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story of liberty,’ and countless others. these are the fairy tales of
our time. Whether they are recounted in epic mode by those satis
fied with the present, or in tragic mode by those nostalgic for
eden, they serve the same function in our intellectual culture that
tales of witches and wizards do in our children’s imaginations:
they make the world legible, they reassure us of its irrevocability,
and they relieve us of responsibility for maintaining it (Lilla
2007, 6).
We may find it useful to contrast these modern legends to the sagas told by
Icelanders, which serve as the prelude to the rise of “political theology,”
and not its postlude. A self-commentary on our own age draws us into
such distant times and places, and civilizational theory should be especially
grateful for its encounter with commonwealth Iceland.
RefeRenCeS
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Bagge, Sverre. 1991. Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla.
Berkeley: university of California Press.
Durkheim, Émile. 1960. Montesquieu and Rousseau. Ann Arbor: university of
Michigan Press [originally published 1953 based on Durkheim’s 1892 Latin
dissertation].
eisenstadt, S.n. 2006. the Great Revolutions and the Civilizations of Modernity.
Leiden: Brill.
Gaskins, Richard. 1997. “félagsvísindamanna saga.” Skírnir 171:185–207.
Gaskins, Richard. 1998. “visions of Sovereignty in Snorri Sturluson’s Heims
kringla.” Scandinavian Journal of History 23:173–88.
Gaskins, Richard. 2005. “Network Dynamics in Saga and Society.” Scandinavian
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Gísli Pálsson, ed. 1992. From Sagas to Society. enfield Lock: Hisarlik Press.
Gunnar karlsson. 2004. Goðamenning: Staða og áhrif goðorðsmanna í þjóðveldi
Íslendinga. Reykjavík: Heimskringla.
Gunnar karlsson. 2009. “Was Iceland the Galapagos of Germanic Political
Culture.” this volume, 77–91.
Hegel, G.W.f. 1993–95. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, ed. Walter
Jaeschke [material from Hegel’s lectures 1824–1831]. Hamburg: Felix Meiner
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Iggers, Georg G. 1997. Historiography in the Twentieth Century. Hanover nH:
Wesleyan/University Press of New England.
CReAtInG At tHe MARGInS