ICELAND'S UNIQUE HISTORY SHEDS LIGHT ON VIKING AGE

The Icelandic sagas recorded far more than myths of the old Norse gods and their supernatural arctic escapades, according to a UCLA Viking expert.

Packed with history and spiced with gossip and legend, these accounts track the adventures of the historical people who settled Iceland more than a thousand years ago. The old Icelandic manuscripts are a treasure chest for historians and scholars who have turned to them in their renewed quest for evidence and details to shed light on the latest archaeological findings about the early days of this island nation settled in Viking times.

The sagas, which are now available in translation, celebrate the evolution of a remarkable people and their social experiment, according to Jesse L. Byock, an archaeologist and professor of Old Norse and Viking history and literature at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Byock's just-released book, Viking Age Iceland (Penguin, 2001), draws from his extensive research into the sagas, as well as state-of-the-art archaeological finds. This cutting-edge socio-historical study explores the first centuries of the Old Icelandic Free State in the period from the 10th to the mid13th century, following the settlement of this northern island by Norse seafarers.
Scandinavian sailors first discovered Iceland in about the year 850. Shortly thereafter in about 870, large numbers of free farmers, mainly from Norway, as well as some from Viking encampments and Norse colonies in Celtic lands, along with their Gaelic wives, allies, and followers, began arriving. Their goal was to stake claim to the abundance of free land.

"The resourceful settlers- as many as 20,000 original immigrants-found a rugged and isolated volcanic expanse, its arctic ecology necessitating ingenuity and resourcefulness." There are fascinating stories about the ingenuity with which food was prepared and preserved, and how people used the materials of their stark environment to build large living and feasting halls.

The reader is taken into the center of a feuding Viking Age society that learned to control violence through law. Byock, writing as an anthropologist, explores the mechanisms that defused conflicts among the fiercely independent early Icelanders. What emerges is a picture of a people who had an extraordinary opportunity to shape their own destiny.

"Essentially, theirs was a successful experiment in proto-democracy with strong egalitarian processes," said Byock.

The foundations of Iceland's frontier society were laid in the early decades of the "landtaking" or landnám, as the initial settlement period is known. By the close of the 60 years of this period, in the year 930 AD, most of the good farm sites were gone. It was inevitable that conflicts would arise conceming land claims, and these often escalated into the island society's famous feuds.
Yet with all the talk of bloodletting, the sagas give evidence of an attitude of compromise in Iceland. The reader is taken back to earlier stages of western culture, as the author describes, through intriguing examples from the sagas, a system of consensus mechanisms that defused bitter disputes.

"The people feuded, yet worked out legal and social systems to buffer the society from the effects of all-out violence. In many ways, they developed surprisingly democratic techniques for controlling violence and sharing power. The results allowed significant room for individuals to enjoy personal freedoms," Byock writes.

After the settlers established in 930 a national assembly called the Althing, Iceland became a self-governing Free State. It was a medieval republic, which lasted until 1264 when the Norwegian monarchy finally succeeded in gaining control over Iceland During the period of Iceland's medieval independence before the Norwegian takeover, Byock notes that, the descendants of Iceland's first settlers created a well functioning society "of scattered farmers with little social hierarchy and no executive government, with order maintained by a coinplex interaction between feud, law, and personal relationships. This makes medieval Iceland an intriguing political and sociological `experiment' as well as fascinating history."

Judith Gabriel Vinje Judith Gabriel Vine is a freelance journalist who writes about Vikings and other Scandinavian subjects. She is a member of the board of directors of the Scandinavian Cultural Center at California Lutheran College, Thousand Oaks.

Scandinavian Press, Issue 1, 2002