Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site sdcrdcf.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittatc!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!barryg 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