Review of Njáls saga: Rechtsproblematik im Dienste soziokultureller Deutung

There is little recommend this book. It is ill-conceived and poorly executed. The author's thesis is that the saga-writer intentionally distorted and varied his presentation of the law of the lawbooks in order to show a society being destroyed by uncontrolled egoism, pride, and envy, a society...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Miller, William I.
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository 1985
Subjects:
Online Access:https://repository.law.umich.edu/reviews/123
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1122&context=reviews
Description
Summary:There is little recommend this book. It is ill-conceived and poorly executed. The author's thesis is that the saga-writer intentionally distorted and varied his presentation of the law of the lawbooks in order to show a society being destroyed by uncontrolled egoism, pride, and envy, a society characterized by willful arbitrariness, disorder, and disarray, with few rules to respect and little respect for the few rules that were there. The validity of the thesis is never really tested because the law which the saga-writer distorts is not even minimally established, nor for that matter is the law the saga-writer does portray with sufficient care.