Gripla - 2023, Page 127
125S L Í M U S E T U R IN EARLY ICELANDIC LAW
Turning to commonwealth Iceland, we may anticipate two things
given what we know about Norway and Europe. Firstly, that if enforced
hospitality was practiced, commonwealth law, Grágás, is unlikely to con-
tain any regulations about it, neither the obligation nor its limits. It would
have been dictated by unwritten custom, social norms. Secondly, that if
enforced hospitality was practiced, its practitioner would have brought
with him only a small band of men, perhaps just a handful. Clearly, Grágás
contains articles that address obligatory hospitality, but these are unre-
lated to slímusetur and the issue of enforced hospitality as an expression of
power or social status. Thus, according to Christian law, it is a communal
responsibility to take a newborn child to baptism without delay if a priest
is not nearby and the child has to be taken to him. Its parents, or another
person responsible for the child, must travel with it, but others are prohib-
ited from hindering or delaying their travel in any way―they must offer
food and shelter if needed (in exchange for payment in certain cases), assist
with boats or ferries if waters must be crossed, make horses available if
necessary, and so on.31
The visitation of Icelandic bishops and their demands for hospitality
when surveying their dioceses is, I would argue, a closely related yet sepa-
rate issue from that of enforced hospitality by political superiors and sli-
mesitting. Rather, it was an internal matter of church administration, and
only within that framework did it revolve around the political superiority
of the bishop. Certainly, legal prohibitions against enforced hospitality
in high medieval Europe were directed against all kinds of political heads
exacting hospitality from political inferiors, including ecclesiastical lead-
ers such as bishops. However, unlike many of their European colleagues,
such as in France and the Empire, the Icelandic bishops were not concur-
rently secular administrators. On the contrary, their office was in every
respect separate from secular political leadership (which did not deny them
influence in the secular sphere). We should also remember that episcopal
visitations were regulated by church law and that the new codes of the
Norwegian realm prohibiting slímusetur―Járnsíða, Jónsbók, Landslǫg―
31 Grágás, Ia: 4‒7; II, 1‒7; Grágás [III]: Stykker, som findes i det Arnamagnæanske Haandskrift
Nr. 351 fol. Skálholtsbók og en Række andre Haandskrifter, ed. Vilhjálmur Finsen
(Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1883), 1‒6; Járnsíða, 145‒46. There are other
special circumstances too, cf. Grágás, Ia: 24, 27, Grágás, II: 26, 29, 35‒36, 74, 119, 169, 211,
252, 333, Grágás, III: 30, 77, 123, 173, 214, 256‒57, 339.