Chapter VI: The Probable Action of the Aggregative and the Disjunctive (1)

TENDENCIES IN THE FUTURE.

Whether in the long run it is the centripetal or the centrifugal force that will prevail in politics, or, in other words, whether large States or small States are more likely to commend themselves to mankind, is a question which belongs rather to history than to the doctrine of constitutions, and which could be adequately discussed only after a long investigation. History shows us first one force dominant, then the other, though no doubt the centrifugal is usually more powerful in rude times and in hilly or mountainous countries, the centripetal in countries comparatively advanced in civilization, and in level and fertile regions where wealth is more easily acquired and stored, and where military operations are easier. When the mists of antiquity begin to rise sufficiently to show us the Mediterranean and south-west Asiatic world, we discover both a few great States and a multitude of small ones. The former have a low, the latter a high and intense political vitality. From the time of Menes down to that of Attila the tendency is generally towards aggregation: and the history of the ancient nations shows us, not only an enormous number of petty monarchies and republics swallowed up in the Empire of Rome, but that empire itself far more highly centralized than any preceding one had been. When the Roman dominion began to break up the process was reversed, and for seven hundred years or more the centrifugal forces had it their own way. Europe and Western Asia were divided up among innumerable petty potentates, and even the large monarchies, such as the two Khalifates, the Romano-Germanic Empire, the kingdoms of France and Hungary, possessed so feeble a royal authority that the real organs of government and centres of attraction were to be sought rather in the vassals than in the nominal sovereign. From the thirteenth century onwards the tide begins to set the other way. One great State indeed—the Empire—first decays and then disappears under the action of centrifugal forces, but all the other chief States expand, absorbing their smaller neighbours, and giving themselves a compact and well-knit organization which makes the central power effective through the whole sphere of its action. This process culminates in the despotic monarchies of the eighteenth century, when the strength of feudal localism has been completely broken, though the picturesque relics of it still cumber the ground, and when at the same time the foundations are laid in the West of a gigantic State which proceeds to cover the temperate area of North America between the two oceans, and, in the East, of the dominion of a European nation which has absorbed the numerous and populous principalities of India. Immediately afterwards the doctrine of popular self-government and the doctrine of nationalities come upon the scene, threatening a disruption of some existing political aggregates. In point of fact, however, these new principles have done as much to unite as to sever, for though five States—Greece, Rumania, Servia, Montenegro and Bulgaria—have been cut off from an effete monarchy, and sixteen republics have been carved out of the American dominions of Spain and Portugal, the doctrine of nationality has substituted two new great States, more important than all the last-mentioned twenty-one put together, for the multitude of kingdoms and principalities which so late as 1859 filled Italy and Germany.

Thus neither Democracy nor the principle of Nationalities has, on the balance of cases, operated to check the general movement towards aggregation which marks the last six centuries.

It may, however, be said—and this question should be faced before we proceed to inquire whether the aggregative movement is likely to continue—that in all this inquiry we have been ignoring two potent factors. One is Conquest—that is to say, military power. We have been examining the forces of Interest and Sympathy, which cover a number of influences social or economic, racial or sentimental. But after all it is Conquest, _i.e._ the might of the strongest, which has created most States as we find them. Is Conquest one of the centripetal forces? and if so, is it not the greatest of them?

The other factor is Family Succession, which both during the Middle Ages and since has done a great deal to consolidate principalities and kingdoms. The United Kingdom owes much to this agency, Austria and France even more.

Conquest and Dynastic Succession are hardly fit to be classed among the centripetal forces, because they are not susceptible of scientific treatment like the other influences. The disposition of the stronger to subdue and annex the weaker neighbour is of course a permanent fact in human nature, and therefore in history. But in each particular instance the success of one or other combatant depends on what may be called historical accidents—on the numbers or the discipline of troops, on the possession of a commander of military genius, on alliances with other States, on the internal dissensions of one State as compared with the unity of another. Physical force belongs to a different sphere from that in which political constitutions work. Constitutions may result from a conquest or may be maintained for a time by arms; but if they are obliged to rely on and have constant recourse to physical force in order to prevent their overthrow, they are, considered as Constitutions, failures; because the very nature and object of a constitutional Frame of Government is so to express and so to adjust to existing conditions the wishes and aims of the citizens as to make the majority, and if possible the vast majority, of the people desire to support it. According to the proverb, you can do anything with bayonets except sit down on them. Physical force is of course needed to punish occasional infractions of the Constitution or to quell revolts against it. But the system of government which _ex hypothesi_ corresponds to the permanently strongest among the moral forces, else it has no right to prevail in a free country, ought not to be surrounded by cannon.

