Gripla - 01.01.1984, Page 90

JESSE L. BYOCK
DISPUTE RESOLUTION IN THE SAGAS
The resolution of dispute in the family and early Sturlunga sagas1
cannot be categorized without taking into account medieval Iceland’s
methods of dispute settlement. These methods were central to the opera-
tion of Iceland’s nonhierarchical society and, as a means of managing
violence, contributed to the control of feud from the tenth to the thir-
teenth century. The sagas, with their many descriptions of resolutions,
are literary evidence of a national process of limiting random violence.
Generally, the goal of resolution in the sagas was social stability rather
than justice for a victim. With no police apparatus to enforce legal de-
cisions, an Icelander who successfully prosecuted a case was required to
enforce, on his own, the court verdict. The heavy burden thus placed
upon the individual was perhaps one reason for the intense interest dis-
played by sagamen in detailing resolutions both in and out of court.
In saga literature precedents are called upon; methods of dealing with
ójafnaðarmenn and other dangerous characters are offered; guidelines
for the behavior of successful middlemen abound; means of settlement
are outlined; and ways of establishing and maintaining ties of reciprocity
are described. Our ability to come to terms with this material is deter-
mined to a large measure by our awareness of the operating structures
of medieval Iceland and the associations, not of fact but of form, which
existed between the sagas and the society that produced them. In this
article I first look at aspects of medieval Icelandic society which bear on
feud and its resolution and then propose three broad categories of re-
solution in the family sagas. In the interest of brevity, I have restricted
the use of examples to the second section of the article where the cate-
1 Throughout this article I refer to the standard íslenzk fornrít edition of the
family sagas (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1933-1968). I abbreviate the
edition /F, giving volume numbers. References to Sturlunga saga are taken from
the standard edition, Sturlunga saga, ed. Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason,
and Kristján Eldjárn (Reykjavík: Sturlunguútgáfan, 1946, 2 vols.).