Law and Fiction in Medieval Iceland: The Story in the Gragas Manuscripts
Medieval Icelandic law has been appropriated for modern purposes as diverse as creating a history for European democracy and proving that a libertarian legal system can work in practice. It has been put to so many modern uses because it presents us with a picture of the Icelandic Commonwealth (ca. 9...
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ftcolumbiaunivls:oai:scholarship.law.columbia.edu:law_culture-1003 2023-08-27T04:10:08+02:00 Law and Fiction in Medieval Iceland: The Story in the Gragas Manuscripts McSweeney, Thomas J. 2014-01-01T08:00:00Z application/pdf https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/law_culture/4 https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/context/law_culture/article/1003/viewcontent/mcsweeney.gragas.5.14.14.pdf unknown Scholarship Archive https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/law_culture/4 https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/context/law_culture/article/1003/viewcontent/mcsweeney.gragas.5.14.14.pdf Studio for Law and Culture Icelandic law European democracy Grágás freedom and equality libertarian scholar European History European Law Law text 2014 ftcolumbiaunivls 2023-08-05T17:50:59Z Medieval Icelandic law has been appropriated for modern purposes as diverse as creating a history for European democracy and proving that a libertarian legal system can work in practice. It has been put to so many modern uses because it presents us with a picture of the Icelandic Commonwealth (ca. 930-1262) as a society of free and relatively equal farmers who operated with no king, no nobility, and minimal government. The laws represent Iceland as an exceptional polity, strikingly different from the monarchies and hierarchical societies that dominated Western Europe in the middle ages. This exceptionalism resonates strongly with modern audiences. In this article, I suggest that one of the major surviving sources of Icelandic law, the body of legal texts we collectively refer to as Grágás, is a work of fiction. The manuscripts of Grágás that have come down to us were written in a period when the Icelandic Commonwealth had been replaced by a hierarchical and centralized society under the control of the king of Norway. The authors of the two Grágás manuscripts set out to critique that society. The Grágás authors took material from a prior legal tradition and—through strategies of inclusion, exclusion, and organization — selected and emphasized certain legal material from the Commonwealth period to present it as a time of freedom and equality. Text Iceland Columbia Law School: Scholarship Repository Norway |
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Columbia Law School: Scholarship Repository |
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ftcolumbiaunivls |
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topic |
Icelandic law European democracy Grágás freedom and equality libertarian scholar European History European Law Law |
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Icelandic law European democracy Grágás freedom and equality libertarian scholar European History European Law Law McSweeney, Thomas J. Law and Fiction in Medieval Iceland: The Story in the Gragas Manuscripts |
topic_facet |
Icelandic law European democracy Grágás freedom and equality libertarian scholar European History European Law Law |
description |
Medieval Icelandic law has been appropriated for modern purposes as diverse as creating a history for European democracy and proving that a libertarian legal system can work in practice. It has been put to so many modern uses because it presents us with a picture of the Icelandic Commonwealth (ca. 930-1262) as a society of free and relatively equal farmers who operated with no king, no nobility, and minimal government. The laws represent Iceland as an exceptional polity, strikingly different from the monarchies and hierarchical societies that dominated Western Europe in the middle ages. This exceptionalism resonates strongly with modern audiences. In this article, I suggest that one of the major surviving sources of Icelandic law, the body of legal texts we collectively refer to as Grágás, is a work of fiction. The manuscripts of Grágás that have come down to us were written in a period when the Icelandic Commonwealth had been replaced by a hierarchical and centralized society under the control of the king of Norway. The authors of the two Grágás manuscripts set out to critique that society. The Grágás authors took material from a prior legal tradition and—through strategies of inclusion, exclusion, and organization — selected and emphasized certain legal material from the Commonwealth period to present it as a time of freedom and equality. |
format |
Text |
author |
McSweeney, Thomas J. |
author_facet |
McSweeney, Thomas J. |
author_sort |
McSweeney, Thomas J. |
title |
Law and Fiction in Medieval Iceland: The Story in the Gragas Manuscripts |
title_short |
Law and Fiction in Medieval Iceland: The Story in the Gragas Manuscripts |
title_full |
Law and Fiction in Medieval Iceland: The Story in the Gragas Manuscripts |
title_fullStr |
Law and Fiction in Medieval Iceland: The Story in the Gragas Manuscripts |
title_full_unstemmed |
Law and Fiction in Medieval Iceland: The Story in the Gragas Manuscripts |
title_sort |
law and fiction in medieval iceland: the story in the gragas manuscripts |
publisher |
Scholarship Archive |
publishDate |
2014 |
url |
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/law_culture/4 https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/context/law_culture/article/1003/viewcontent/mcsweeney.gragas.5.14.14.pdf |
geographic |
Norway |
geographic_facet |
Norway |
genre |
Iceland |
genre_facet |
Iceland |
op_source |
Studio for Law and Culture |
op_relation |
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/law_culture/4 https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/context/law_culture/article/1003/viewcontent/mcsweeney.gragas.5.14.14.pdf |
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