The Conflict of Law and Justice in the Icelandic Sagas

The Emergence of Rationality in the Icelandic Sagas: The Colossal Misunderstanding of the Viking Lore in Contemporary Popular Culture

“…Altogether, as we can observe throughout the Njál's Saga, the events presented here mirror the growth of the legal system based on laws, arbitration, a court system, trials, and globally accepted judgments. While previous scholarship has long recognized this phenomenon, we really need to situate it within a more global transformation of high medieval society determined, and this also in Iceland, by more rational forms of interaction both in private and in public (Pencak 1995;Ziolkowski 1997). As our examples have indicated so far, and as further explorations of other sagas can certainly confirm (see also below), brutal heroism centered on the individual only with almost complete disregard for the needs of society at large was not sustainable, neither on the continent nor in Iceland.…”