Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 98
GRIPLA98
Árnason 2003, 202), a dynamic value system may reveal the key pressure
points. We may require a different approach that admits value tensions and
variations as part of the cultural texture of early Iceland.
Dynamic undercurrents (a brief interruption)
All attention turns therefore to values. But before shifting to that topic, let
us step back and review the particular concerns that have emerged about
“mechanisms of political expansion” during the commonwealth period,
using the civilizational perspective. Here we confront a problem that
haunts all historical scholarship, in that the outcomes of political dynamics
over time are always more complex than the mere historical conditions
from which they evolve. Even when we master the whole gamut of data
about laws, norms, individual ambitions, local feuds and battles, church
initiatives, and foreign interventions, the synergistic process of political
development transforms these baseline data into qualitatively new results.
these results are like the emergent properties of complex systems: they
are pathdependent mutations of individual motives and social structures,
where the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. We confront a
critical gap between “input data” (such as structural patterns and micro-
motives of individual actors) and transformative “outputs,” (the resulting
macroeffects that emerge over time, jointly produced out of complex
behavioral and cultural environments). As I have proposed elsewhere, one
way to bridge this gap is to apply techniques of “network analysis,” which
mediates between historical/social data and transformative social outcomes
(Gaskins 2005). Network analysis operates on the assumption that his
torical outcomes are always richer than the sum of all inputs. By augment
ing the study of social structures and personal motives, networks look for
dynamic forces in transactional patterns, firmly embedded in alliance
building activities that reveal how and why new structures develop. In the
case of Icelandic political development, we can take this dynamic step only
by integrating the textual resources of the sagas – with all the subtlety and
difficulty entailed by crossing disciplinary boundaries. In taking this step,
it is important to state clearly what we hope to learn from sagas, and how
to go about the task – a project that leans heavily on the humanistic con
tent of Iceland’s vast literary heritage.