Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 94
GRIPLA94
with critical distance on our basic notions of modernity. Given the special
dominance of the West, we are curious about tensions and conflicts that
were likely present when our modern institutions first emerged in transi
tional societies. As a premodern cultural episode on the periphery of
Christianizing europe, the dynamic society portrayed in sagas and con
temporary histories offers an unusually rich source of selfreflection. It
responds fully to sociologist jóhann Páll Árnason’s interest in finding
“connections between the internal pluralism of modernity and the civiliza
tional pluralism of its prehistory” (2003, 13). A civilizational perspective on
early Iceland invites us to roam with unusual freedom across normal schol
arly boundaries of history, politics, philosophy, the arts, and literature.
the 2007 Skálholt symposium provided a multidisciplinary response to
the challenge laid down by Jóhann, one of the leading exponents of the
civilizational approach. The symposium was an occasion for scholars of
medieval Iceland to revisit standard findings and controversies, including
some that were assumed to have been safely settled (Gunnar Karlsson
2007). At its core, Jóhann’s framework encourages a retrospective search
for cultural tensions, contrasts, variations, and novelty within the cultural
epoch of the Icelandic commonwealth [þjóðveldi]. His framework casts
suspicion on static interpretive models, norms, and structures as tools for
understanding what was plainly a changing society, evolving over four cen
turies. It asks skeptically whether we can reduce that distant culture to its
legal codes, social functions, systematic ideologies, historical data sets, nar
rative structures, religious doctrines, artistic symbols. Indeed, the new
framework suggests that standard disciplinary categories may need to be
recast as more fluid and dynamic. Alongside the fixed rule, one must also
look for the exception, the deviation, and the underlying creative force that
blurs the boundaries of academic specialties. Some interpretations of early
Iceland are content to presume monolithic world views, mentalités, or
closed value systems, and to enforce strict boundaries between historical
and literary modes of understanding. Jóhann’s framework questions these
standard interpretive categories and boundaries. His civilizational perspec
tive leads to a more subversive, iconoclastic spirit of inquiry, accompanied
by the scent of risk and danger. When it comes down to what we really
know about the Icelandic commonwealth, one is tempted to quote, with
mild irony, the dictum that “all that is solid melts into air.”