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jóhann Páll Árnason. 2003. Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and
Theoretical Traditions. Leiden: Brill.
jóhann Páll Árnason, eisenstadt, S.n. and Wittrock, Björn. 2005. Axial
Civilizations and World History. Leiden: Brill.
jón viðar Sigurðsson. 1999. Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth.
odense: odense university Press.
Lilla, Mark. 2007. The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West. New
york: knopf.
Sigurður nordal. 1942. Íslenzk menning I. Reykjavík: Mál og menning.
Spengler, Oswald. 1918–22. Der Untergang des Abendlandes. München: C.H.
Beck’sche verlagsbuchhandlung.
toynbee, Arnold. 1934–61. A Study of History. oxford: oxford university Press.
vésteinn ólason. 1998. Dialogues with the Viking Age: Narration and Representation
in the Sagas of the Icelanders. Reykjavík: Heimskringla.
vilhjálmur Árnason. 1985. “Saga og siðferði.” Tímarit Máls og menningar 46:21–37.
vilhjálmur Árnason. 1991. “Morality and Social Structure in the Ice landic Sagas.”
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 90:157–74.
Wittrock, Björn. 2006. “Civilizations in Dispute” [Review]. European Journal of
Sociology 47: 407–416.
SuMMARy
The Icelandic þjóðveldi was a society in transition, filled with conflicting ten­
sions and dynamic forces. the civilizational perspective advanced by jóhann
Páll Árnason and others provides a useful approach to understanding Icelandic
cultural development over four centuries, including the development of political
forms. that approach casts suspicion on static interpretive models, stable norms
and ideologies, and fixed legal structures in favor of more dynamic analysis. It
also prompts us to use creatively the rich materials contained in saga narratives,
written near the end of this period. For it is here, in the self-reflection of a culture,
that the fault-lines within ethical forms are revealed, along with the subtle mecha­
nisms of legal and political development. Civilizational analysis overplays its hand
by applying standard categories of paganism or sacred kingship to the Icelandic
case. Rather the sagas display a more fundamentally secular vision of authority
and legitimacy, imbued with a humanism and immanence that marks the cultural
temper of the Icelandic þjóðveldi.
Richard Gaskins
Brandeis University (USA)
gaskins@brandeis.edu