Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government

by kiba • 16 years ago

57 32 16 years ago

jamesbressi2• 16 years ago

Fantastic find, thanks for sharing!

While I am now very interested in learning more about Medieval Iceland and it's government, I do wonder if some type of "federal" authority would have prevented it's demise?

Now, I am not in favor of the current heavy federal government and its power over the states here in the U.S. I think the balance between Medieval Iceland and the U.S. is to shift power back to our 50 states, and have our federal government there to do what it was originally intended: prevent what was the demise of Medieval Iceland.

Hopefully that made sense.

kiba2• 16 years ago

Its demise was the introduction of the involuntary church tithe which forced the free farmers to pay the chieftain. This create a capture audience, allow cheftains to concentrate their power, and create a less competitive market for law and abritation.

A "federal" authority would concentrate and centralize power and create the same situation exactly the opposite of what we want.

jamesbressi2• 16 years ago

Thanks for that clarity and helping me arrive to that answer more quickly. I would have eventually got there when I started loading information about this history tonight.

Intriguing that this history isn't referenced more often.

mbrubeck• 16 years ago

The David Friedman cited here is the son of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, and the father of Patri Friedman (former Google engineer, now director of the Peter Thiel-funded Seasteading Institute: http://seasteading.org/).

His book The Machinery of Freedom has a lot more about law without government, both historically and speculatively: http://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capita...

His weblog is pretty good reading for HN fans too: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/

jacoblyles• 16 years ago

The Machinery of Freedom is a great book. One of the few capitalist-Anarchist tomes not in the Austrian tradition, and much more convincingly argued than most.

Sadly, it is little known or read. I asked David about putting the text online since sales are so small, but the publisher still owns the rights to it.

Sometimes I think, what would the world be like without the Friedmans? Definitely a grayer, less free and dynamic place.

axiom2• 16 years ago

The article mentions several times that the Icelandic form of government lasted longer than the US - if anything I see that as a negative indicator, given how little actual progress occurred during that time. Compare the impact the US system of government has had with the impact the Icelandic form cited in this article had. The indigenous populations of North America and Australia have been around for thousands of years as well, with their "chieftain" systems of government, and similarly they just stagnated.

Nwallins2• 16 years ago

> Compare the impact the US system of government has had with the impact the Icelandic form cited in this article had. The indigenous populations of North America and Australia have been around for thousands of years as well, with their "chieftain" systems of government, and similarly they just stagnated.

You really ought to check out Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel#The_theo...

Specifically, he would question your use of the word stagnate.

axiom2• 16 years ago

I've read it, and I think it's silly to ascribe societal success based on the various random incedental facotrs surrounding it.

joe_the_user• 16 years ago

By "stagnate" you perhaps mean "failed to achieve massive technological progress and massive population growth".

If the areas in question lived well and were happy with how they lived, then this would be a good thing. If they lived badly and were miserably, then it would be, indeed, a bad thing.

So your comment leaves with the original question of whether life in these societies was desirable or not.

idlewords• 16 years ago

Two points:

The population of medieval iceland never exceeded 80,000.

The country was Catholic, there was plenty of church law.

kiba2• 16 years ago

Medieval Iceland was transiting to Catholicism. It was this transition(more specifically, the involuntary chruch tithe) that spelled the end of the icelandic system of private law.

That much I think I know. Correct me if I am wrong.

anigbrowl3• 16 years ago

Well it took ~200 years from when they first decided to adopt Christianity to the collapse of the commonwealth (if http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iceland#Commonwealth... is to be believed). I suspect the tiny population was a much bigger factor. The article doesn't even address the question of population size or density and the idea that you can freely scale up from a small agrarian society is a rather big assumption.

Mr Whiston mentions slavery in the context of working off a debt, implying that slavery was only a temporary condition, but in fact it seems to have been institutionalized in early Icelandic society. So I suppose this system is good if you are born into a family of free farmers, but if you happen to be the offspring of a slave you might not think it was such a hot proposition.

He makes much of the fact that the poor could sell their right of retribution to a chieftain with the economic or military wherewithal to enforce such a claim, but I fail to see how this is very different from a law firm taking a case on a contingency basis if they think there's clear evidence of a tort having been committed and the chance of a sufficient payout.

jacobolus2• 16 years ago

Yup. It's the size of, say, a Greek city-state, or a large-ish rock concert.

Radically open (or otherwise atypical) government structures are much more feasible at that kind of scale.

barmstrong2• 16 years ago

Source?

