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this context is how the Free State managed to function without executive
institutions. An intricate account of this is found in jesse Byock’s theory
about feud in the Icelandic sagas.24 Byock argues that the sagas demon
strate how an original system of decision-making and conflict-solving
functioned. this “system of advocacy” structured feuds in the free State,
directed disputes into socially accepted channels and brought them to a
resolution.
Byock’s structural analysis provides a background for understanding
and explaining saga morality which differs from both romantic and human
istic interpretations. What is most striking in his account is the displace
ment of individual heroism in the sagas: “In saga literature brokerage is
characterized as a form of worldly societal interchange rather than as the
heroic actions of an individual.”25 Moreover, some of the most cherished
heroes of the sagas, like Gísli Súrsson, are characterized as socially inept
individuals who do not know how to employ the socially accepted and
available tools. they are like misplaced vikings, unable to honour the
norms of an agrarian society where peace and order are vital. Gísli, for
example, makes a deadly mistake, Byock argues, by following “the tradi
tional Norse code of family honour which was no longer appropriate to
the settled conditions of Icelandic society.”26
the fruitfulness of Byock’s analysis lies in the grounding of these phe
nomena in the social order. Instead of abstracting individuals from their
social conditions, he carefully analyzes the social systems and processes
which channel and condition human interaction. Byock discusses the
framework of human behaviour in medieval Iceland in terms of power
relations, creation and distribution of wealth and the specific life condi
tions of a small nation on a large island in the North Atlantic. He shows
how the society of the Icelanders was built both on Scandinavian heritage
but also developed in a distinctive direction, mainly due to a unique “proto
democratic” political process. The following words from Jóhann Páll
Árnason’s book, Civilizations in Dispute, can be used to describe the differ
ences between Byock’s structural analysis of the sagas on the one hand, and
the romantic and humanistic readings on the other hand: “the most funda
24 Byock, Feud in the Icelandic Saga (Berkeley: university of California Press, 1982).
25 Ibid., 42.
26 Ibid., 193.