Feud in the Icelandic saga by Byock Jesse L

Author:Byock, Jesse L
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sagas, Vendetta in literature
Publisher: Berkeley : University of California Press
Published: 1982-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

8 The Importance . of Land in Saga Feud

Wise men have also said that Iceland became fully settled in sixty winters, so that no additional settlements were made thereafter. At about this time, Hrafn the son of the landndmsmadr Ketill hoengr became lawspeaker (ca. 9301.

—Ari inn frodi (Islendingabok, ch. 3)

One of the most readily apparent ways whereby new societies differ from old ones is that new societies know their origins and how they came into being and old ones do not. This knowledge assumes major importance in the history and mythology of a new nation. One of the first tasks of new nations is to develop unifying myths, a sense of national distinctiveness and nationhood. Americans celebrate the landing of the first pilgrim settlers and the taming of the West, Afrikaners revere the “trekboers” who conquered and occupied the wilderness of South Africa during the eighteenth century, and Argentines respect the freedom of the pampas typified above all by the gauchos. Icelanders celebrate the founding of Icelandic society and the early history of their island, particularly the century around 930-1030 known in Icelandic chronology as the Saga Age.

—Richard Tomasson

TTwo fundamental questions concerning / saga feud must be addressed: (1) Why is land so frequently a source of dispute in saga literature? (2) How is the feu-demic technique of prose composition wedded to the movement of medieval Icelandic legal, societal, and economic forces? There is more here than initially meets

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