few vestiges of centralized authority that touched Iceland, both foreign and domestic, which eventually destroyed the social fabric.
Two factors converged to precipitate the collapse of the Icelandic commonwealth: the enforcement of Christian orthodoxy on Iceland by Norway, and the compulsory nature of the hreppar.
Originally, the people of Iceland had been predominantly pagan, and the goðar were consecrated to the Norse gods – Þór, Óðinn, Fréja, Bladr, and so on. There were, however, some Christians among them. Christians would nominally join a pagan goðorð in order to be represented in the community, but were given complete forbearance to worship as they wanted in their own homes. Thus, although community authority was technically ecclesiastical and the Icelandic commonwealth was, by all rights, a theocracy, the goði had no intention of abridging the religious freedoms of their constituents, so long as missions were peaceable.
But the missions were not always peaceable. In the late 990s, the Christian Olav I, seventh King of the unified country of Norway, started holding Icelanders who were in his country hostage and sending warriors to Iceland to harass the pagans. He indicated that killings would continue until Iceland declared Christianity as the official state religion. So, in 1000 ce, the alþingi convened, and reached the (unconstitutional) decision that the island would become officially Christian, and that all Icelanders would be baptized. The Icelanders considered this to be a relatively modest concession considering the circumstances, and church properties – the staðir – would all be privately administered.
Things were relatively stable for about ninety years. The churches were mostly owned by goðar (whose position no longer held any religious significance of its own) and by wealthy farmers. Then, in 1096 ce, a new measure was proposed to strengthen the churches: a tithe. According to the new suggestion, each hreppr would tax every member a flat rate of 1% of his income, for the specific purpose of maintaining the community's church. The argument, of course, was based on the idea that the hreppar, which were responsible for the material welfare of Icelanders, could be used to see to their spiritual welfare as well. What it really meant, though, was that the goðar and the wealthy farmers who owned the churches would be receiving a tax from everyone in the local community, a tax that had nothing to do with the insurance of Icelanders' property or livelihood and had everything to do with maintaining the élite in a manner beyond the voluntary rewards of any economic or civil services they were providing.
Because most goðar were church owners and most church owners were goðar, the bill met little resistance in the lögrétta, and so in 1096 Iceland got its first effective national tax. Because Icelanders already had no choice as to which hreppr they would belong or how much they would contribute, the precedent for collecting involuntary funds was already set at the community level. Because the hreppar and staðir were localized by community, this bound the goði to the land, not in terms of representation in the lögrétta, but rather in terms of their source of income. And because Christianity was the official state religion, it was considered legitimate to appropriate tax for the promotion of Christianity in the name of the welfare of Icelanders – whether they wanted it or not.
Now that a goði recieved an automatic income from everyone dwelling within a certain neighbourhood, on the basis of his privilege as a church owner, his standard of living was no longer dependent on his ability to represent his constituents in a way they found satisfactory. Furthermore, because the church lands were private property, the goðar who owned them still had all their rights to participate in feuds, to marry, and most importantly, to leave inheritance for their children – including their goðorð title, of course, but more importantly also the church lands, and therefore also the privilege of automatic income from the subjects of the hreppr in which the church was located.
So, the owners of churches began to use their dirty money to buy up more and more land. Slowly but surely, as the rich church-owners bought more and more of the local farms, whole hreppar came under the control of one local family – then several hreppar. The farmers, of course, hoped to recoup some of what was being taken from them in the tithe, but the cost was that they would become tenants of the politically privileged. Feudalism arose, with the hreppar becoming fiefs. This was the Sturlungaöld, age of the monopolization of Iceland by five families: the Sturlungar, the Haukdælingar, the Oddaverjar, the Vatnsfirðingar, the Svínfellingar, and the Ásbirningar. These privileged families, owners of both church and goðorð became known as "big goði" families – storgoðar. In addition to imposing escalating rents on their subjects, they fought relentlessly among themselves for control of more land, more hreppar, and more churches. Eventually, the storgoðar gained so much power in this way that they could institute a general tax, without the pretense of supporting the spiritual wellbeing of their subjects.
Over the coming generations, discord and resentment grew between the subjects and their new overlords. Thanks to the special privileges of the storgoðar through the originally seemingly innocent institution of hreppar, wealth concentrated increasingly in their hands. Five families gobbled up the whole of Iceland. This situation was aggravated by the kings of Norway, who always relished the opportunity to annex Iceland.
Eventually, in 1262, three hundred and thirty-two years after the Icelanders erected their federal commonwealth, violence and hatred tore Iceland apart. King Håkon IV of Norway became the benevolent saviour of Iceland, whose authoritarian rule was invited by the Icelanders and the only way they knew how to resolve their differences. The ancient respect for arbitration and private discretion had long since been forgotten.
If the Icelanders had been able to respect freedom of religion despite Norway's religious intolerance, the crisis may have been averted. If they had had the right to choose their own hreppr as they chose their own goðorð, the crisis might have been averted. Instead, after three hundred years of independence, equality and equity, the Icelanders were rewarded with six hundred and fifty-six years of servility to a foreign crown.