Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 81
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19th centuries opened the eyes of scholars to these traits in earlier history.
nothing is more likely to hinder understanding of remote times than the
common tendency among scholars to attribute definite characteristics to
historical periods and to refuse to see anything that does not fit with those
characteristics. Nevertheless, we should be certain to remember that delib
erate state-building, equality and democracy were especially the ideals of
the times that I am coming to now in my survey of the history of the
research of this topic.
In the 19th century, two scholars dominated research on the constitu
tional history of medieval Iceland, the German konrad Maurer and the
Icelander Vilhjálmur Finsen, who spent most of his working lifetime in
Denmark. Maurer wrote his first extensive work on the political system of
the Icelandic commonwealth, Die Entstehung des isländischen Staats und
seiner Verfaßung, in 1852. there, of course, he discussed the stipulation of
the law on the freedom of farmers to leave one goðorð and enter another
one, but he added the important reservation, obviously based on evidence
from sagas, that this right could in practice never be much more than a
dead letter because no powerful chieftain would accept his followers leav
ing him to enter the goðorð of another chieftain.5 Without saying so
directly, Maurer obviously doubted that the right to choose a goðorð could
bring the farmers any real democracy when there was no state power in the
country to protect them against encroachment and to secure their rights.
Vilhjálmur Finsen, on the other hand, described without reservation
the stipulation of the law regarding the free choice of goðorð,6 and on the
whole he was clearly more apt to see the commonwealth as a purposefully
established institution. thus he thought that the alþing had been estab
lished in the early 10th century with a definite number of goðorð, namely
36, while Maurer doubted that the number of goðorð had been decided
until the country was divided into quarters, some three or four decades
later. Maurer was of the opinion, which had been put forward earlier, that
Grágás largely comprised customary rights, rather than law which had been
passed formally, while Finsen denied this, maintaining that customary
5 konrad Maurer, Die Entstehung des isländischen Staats und seiner Verfaßung (München:
Christian kaiser, 1852), 109. – konrad Maurer, Upphaf allsherjarríkis á Íslandi og stjórnar
skipunar þess, translated by Sigurður Sigurðarson (Reykjavík: Bókmenntafélag, 1882), 96.
6 vilhjálmur finsen, “om de islandske Love i fristatstiden,” Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighed
og Historie 1873 (1873): 202.
WAS ICeLAnD tHe GALAPAGoS . . . ?