Similarly, the devolution of princedoms or kingdoms by marriage and inheritance, much as it has done to bring States originally independent under one government, lies outside political science in the proper sense of the term. Like conquest, it brings about a new state of things by an event with which the ordinary political and constitutional phenomena of national life have nothing to do, coming into these phenomena as an incommensurable and (so to speak) irrational factor[114].

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Footnote 114:

The fact that the custom of a country permits or forbids succession
through females makes a great difference in the importance of
succession. The union of Castile with Aragon, like the union of
England with Scotland, would not have occurred under a different rule
of succession. So it may make a difference whether the throne of the
larger country passes to the dynasty of the smaller, or vice versa.
Had a king of England inherited the throne of Scotland, Scotland might
have been more hostile to England. Had a king of Portugal inherited
the throne of Spain, the two countries might have remained united.

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So soon as either conquest or a union due to hereditary succession has taken place, the normal centripetal and centrifugal tendencies resume their action. Where the territory of one people has been forcibly acquired by another, as Lombardy was acquired by Austria in 1815, or has been occupied in virtue of a title based on succession, as Portugal was claimed by Spain in 1580, such centripetal forces as may exist have the advantage of physical force behind them. But this advantage may be unavailing against the stronger forces which sentiment sends forth to dissever the connexion. Austria lost Lombardy after forty-four years; Spain lost Portugal after sixty. In both cases there was fighting, but it was not so much the balance of military strength as the settled hostility of the subjected people which in both caused the severance. So the acquisition by the English kings of Aquitaine and the subsequent conquest of large part of France, the conquest by the Turks of Transylvania, the union of Holstein with Denmark, the union of Belgium with Holland, the union of Alsace with France, all effected without regard to the will of the people, were all in time brought to an end. The last-mentioned case is a peculiar one. It was not because the Alsatians wished to be reunited to Germany, but because the Germans wished to be reunited to Alsace that a connexion which had lasted nearly two centuries was dissolved in 1871. Military motives, decisive as regards the annexed part of Lorraine, had something to do with the taking of Alsace also; but if Alsace had not been German in language and habits, though not in sentiment, the popular voice of Germany would not have insisted on recovering it against the will of its inhabitants.

Speaking broadly, one may say that Conquest and Inheritance give an opportunity, better in the latter than in the former case, for centripetal forces to work. If the peoples on which they operate are backward, with no pronounced national feeling, that chance may be a good one, and the influences of free commerce, joint government (especially if it is good government), together with the kind of pride which common service in war often produces, may operate to weld two peoples together into a united State. Much depends on language, much on geographical position, much on external pressure from powerful neighbours. But if one of the peoples (or both) has already developed a strong sentiment of nationality, the prospect of fusion is but slender.

The Roman Empire is the capital instance of a vast dominion established by conquest. But there it was the weakness of the centrifugal forces that secured the cohesion of the Empire. The conquered countries were either, like Gaul, Spain and Britain, occupied by tribes between whom there existed so weak a bond that no general national feeling or combined national action was possible, or had been, as in the Eastern Mediterranean World, ruled by dynasties, most of them sprung from military adventurers[115], so that the sentiment of national life had not centred in the monarchy. The centrifugal forces of interest—the desire for peace, good government, facilities for commerce, and so forth—obtained free play under the imperial administration, and to these was added after a time the sense of pride in Roman citizenship, and in the greatness of a State which included all the highest civilization of the world. So too during the Middle Ages not a few conquests ended in an assimilation of the vanquished, which enlarged without weakening the conquering nation. But during the last three centuries the experience of military powers has been that the acquisition of masses of subjects who, being already civilized, are likely to resist absorption and to remain disaffected, is a doubtful gain and may become a danger to the conquering State. The last conspicuous instance is Poland, partitioned between three Powers, to all of whom her provinces have brought trouble. Conquests continue to be made, but they are now mostly of barbarous or semi-civilized races, so inferior to the conquerors in force and in national spirit that the centrifugal forces are, or at least seem to be, practically negligible.

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Footnote 115:

There were of course also a certain number of city republics, or
leagues of republics, but these were too small to have developed
national feeling in the modern sense; and the Roman system left most
of them a certain measure of self-government which modified their
regret for an independence the delight in which had been (in many
cases) reduced by domestic disorders.

