Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 218
GRIPLA218
I
There is no framework of ethics in the sagas, no reflective attempt to ana
lyze moral behaviour or norms. By telling about human interaction in a
social world, however, the sagas of the Icelanders inevitably describe a
morality, portray an ethos impregnated with values and virtues, norms and
obligations. the narrative of the sagas is rather silent about orderly domes
tic life but is fuelled by disruption or conflicts of interest that have conse
quences in the public sphere. Hence they tell us more about public moral
ity relating to conflict resolution than about private morality. These two
aspects of morality are inevitably related, however, because every morality
requires a political environment which facilitates orderly existence and
protects values that are sought after in people’s everyday dealings. this has
been recognized by all the major thinkers in the history of ethics, most
explicitly by Aristotle who regarded politics as the master science of the
good for man: “for even if the good is the same for the individual and the
state, the good of the state clearly is the greater and more perfect thing to
attain and to safeguard.”1 According to my reading, the sagas are concerned
with politics in this grand sense, morality in “the headless polity”, as Jesse
Byock has referred to the Icelandic free State.2 Morality in the narrower
sense of mundane interaction is often left to the silence mentioned in phras
es like “var nú kyrrt um hríð”, “now everything was quiet for a while”.
everyday interaction takes place against a more or less tacitly assumed
background of norms. When conflicts occur, they tend to make some of
these norms more explicit and to provide reasons for reconsidering their
validity.3 from the standpoint of narrative this emphasis on conflict is
understandable, there is no need to tell about the ordinary. But by telling
about the extraordinary – the episodes when orderly co-existence was dis
rupted – the sagas place basic values and social norms into sharp focus. At
the same time, they portray interaction where individuals’ virtues and
vices, as well as their ability to uphold their obligations, are put to the test.
1 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Indianapolis: the BobbsMerrill Company, 1962), 4–5
[1094b].
2 jesse Byock, Viking Age Iceland (London: Penguin Books, 2001), 2.
3 “Moral judgment serves to clarify legitimate behavioural expectation in response to interper
sonal conflict resulting from the disruption of our orderly coexistence by conflict of interests.”
jürgen Habermas, Justification and Application (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 9.