Saga - 1972, Page 58

56
GUNNAR KARLSSON
was more powerful came away with the better half of the bargain.
There is clear evidence that it was eonsidered better in disputes to
have the support of powerful men than to have a just cause. It is
therefore safe to say that in general justice and security were in the
hands of the goðar.
III. In treating the relations of farmers to goðar historians have
on the whole stressed the farmer’s legal freedom to choose his own
goði. The relationship between farmers and goðar has been compared
to that between voters and elected representatives in nineteenth and
twentieth-century democracies. The German legal historian Friedrich
Boden presents a rather unusual view of this matter when he writes
that only a small minority of farmers were the thingmen of goðar.
But Boden’s arguments do not hold water and we must assume that
in general farmers were thingmen, just as the laws indicate.
In the twelfth-century Sturlunga sagas there is one example of a
farmer who changed his goðorð of his own free will. This shows that
it was possible to exercise this right; but it is no proof that the rela-
tionship between goðar and thingmen was in general a matter of the
farmers’ free choice. It can be assumed that hereditary custom often
decided what goðorð a man was in. But it is also clear that the aut-
hority of a goði was to a certain extent territorially defined. There
are, to be sure, clear examples that a goði's thingmen did not always
form a consistent district in which no one else lived, but to a large
extent the authority of the goði was restricted to one defined area.
For defense against robbers men depended on the goði who lived in
their district, whether they were his thingmen or not. There are also
examples of goðar refusing to allow other men in their district than
those they could depend on. Tbus the goðar had their own areas of
influence within which everyone — both their own thingmen and
those of other goðar — had to respect their will. Under these circum-
stances the right to attach one’s self to another goði meant little
in practice. On the other hand, the goðar were dependent on neigh-
bouring farmers in so far as they needed their support in defense and
in fighting. When most of the goðorð in Iceland were assembled in
the hands of a few powerful chieftains in the beginning of the thir-
teenth century, it is likely that this was due to some extent to the
failure of farmers to support the less powerful goðar.
IV. Historians have usually assumed that there was a peaceful
period in Iceland from early in the eleventh century to the middle of
the twelfth century. If this is so, then the analysis given above cannot
apply to that period, because it has been assumed here that it was
war and the threat of war that created the bonds between goðar and
farmers. But the arguments for the existence of this period of peace are
in no way convincing. It seems most probable that the constant petty
warring described in the twelfth century sagas prevailed in Iceland
from its very beginning, without interruption. There is therefore no
special reason for thinking that the relationship between goðar and