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Is it possible, then, to arrive at any conclusion regarding the respective strength which these two sets of forces are likely to display in the coming centuries? Will the tendency to aggregation continue, and does the future belong to great States? Or may new forces appear which will reverse the process, as it was reversed, though through causes most unlikely to reappear, at the fall of the Roman Empire?

At first sight the probabilities seem to point to further aggregation. Although none of the five great national States—Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Britain—is in the least likely to be absorbed by any of the others, there is reason to think that within the next century some of the smaller states will have disappeared from the map of Europe. In one or two other parts of the world—as for instance in South and in Central America—the process by which the great States are expanding is not yet complete. The influences of swifter and cheaper communications by land and sea, of increasing commerce, and of the closer intercourse which commerce brings, of the power exerted by the printing press in extinguishing the languages which prevail over a small area and diffusing those spoken by vast masses of men—all these things make for unity within each of the great States and add to the attractive power which the greater have for the smaller. These influences, moreover, all promise to be permanent.

Against them we must set the fact that Conquest, so far as civilized peoples are concerned, seems likely to play a smaller rôle in the future than in the past, because it begins to be perceived how tenacious is the sentiment of nationality in a vanquished people, and how much the maintenance of that sentiment may endanger the victor State. As was observed in an earlier page, the progress of a community in civilization often tends to intensify both its capacity for political discontent and its peculiar national sentiment, thus counterworking the influences of trade and wealth. A people, or a nationality included in a large State, while feeling the centripetal forces of material interest, may nevertheless feel the repellent instinct of an unquenched attachment to its national traditions and cling to the hope of reviving its old national life.

The problem is, however, a far more complex one than any comparison of the influences of material interest on the one side and national sentiment on the other would suggest. Many phenomena may be imagined which would affect it as the world moves on. One is a change in the conditions under which war is waged. Another is a removal of some of the causes which induce war, or a means, better than now exists, of averting its outbreak. Another is the growth of what is called Collectivism and a disposition to apply its principles in small rather than in large areas, seeing that there are obviously some things which can be better managed in the former. We are far from having exhausted the possibilities of the influence of scientific discovery upon economic life, and through it upon social and political life. Both the relations of Nations and States to one another and the relations of the groups or communities within each State to each other may be affected in ways as yet scarcely dreamt of. Neither can we foresee the modes in which the scientific way of looking at all questions may come ultimately to tinge and modify men’s habits of thought even in social and political matters. No institution was at one time more generally prevalent over the world, or seemed more deeply rooted, than Slavery; and slavery, which has now vanished from civilized communities, will soon have vanished from all countries. There is indeed hardly any institution for which permanence can be predicted except—and some will not admit even this exception—the Family.

Imagine a world in which all the hitherto unappropriated territories had been allotted to one or other of the few strongest States. Imagine tariffs abolished and the principle of equality of trade-facilities among States established. Imagine a system of international arbitration created under which the risks of war were so greatly reduced that the prospect of war did not occupy men’s minds and give a military and aggressive tinge to their patriotism. The present relations of centripetal and centrifugal forces would under such conditions be greatly altered, as respects both the wide theatre of the world and the internal conditions of each particular State.

Imagine also a great advance in the desire to use governmental agencies for the benefit of the citizens, and a general conviction that such agencies could best be used by comparatively small communities rather than by the State as a whole. A new centrifugal force, centrifugal at least in respect of each State, would thereby have been called into action. No one will venture to foretell any of these things. But none of them is impossible; and it is plain that they might produce a set of conditions, and a play of forces, unlike the present, and unlike any period in the past. We must not therefore assume that the large States and the present structure and organization of States will be permanent.

Of the more remote future, History can venture to say little more than this—that it will never bring back the past. She recognizes that, as Heraclitus says, one cannot step twice into the same river. Even when she is able to declare that certain forces will assuredly be present, she cannot forecast their relative strength at any given moment, nor say what hitherto unobserved forces they may not, in their action upon one another, call into activity. All she can do for the lawyer, the statesman and the legislator, when they have to study and use the forces operative in their own time, is to indicate to them the nature and the character, the significant elements of strength and weakness, that belong to each and every force that has been heretofore conspicuous, so as to direct and guide them in observing and reflecting on the present. This is much less than has sometimes been claimed for history. Nevertheless it is a real service, for nothing is more difficult than to observe exactly, and the ripest fruit of historical study is that detachment of mind, created by the habit of scientific thinking, which prevents observation from being coloured by prejudice or passion.