I've seen this claim a few times, but never a study on it.

claymmm• 16 years ago

According to "Viking Age Iceland" the Icelanders mostly settled disputed by tit-for-tat revenge killing of each others' slaves. It was all really grim.

http://www.amazon.com/Viking-Age-Iceland-Penguin-History/dp/...

byrneseyeview• 16 years ago

Would they have any other significant assets? I would expect land to be pretty worthless without people to work it (and in other countries, "land" meant "land, plus peasants who must farm on it"). So from their perspective, they were settling disputes through a DIY tort system. Sucks for the slaves, except that if they're worth something, they're worth keeping alive. In places where they're worth less, there's less of a reason to keep them alive.

mattchew2• 16 years ago

You're probably talking about Njal's Saga. There is a feud that degenerates into exactly that--but it is also clear if you read the story that this is not the normal way disputes get settled. We got a saga out of it precisely because the standard process broke down in spectacular fashion.

You should be able to find a copy of Njal's Saga pretty easily. I recommend reading it for yourself--even apart from the historical/political value, it's just a good story.

berntb2• 16 years ago

Sorry for coming in late when no one reads anymore, but...

Clan societies (that is, most everywhere, before state monopolies on violence) had this kind of revenge for generations. Afghanistan and parts of Iraq are famous present examples.

Afaik (no references, but I think Wikipedia supports this), the research says that old Scandinavia's local ting was a bit more of a negotiating place for feuds than a governing/judging assembly.

Edit: Life on Iceland was certainly even harder than in the rest of Scandinavia. That would probably have left less time over for that time's main sports -- pillage, etc.

noarchy• 16 years ago

I don't know if I'd call this an "absence" of government, just an example of a relatively minimal government. There was a hierarchy of some kind here, and a concept of laws. What looks remarkably different to us today is that it lacked a massive bureaucracy.

foldr2• 16 years ago

>In a stateless society, men are selected according to their ability. Status, money, power, and greed, everything that the advocates for a strong central government stand for are not prerequisites for leaders

I was unable to make any sense of this, or the rest of the final paragraph. Surely having money and power could help you to get a position of authority in a stateless society. E.g. by advertising, bribing, spending the money on popular philanthropic projects, etc. etc. The possibilities are endless.

(In fact, isn't it almost tautologically false to claim that power is "not a prerequisite" for being a leader? Leaders have power virtually by definition.)

And as far as "men" being selected based on their ability, why on earth should abolishing the state suddenly give everyone perfect judgement?

barmstrong2• 16 years ago

Check the wording carefully...by saying they are "not prerequisites" this does not mean having money can't help you.

It's a matter of degree. With a powerful state people are more likely to obtain positions of power due to favors, or who they know rather than merit. The reason being that if you're a government official and you hire the senator's son over a more qualified candidate (to gain his favor) it's not as big of a deal if he screws up because it's not your money he is losing (it's the tax payers).

In a free society you're more likely to hire the best person for the job because it's your own money on the line if he screws up.

As Milton Friedman once so elegantly put it, you always spend your own money more carefully than you spend someone else's. And this can be a powerful incentive.

foldr2• 16 years ago

>It's a matter of degree.

Maybe it is, but that's not really how he presents it.

As far as hiring decisions are concerned, I think you're just picking one factor our of many thousands that are operative and assuming that it has the biggest influence.

anigbrowl3• 16 years ago

The reason being that if you're a government official and you hire the senator's son over a more qualified candidate (to gain his favor) it's not as big of a deal if he screws up because it's not your money he is losing (it's the tax payers)

You must hate most corporations then - all-powerful executive, weak and passive boards of directors, and shareholders with little influence who have to take the haircut for executive screwups.

Why is it that most of the institutions of capitalism have such hierarchical structures? Seen any anarchist corporations on the stock ticker lately? No? Maybe that's because when laissez-faire capitalists start talking about freedom, they're talking about what they want for themselves, not everyone else. As Adam Smith observed, men of the same profession seldom come together save with the intent to defraud the public.

zephjc• 16 years ago

Interestingly, this reminds me of the distributed cultural nation-states based on interests as described in _The Diamond Age_. The idea of non-location-based national affiliation has interested me since I read about that, and though I've read some about old Iceland's political system, I never knew they had such a thing.

lionhearted• 16 years ago

> the idea of non-location-based national affiliation has interested me

Interests me too. There's got to easily be at least 10 million, 20 million people who think the way I think, but we're all spread out and surrounded by hundreds of millions of people who want to force us to do their bidding, impose their morals on us by force, and so on. Individually we couldn't stand up against a horde, but if we could become part of the same recognized affiliation and negotiate and work together voluntarily - that'd be something.

Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government

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