Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 10

GRIPLA10
Scandinavian people and their lives were genuine sources for the civilisa­
tion of the Scandinavian countries, and furthermore, that these texts bore
a general Germanic stamp. This view is now outdated and it is clear that
the source value of the medieval writings of the Icelanders is greatly
restricted. The texts were determined by the specific circumstances sur­
rounding their production in Iceland and their presentation of the pre­
Christian world was moulded by the fact that that they were conceived by
Christians in an environment where the church and its ideology dominated
textual production to a great extent. This does not mean, however, that
these sources—the sagas and the poetry—have no value for research into
the history of the Scandinavian countries other than Iceland in the viking
Age and the Middle Ages. Such research, however, calls for strict criticism
of the sources.
For many years, Jóhann Páll Árnason, an Icelandic philosopher with an
international academic career behind him, has dedicated himself to the
academic field known as ‘civilisation studies’. As noted earlier, the initiative
behind the conference was Jóhann’s and therefore his article is printed first
here, also because the scope of his article is broad. jóhann focuses on the
origins and nature of the Icelandic ‘Commonwealth’ and reviews and
analyses ideas about its basic characteristics, as formulated by twentieth-
century scholars from Arnold toynbee and Sigurður nordal to jesse
Byock and Gunnar karlsson. jóhann’s subject is the distinctive society that
came about in Iceland and its development. An important element of
jóhann’s interpretation is that even before the country’s conversion to
Christianity, Icelandic society was different to the Scandinavian monar­
chies. Jóhann follows Sigurður Nordal in believing that explanations for
the Commonwealth cannot be based exclusively on the particular physical
conditions in the extensive, very sparsely populated, and previously unset­
tled land; the establishment of a social organisation, which could not be
called a state in the normal sense but rather a political community, was also
the result of the ideas and desires of its leaders. However, both these schol­
ars agree that these ideas could not be fully realised because of adverse cir­
cumstances. In explaining and defining the political community that
evolved in Iceland, jóhann looks to the ancient Greek polis for compari­
son, amongst other things. one determining factor in the origin and devel­
opment of Icelandic society was the relation between politics and religion.