V

PRIMITIVE ICELAND

Iceland is known to most men as a land of volcanoes, geysers and glaciers. But it ought to be no less interesting to the student of history as the birthplace of a brilliant literature in poetry and prose, and as the home of a people who have maintained for many centuries a high level of intellectual cultivation. It is an almost unique instance of a community whose culture and creative power flourished independently of any favouring material conditions, and indeed under conditions in the highest degree unfavourable. Nor ought it to be less interesting to the student of politics and laws as having produced a Constitution unlike any other whereof records remain, and a body of law so elaborate and complex that it is hard to believe that it existed among men whose chief occupation was to kill one another.

With the exception of Madeira and the Azores, Iceland is the only part of what we call the Old World[116] which was never occupied by a prehistoric race, and in which, therefore, the racial origin of the population is historically known to us.

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Footnote 116:

Though geographically Iceland belongs rather to North America than to
Europe, geologically its affinities are with the Cape Verde Islands,
the Canaries, Madeira, and possibly the Azores to the South, with Jan
Mayen to the North, as it seems to owe its origin to a line of
volcanic action stretching from the Cape Verde Islands to far beyond
the Arctic Circle.

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None of those rude tribes who dwell scattered over the north of Asia, Europe and America—Lapps, Samoyedes or Esquimaux—ever set foot in it. Adamnan, Abbot of Iona from A.D. 679 to 704, reports in his famous _Life of St. Columba_[117], a prophecy of the saint regarding a holy man named Kormak, who, in Columba’s days (A.D. 521-597), made three long voyages from Ireland in search of the ‘Desert in the Ocean’ (_eremum in Oceano_), a term so happily descriptive of Iceland that one is tempted to believe it to be the region referred to. A little later the Venerable Bede (A.D. 673-735) speaks of contemporaries of his own who, coming from the isle of Thule, declared that in it the sun could be seen at midnight for a few days[118]. Still later the Irish monk Dicuil (writing about A.D. 825) tells[119] of an isle lying far to the North-West where monks known to him had spent the summer some thirty years before. And our earliest Icelandic authority, the famous _Landnámabók_ (Book of the Land-takings), mentions that when the first Norwegian settlers arrived they found a few hermits of Irish race already established there, who soon vanished from the presence of the stronger heathen, leaving behind books, bells and staves (probably croziers). The Norse settlers called them Papas (_i.e._ priests), or Westmen, a term used to describe the Scots of Ireland. No doubt, then, the earliest discoverers of the isle were these Celtic hermits, who had crossed the wide and stormy sea in their light coracles of wood and leather, consecrating themselves to prayer and fasting in this inclement wilderness. But they contributed no element to the population of the island, and can hardly be said to have a place in its history, which begins with the great Norwegian immigration.

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Footnote 117:

_Vita S. Columbae_, cap. vi.

Footnote 118:

Comment. on 2 Kings xx. 9. The extreme northernmost point of Iceland
just touches the Arctic Circle.

Footnote 119:

In his book _De Mensura Orbis Terrae_, cap. 7, he identifies the isle
with Thule; and the reports of the monks point rather to Iceland than
to the Faeroe Isles, a group which Dicuil mentions elsewhere, and
which therefore he cannot mean by his Thule. The name Thule has of
course been applied by different writers to different lands. When
Tacitus says that it was seen in the distance by the fleet of
Agricola, he probably means either Shetland or the Fair Isle between
the Shetlands and the Orkneys.

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The first Teuton to reach Iceland was a Norse Viking named Naddođ, who was driven to the isle by a storm in the latter half of the ninth century. He called it Snæland, or Snowland. A second visitor, a Swede named Gardar, sailed round it; a third (Flóki, a Norseman) landed, and gave it the name it still bears. But though the news of the discovery soon spread far and wide through the whole Northland, the isle might possibly have lain unoccupied but for the events that were passing in Norway. King Harald the Fairhaired was then in the full career of his conquests. The great battle of Hafrsfjord had established his power in Central and Southern Norway, and he was traversing the fjords with his fleet, compelling the petty chieftains who stood at the head of the numerous small independent communities that filled the country to acknowledge his supremacy, and imposing a tax upon the land-holding freemen.

