Með lögum skal land vort byggja: ‘With Law Shall the Land be Built.’ Law-Speaking and Identity in the Medieval Norse Atlantic

• Main Author: Fee, Christopher R.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College 2012
• Subjects: Atlantic Ocean; Norse Law; North Atlantic Identity; English Language and Literature; Literature in English; Anglophone outside British Isles and North America; North America; Ethnic and Cultural Minority; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/engfac/63; https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137062390; https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/context/engfac/article/1063/viewcontent/Norse_Law_and_Medieval_North_Atlantic_Identity.pdf

Gwyn Jones famously posited the notion of a cogent Norse identity as manifested by common language, culture, and mythology; further, as he clarified in his landmark work A History of the Vikings, law and the practice of law in local and national assemblies was a fundamental component of such a unifying cultural characteristic: "…for the Scandinavian peoples in general, their respect for law, their insistence upon its public and democratic exercise at the Thing, and its validity for all free men, together with their evolution of a primitive and exportable jury system, is one of the distinctive features of their culture throughout the Viking Age…." [excerpt]