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From: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Vikings
Message-ID: <2426@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Oct-85 10:44:38 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.2426
Posted: Mon Oct 28 10:44:38 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Nov-85 00:06:03 EST
References: <518@tjalk.UUCP> <126@crin.UUCP> <342@chalmers.UUCP> <131@crin.UUCP> <760@inset.UUCP>
Reply-To: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold)
Organization: System Development Corp. R+D, Santa Monica
Lines: 26

In article <760@inset.UUCP> mikeb@inset.UUCP (Mike Banahan) writes:
"Njal's Saga" (admittedly Icelandic rather than Viking) makes the place
look a damn sight more pleasant to live in, and better run, than most of
the rest of the world looks today.

First off, Viking is an activity, not a country.  Several of the Njalssons
went Viking.  (Skarp-Hedin never got around to it.)

Second, bad as things are today, I think most of the world is at least as
pleasant as 1000 CE Iceland as portrayed in that saga, with perpetual
feuding ending in bloodshed which the society at large found no
ordered way to cope with.  Certainly the culture we live in finds easier
ways to divorce a man than to have one's foster father "cure" his backache
with an axe, easier ways to resolve problems between neighbors than to
hire servants to kill them.  Few lawyers these days would regard it as a
coup to arrange for the trial to end in a pitched battle.

"Njal's Saga" is great reading, but I wouldn't want to live there.

I will agree that women were treated better in medieval Iceland than
elsewhere in medieval Europe.  I will agree that theory of the Althing
appeals to me.  I like the theory of a society which governs by law and
consensus.  I think Ireland's Brehon Laws handled it better, though.
(You'll find them discussed at length under that name in a Britannica II.)

--Lee Gold