Gripla - 2023, Page 139

137S L Í M U S E T U R IN EARLY ICELANDIC LAW
S U M M A R Y
Slímusetur in Early Icelandic Law and its European Context
Keywords: slímusetur, hospitality, medieval Nordic and European law, state
formation
Iceland received new law from its king in 1271, Járnsíða (Ironsides). Among
other novelties, it forbade unwelcome and overbearing guests ‘slimesitting’ at
other people’s feasts, sitja slímusetri. Analogous articles appear in the Norwegian
Landslǫg (National Law, 1274) and Jónsbók (1281).
To understand the king’s newly acquired interest in legislating against
slímusetur, it is necessary to appreciate both the local context of legal reform
and the European context of political language. Many things that had not
been the concern of the king now became so. My present argument is that law
forbidding people from imposing themselves on others by enforced hospitality
must be understood in its European context and in comparison with similar legal
provisions made elsewhere during the high Middle Ages. The two contexts, local
and European, are but different viewpoints; however, they are useful in separating
the specific and contextual from that which is general. The local context of legal
reform in the Norwegian realm during the second half of the thirteenth century
is principally a variant on a European theme that rang loud in the central Middle
Ages. Essentially, it was a part of a larger, European process of state building.
The introduction to Icelandic law of a prohibition against slímusetur, in
Járnsíða and then Jónsbók, was not a response to local political conditions. Mainly,
it was symptomatic of the fact that Iceland had now joined a new and different
political unity, the Norwegian realm. In Norway, its introduction corresponded
better to local conditions. Ultimately, however, the legal measures taken against
forced hospitality in Scandinavia were echoes of a European development in which
kings and princes increasingly policed their territories as legislators, supreme
judges, and protectors of public peace and order.
Viðar Pálsson
Associate Professor of History,
University of Iceland
Árnagarður at Suðurgata
IS-102 Reykjavík
vp@hi.is