The proud spirit of the warriors who for more than a century had been ravaging the coasts of all Western Europe could not brook subjection, and, being unable to offer a united opposition, the boldest and bravest among them resolved to find freedom in exile. Some sought the Orkneys, Shetlands and Faeroe isles, already settled by Northmen. Some joined the Norwegian settlers in Ireland, and drove the Celtic population out of some districts on its eastern coast. Others, again, followed Hrolf Ganger (Göngu Hrolfr) (‘the Walker’), or Rollo as our books call him, a Viking who, having incurred the wrath of Harald, sailed forth from his home on the fjords near Bergen to found in Northern Gaul a dynasty of Norsemen whence came the long line of Norman dukes and English kings, _Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae_. And yet others, hearing the praises of the lately-discovered isle far off in the ocean, turned their prows to the west and landed on the solitary shores of Iceland. They embarked without any concert or common plan; each chieftain, or head of a household, taking his own family, and perhaps a group of friends or dependents; and they settled in the new land where they pleased, sometimes throwing overboard as they neared the shore the wooden columns, adorned with figures of Thor and Oðin, of the high-seat in their old Norwegian hall, and disembarking at the point to which these were driven by the winds and currents. At first each took for himself as much land as he desired, but those who came later, when the better pastures had been already occupied, were obliged to buy land or to fight for it; and a curious custom grew up by which the extent of territory to which a settler was entitled was fixed. A man could claim no more than what he could carry fire round in a single day; a woman, than that round which she could lead a two-year-old heifer. So rapid was the immigration, many colonists from Norwegian Ireland and the Scottish isles, Orkneys, Shetlands and Hebrides (the two former groups being then Scandinavian) joining those who came direct from Norway, that in sixty years the population had risen (so far as our data enable it to be estimated) to about 50,000, a number which seems not to have been exceeded down to the census of A.D. 1823. With those who came from Ireland and the Hebrides there came some small infusion of Celtic blood, which we note in such names as Njál, Kjartan, and Kormak, given to men descended from the daughters of Irish chieftains.

Planting themselves in this irregular way, and in a country where the good land lay in scattered patches, and where deserts, glaciers and morasses, as well as torrents, passable only with difficulty or even danger, cut off one settlement from another, the first settlers did not create, and indeed felt little need of, any political or social organization. But after a time a sort of polity began to shape itself, and the process of its growth is one of the most interesting phenomena of mediaeval history. The elements out of which it sprang were of course those two which the settlers had brought with them from Norway, and both of which were part of the common heritage of the Teutonic race—the habit of joint worship at a temple, and the habit of holding an assembly of all freemen to discuss and dispatch matters of common interest, and more especially lawsuits[120]. This assembly resembled the Old English Folk Mot, and was called the Thing, a name which survives in our English word Hustings (Husting or House Thing), the platform from whence candidates spoke at parliamentary elections, which disappeared in A.D. 1872 when written nominations were prescribed by the statute which introduced vote by ballot. The Þing[121] was held at the temple, usually dedicated to Thor, the favourite deity of the Norsemen as Oðin was of the Swedes; since the place of worship was the natural centre of the neighbourhood, and the Þing was presided over by the local magnate or chief, who was usually also the owner or guardian of the local temple, there being among the Scandinavian peoples no special sacerdotal caste.

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Footnote 120:

Not but what the habit of holding such an assembly has existed among
peoples of very diverse race in many parts of the world. It existed
among the Greeks. It exists among the Kafirs of South Africa.

Footnote 121:

I use the Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon letter þ in this word to
distinguish it from the common English word.

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Now when a Norse chief settled himself in Iceland, one of his first acts was to erect a temple, often with the sacred pillars which he had brought from the ancestral temple in the old country. The temple soon became a place of resort, not only for his own immediate dependents, but also for those other settlers of the district who might not be rich enough to build and maintain a shrine of their own. Of this temple the chieftain and his descendants were the priests; and as the meetings of the local Þing were held at it, he was the natural person to preside over such meetings, both because he was usually (though not invariably) eminent by his wealth and power, and also because he offered the sacrifices and kept the sacred temple-ring on which judicial oaths were taken, as at Rome men swore at the Ara Maxima of Hercules. Thus the priest acquired, if he had not already enjoyed it, the position of a sort of local chieftain or magnate, not unlike those kings of heroic Greece whom we read of in Homer, or those German tribe-princes whom Tacitus describes. Although his title was that of Goði[122] (originally Guði) or priest, a word derived from the name of the Deity, he lost in becoming the depositary of a certain measure of political power most of such religious character as his office had possessed. Nor did any sanctity attach to his person. In that age at least religion had come to sit rather lightly upon the Norsemen. Either from inner decay, or from the influence of the Christian peoples with whom they came in contact beyond the seas, the old faith was beginning to disintegrate. Worship was often cold or careless, and we read of men who regarded neither Þor nor Oðin, but trusted in their own might and main.

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Footnote 122:

The term goði does not seem to have been used in Norway, but Ulfila,
in his translation of the Bible into Gothic (in the fourth century
A.D.), renders ἱερεύς by _gudja_. The ð is pronounced like th in
‘then.’

