Gripla - 20.12.2009, Side 82

GRIPLA82
rights were mainly valid in the infancy of peoples, “i Folkenes Barndom” as
he expressed it in Danish, but in his opinion that obviously did not apply
to Iceland.7
one does not find much discussion about this in Icelandic in the 19th
century. But after the turn of the 20th century, especially after the estab­
lishment of the University of Iceland in 1911, Icelandic scholars who were
working in Iceland and mostly writing in Icelandic, took the lead in studies
of the commonwealth age. The early 20th century was a period of ardent
nationalism in Iceland; successful steps were made towards state formation
in the country and economic progress was rapid. Of course Icelandic schol­
ars of this time adopted the views of Vilhjálmur Finsen rather than Konrad
Maurer, and portrayed the commonwealth rather incautiously as mirroring
the democratic society that they were building in Iceland, an egalitarian
polity where the choice of goðorð by farmers could be equated with elec­
tions in a representative democracy. Among these scholars were the legal
historian and professor of law Ólafur Lárusson, the literary historians
Sigurður nordal and einar ólafur Sveinsson, and the historian and Marxist
politician einar olgeirsson.8 the last of these, einar olgeirsson, even sug­
gested that the goðar had been elected to their posts when the alþing was
established. This was not entirely unsupported by the evidence, because in
a 13th­century text it is said that the goðar were originally chosen (“valdir”)
to be responsible for the pagan temples.9 Even as careful and down-to-
earth a scholar as the history professor jón jó hannesson said, in the
english translation of his History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth, that
“the leaders of the country held to the idea of carefully maintaining a bal­
ance of authority between various chieftaincies, a principle which had
already developed at the time of the founding of the Althing.” In the Ice­
landic original Jón used even a stronger word than ‘idea’; he talked about
‘hugsjón’ which could be translated more exactly as ‘ideal’ or ‘vision’.10
jón jóhannesson published this study in 1956, but soon after, in the late
7 Gunnar karlsson, Goðamenning, 30, 66.
8 Ibid., 181–184.
9 einar olgeirsson, Ættasamfélag og ríkisvald í þjóðveldi Íslendinga (Reykjavík: Heimskringla,
1954), 93–97.
10 jón jóhannesson, A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth. Íslendinga saga, translated by
Haraldur Bessason ([S.l.]: University of Manitoba Press, 1974), 226. – Jón Jóhannesson,
Íslendinga saga I. Þjóðveldisöld (Reykjavík: Almenna bókafélagið, 1956), 270.