Gripla - 01.01.1984, Page 94

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GRIPLA
only effective governmental officials, did not rule territorial areas within
which their thingmen lived. Instead, the goðar served as leaders of inter-
est groups and vied for the allegiance of the bœndr who lived inter-
spersed among them.8 The resulting patchwork of alliances not only
allowed small farmers significant freemen’s rights but granted the more
influential among them a high degree of political independence. In the
sagas influential farmers such as Njáll Þorgeirsson, Helgi Droplaugar-
son, and Blund-Ketill Geirsson, to name a few, act as the equals of
chieftains; even though they have no legal following of thingmen, their
movements are treated with the same attention as those of goðar. To-
gether, chieftains and important farmers—often called stórbœndr in
later centuries—formed a core group of arbitrators and advocates who
were active in the process of resolution. In the family and Sturlunga
sagas, compromises and resolutions are often effected in an orderly way
through the pivotal intervention of these advocates, whom I call brokers,
whether they are goðar or bœndr. The term brokerage is suitable to
describe the dominant form of advocacy in the sagas because it reflects
the contractual quality of the enterprise by which middlemen repeatedly
intervene in the affairs of others to provide a service or to arrange for
assistance.
Brokerage is not a very complex procedure.9 It is the means by which
an individual seeks the support of another individual, usually more
powerful than himself, and relies on ties of obligation, such as kinship,
political agreements, or financial transactions. These ties may already be
in existence when an individual and a broker decide on a certain activ-
ity, or they may be created in response to a new situation. In most
societies brokerage has a well-defined place, though it is often a peri-
pheral and private practice. What is unusual in Iceland is that brokerage
was elevated to the status of a central and often public process. The
major reason for its significance was the lack of governmental institu-
tions to which an individual in need might turn. In the usual procedure
described in the sagas a farmer turned to his goði, although often
8 From here on, the term “farmer” is used interchangeably with the Icelandic
term bóndi (pl. bœndr). The terms “chieftain” and goði (pl. goðar) are also used
interchangeably. It follows that the office of the goði, the goðorð, is comparable
to the term “chieftaincy.”
9 See J. L. Byock, Feud in the Icelandic Saga (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London:
University of California Press, 1982), esp. ch. 5 and App. C.