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The Goði was therefore much more of a secular than of an ecclesiastical person, a chieftain rather than a priest in our sense of the word[123]. His powers as a chieftain were very indefinite, as indeed had been those of the local chieftains of Norway. He was only the first among a number of free and warlike landowners, some of them equal or superior to him in lineage, with an official dignity which was little more than formal in the hands of a weak man, but might be turned to great account by a person of vigour and ability. As he presided in the Þing, so he was the appropriate person to see to the regularity of its judicial proceedings, to preserve order, and to provide for the carrying out of any measures of common concern on which it might determine. When any unforeseen danger or difficulty arose, he was looked to to advise or take the lead in action; the members of his Þing expected aid and protection from him, while he, like a thegn among the Teutons of contemporary England, expected support and deference from them. But he had no legal powers of coercion. Any one might oppose him in the Þing or out of it. Any Þing-man might withdraw at pleasure, join himself to some other Goði, and become a member of some other Þing[124]. There was, it must be noted, no territorial circumscription corresponding to the Þing. Land had nothing to do with the position held by the Goði to the Þingmen, and herein, as well as in the absence of the relation of commendation and homage, we see a capital difference between this system and feudality. Nor was the post of Goði a place whence much emolument could be drawn. The Þingmen were indeed required to pay a sort of tax called the temple toll (_hoftollr_), but this did no more than meet the expenses to which the Goði was put in keeping up the temple, and feasting those who came to the sacrifices; it gave him no revenue which he could use to extend his authority. Accordingly, the Goðorð was regarded as implying power rather than property, and was not (after the introduction of Christianity) liable to the payment of tithe. A curious feature of the office was its alienability. Probably because it had arisen out of the ownership of the temple, it was regarded as a piece of private property which could be transferred by way of sale or gift, and could be vested in several persons jointly. And similarly a number of Goðorðs might by inheritance or purchase become vested in the same person.

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Footnote 123:

It is true that as the Sagas whence we draw our knowledge of the Goði
were all written down at a time when heathenism had vanished, it is
possible that they may not fully represent the original character of
the office.

Footnote 124:

The illustrious Konrad Maurer, to whose learned researches and sound
judgement every one who writes about the constitutional antiquities of
Iceland must feel infinitely indebted, thinks that the name of Goði
was used in Norway before the emigration to Iceland, though probably
the priest was there a less important person than he became in
Iceland, where his custody of the temple put him to some extent in the
position held in the Norwegian motherland by the hereditary chieftain,
who was in Norway the natural president of the local Thing.

Those who desire to study the early history of Iceland may be referred
to the writings of Dr. Maurer, and especially to his _Island bis zum
Untergange des Freistaats_ (Munich, 1874), and his _Beiträge zur
Rechtsgeschichte des Germanischen Nordens_ (Munich, 1852).

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Thus in the years immediately following the immigration there sprang up round the coasts of Iceland a great number of petty, unconnected and loosely aggregated groups of settlers. We must not venture to call them states, scarcely even communities, not principalities, such as those which were beginning to spring up in Western Europe, not in a strict sense republics, yet nearer to republics than to principalities, organized, so far as they were organized at all, chiefly for the purposes of justice, and particularly for the exaction of fines for homicide, but with no settled plan of government, no written laws—if indeed writing was yet in use at all—no defined territory, and a comparatively weak cohesion among their own members, the Thingmen. The really effective tie was, in those ages, the tie of kindred; and the Þingmen of the same Goði were not kinsfolk, were not a clan or sept, like the Celtic communities of Scotland and Ireland. That tie was strong enough to involve a whole district in the blood-feud of a single man. For when any member of a family was killed, it was the duty of his nearest relatives to avenge his death, either by obtaining a full compensation in money, for which, if the offender refused to pay it, a lawsuit was brought in the Þing, or else by slaying the murderer or some member of his family. Thus a feud, like a _Vendetta_ in Corsica or in Eastern Kentucky, might go on from generation to generation, each act of revenge drawing others in its train, and tending to draw more and more families into the feud, because when fights took place, the friends of each party often joined, and if some were killed, their relatives had a new blood-claim to prosecute.

Between the different communities that had thus sprung up there was no political tie whatever. There did not as yet exist any Icelandic nation, much less any common Icelandic State of which all the communities felt themselves members. Each was an independent body; and if a dispute arose between the members of two different Þings, there was no means of adjusting it except by voluntary submission to the award of some other Þing or else by open war. Seeing that slayings and plunderings and burnings were everyday occurrences in this fierce race, where Vikingry (_i.e._ piracy) was the most honoured pursuit, such cases were very frequent, especially as to take revenge for a kinsman’s death was deemed a sacred duty.

