Peace Through Trade, Redux: Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government

[R. A. Hettinga]

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At 9:57 PM -0500 on 12/26/02, Somebody wrote:


> Obviously he hasn't read Njal's Saga.

Yeah, people say this a lot, but it's more the exception that proves
the rule.

For instance, multi-generational blood feud that runs over the course
of Njal's Saga goes over a century or more, I think, so a simple body
count doesn't work very well.

In addition, the reason they made a saga out of the story was that
the events in it were so exceptional, not just the burning of Njal
and the Njalssons, but the whole fight that lead up to it. Like the
paper said about Icelandic conflicts in general, when the burning was
over, the whole "war" was over -- without dragging in a cast of
thousands.

Hype is a very old thing. The saga said, among other things, that
Gunnar could also jump his own height from a standing start, too,
remember? :-).


Like they said in the Old West, which was also much more peaceful
than the pulp-novels, movies, and gun-control advocates would have
you believe, "We didn't need the law until the lawyers came."

The Norse, like people in early America were, of course, all armed to
the teeth, and an armed society is a polite society. Remember that
rabbits fight to the death by disembowelment, while rattlesnakes just
bump chests to see who gets the girl...

Cheers,
RAH

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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'