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at the cost of co-operative virtues which, within the institutionalised ethi
cal framework, are at best secondary and at worst nonexistent; hence
calamities ensue.24 But the undoubted importance of honour and shame
does not by itself entail the subjection of cooperative virtues to competi
tive ones, even within the institutionalised ethical framework; the entail
ment is contingent. Shame can just as easily be created by “a failure to act
in some expected selfsacrificing or cooperative manner”, as Williams
claimed.25 In order to establish that the one entails the other, we need spe
cific testimonies that simply record the dominance of competitive virtues.
In the case of ancient Greece, it had indeed long been held that as a culture
of honour it was ruled by competitive virtues.26 Later, it was forcefully and
persuasively argued that the record showed no such thing.27 Likewise, I
submit, in the case of medieval Iceland: the importance of cooperative
virtues at all levels seems incontestable, within the institutional framework
of honour.28 that they often lose out gives the saga narratives their pecu
liar poignancy. tying honour especially to competition, as opposed to co
operation, simply seems fallacious: “... like so many features of Icelandic
culture, honour is repeatedly tied to competition,” jesse Byock says, imply
ing that there is a closer connection between honour and competition than
honour and cooperation.29 But he also convincingly maintains when ana
lysing feud as an organising principle that: “Rather than a socially destruc
tive force to be controlled by sheriffs, bailiffs and royal agents, as in many
contemporaneous european societies, feud in Iceland became a formalized
and culturally stabilizing element. Respected men served as negotiators,
and feuding became the major vehicle for channelling violence into the
moderating arenas of the courts and into the hands of informal arbitrators,
24 for ancient Greece, see Moses I. finley, The World of Odysseus (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
19792 [1954]), and Arthur Adkins, Merit and Responsibility; also, albeit more guardedly,
MacIntyre, After Virtue, 125, 133–34, 138–39.
25 Williams, Shame and Necessity, 38.
26 Finley, who claimed that “[o]f necessity … the world of Odysseus was fiercely competitive,
as each hero strove to outdo the others” (The World of Odysseus, 118), is clearly echoed by
Adkins and MacIntyre.
27 See especially Cairns, Aidōs, 50–51.
28 this seems especially evident from the account of the feud system in jesse Byock, Feud in
the Icelandic Sagas, and in his Viking Age Iceland, as indeed from that of Miller’s Bloodtaking
and Peacemaking.
29 Byock, Viking Age Iceland, 14.
HonouR AnD SHAMe