Even when the offender belonged to the same Þing as the injured, it often happened that the influence of his kindred, or the favour of the Goði of the place, or some technical error in bringing the suit for compensation, prevented justice from being done. Accordingly the need for some remedy, for some further political, or rather judicial, organization of the island began to be generally felt, for however fond men may be of killing one another, the Norsemen were always also fond of money, and would often prefer a blood-fine to the satisfaction of killing their enemy, could the blood-fine be secured. Thus it came to pass that, about fifty years after the first colonization, a chief named Úlfljót, venerable from his age and abilities, came forward to propose a scheme. He urged the creation of one general Þing for the whole country, where all matters of common interest might be discussed, and all suits which could not be dispatched, or had not been fairly dealt with in the local Þings, might be decided. Travelling round the island, he brought over to his views the most influential Goðis and other leading men; and at their request, sailed to Norway to inquire into the laws prevailing there, and to draw up regulations for this new general Þing; somewhat as envoys were, according to the Roman story, sent from Rome to the Greek cities to bring back materials and suggestions for the legislation of the Decemvirs. At the same time Úlfljót’s foster-brother, Grím Geitskór (‘Goat’s Shoe’), the fleetest man and nimblest rock-climber in Iceland, was commissioned to traverse the island in search of a place suitable for the meeting of the proposed assembly. After long wanderings, Goat’s Shoe hit upon a spot to which the name of Þing Vellir[125], ‘the plains of the Þing,’ has ever since belonged, in the south-west of the island, about eight hours’ riding from where Reykjavík the present capital now stands, and within the district of the first temple that had been founded by Ingolf, the earliest Norwegian settler. This circumstance gave the place a sort of sacredness. There was plenty of water and pasture, and the lake which washed the plain of meeting abounded (as it does to this day) with trout and wild fowl. (It abounds also with most pernicious small black flies, whereon the trout grow fat, but which make fishing not always a pleasure.) Here, accordingly, Úlfljót having in the meantime returned from Norway with his materials for legislation, the first Alþing, or General Assembly of all Iceland, met in A.D. 930, and here it continued to meet, year after year, for a fortnight in the latter half of June, till the year 1800[126], one of the oldest national assemblies in the civilized world, and one of the very few which did not, like the English Parliament and the Diet of the Romano-Germanic Empire, grow up imperceptibly and, so to speak, naturally, from small beginnings, but was formally and of set purpose established, by what would have been called, had paper existed, a paper constitution, that is to say by the deliberate agreement of independent groups of men, seeking to attain the common ends of order and justice.

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Footnote 125:

Thing Vellir is the nominative plural, Thing Valla—the form in which
the word has become more familiar to Englishmen, and which remains in
Thingwall (near Liverpool), Tynwald (in the Isle of Man), and Dingwall
(in Rosshire)—is the genitive plural.

Footnote 126:

Since this lecture was delivered the Alþing which since 1843 had led a
feeble life at Reykjavík as a sort of advisory council, has been
re-established as a representative governing assembly under a new
constitution granted to Iceland in 1874. It now meets every second
year at Reykjavík.

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There was thus created, before the middle of the tenth century, when Athelstan the Victorious[127] was reigning in England and defeating Scots and Northumbrians at Brunanburh by the help of the Icelandic warriors Thorolf and Egil, sons of Skallagrim[128], when the Saxon king Henry the Fowler was repelling the Magyar hosts and laying the foundations of the German Kingdom, and when the power of the last Carolingians was beginning to pale in Gaul before the rising star of the Capetian line, a sort of republic embracing the whole isle of Iceland, a republic remarkable not only from its peculiar political structure, but also, as will presently appear, from the extremely limited range of its governmental activity. About thirty years later its constitution was amended in some important points, and forty years after that time, about the year 1004, further alterations were made, the details of which are too much disputed as well as too intricate to be explained here. Its general outline, in its completed shape, was the following. The total number of regular Þings, and priest-chieftaincies or Goðorðs, was fixed at thirty-nine, nine for each of the four Quarters into which the island was divided, except the North Quarter, which, in order to allay certain local susceptibilities, was allowed twelve. Each of these thirty-nine local Þings was presided over by its Goði. Then, for certain purposes, three of these Þings were united to form a larger Þing-district (Þingsokn), of which there were therefore thirteen in all, viz. four for the North Quarter, and three for each of the other Quarters. There was also one still larger Þing for each Quarter, called the Fjórðungsþing. It seems to have grown up before the institution of the Alþing, and to have represented the first stage in the organization of a larger community out of the small local Þings. But it tended in course of time to lose its importance.

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Footnote 127:

The Saga of Egil calls him Aðalsteinn hinn Sigrsæli (_lit._ ‘blessed
with victory’). It is curious that this title should have been
preserved in Iceland and apparently have been forgotten in England.

Footnote 128:

See _Egils Saga Skallagrimssonar_, chap. 54.

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Ordinary lawsuits and questions of local interest were determined in these minor Þings, while graver suits, or those in which the parties belonged to different Þings, or where it was sought to reverse the decision of a local Þing, as well as all proposals for alterations of the general law, were brought before the Alþing, at its annual meeting in June. It seems to have been therefore partly a court of first instance and partly a court of appeal. Now the Alþing was open, like other primary Teutonic and Hellenic assemblies, to all freemen who chose to attend; but its powers were practically exercised by a limited number of persons, viz. the Goðis and certain members nominated by them.

For judicial purposes, the Alþing acted through four Courts, one for each Quarter. Each Quarter Court (fjorðungsdómr) consisted, according to one view, of thirty-six members, viz. the Goðis of the Quarter with twenty-four nominees, and, according to another view, of nine persons nominated by the Goðis of the Quarter. There was also a fifth Court (called the fimtardómr), instituted later than the others (A.D. 1004), on the suggestion of the famous jurist Njál, son of Thorgeir. This Court, which exercised jurisdiction in cases where one of the other Courts had failed, was composed in a somewhat different way, acted under a more stringent oath, and gave its decisions by a majority, whereas in other Courts unanimity was required. It seems to have been intended not only to avert armed strife by providing a better method for settling disputes, but also to organize the country as a whole and give it something approaching to a central authority. This result, however, was not attained, the social and physical obstacles proving insuperable.

In these judicial committees of the Alþing lawsuits were brought and argued with an elaborate formality and a minute adherence to technical rules far more strict than is now practised anywhere in Europe, a fact which will appear the more extraordinary when we remember that in those days both the law and all the appropriate forms of words which the parties were obliged to employ were not written, but preserved solely by the memory of individual men.

For legislative purposes the Alþing acted through another committee of 144 persons, only one-third (forty-eight) of whom, being the thirty-nine Goðis and nine nominees, had the right of voting. The nine nominees were persons chosen by the Goðis of the East, South, and West Quarters, three by each Quarter, in order to give each of these Quarters the same strength in the Committee as the North Quarter had with its twelve Goðis. Each of the forty-eight appointed two assessors who advised him, sitting one behind him and the other in front of him, so that he could readily seek their counsel, and thus the 144 were made up, the forty-eight being described as the Middle Bench. This Committee was called the Lögrétta (_lit._ ‘Law Amending’), and by it all changes in the law were made, and all matters of common interest discussed. It was essentially an aristocratic body, as indeed the whole Constitution bore an aristocratic colour, though there was no such thing as a formal distinction of rank[129], much less any titled nobility. After the introduction of Christianity in A.D. 1000, the two bishops were added to the Lögrétta, while at the head of all, making up the number of members to 147, stood an elected officer, called the Speaker of the Law.

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Footnote 129:

Although the penalty for killing a man of high lineage was heavier
than that for an ordinary freeman; and one perceives from the Sagas
how carefully genealogies were preserved and what great respect was
paid to long descent.

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This last-named personage, the solitary official of the republic, is one of the most curious parts of the system. He was called the Lögsögumaðr, literally ‘Law-say-man,’ or, as we may render it, Speaker, or Declarer, of the Law, and was the depositary and organ of the unwritten common law of the country. It was his duty to recite aloud, in the hearing of the greater number of those present at the Þing, the whole law of Iceland, going through it in the three years during which he held office; and to recite once in every year the formulas of actions, this being the part of the law which was of most practical importance. Besides this, he presided in the Lögrétta, giving a casting vote where the votes were equal; and he was bound to answer every one who asked him what the provisions of the law actually were, although not required to advise applicants as to the course they ought to follow in a given case. When in any suit a question of what was the legal rule arose, reference was made to him, and his decision was accepted as final. For these labours he received a yearly salary of two hundred ells of Vaðmál (the blue woollen cloth which then served as currency, and which continued to do so, for some purposes, down to our own time), besides one-half of the fines imposed at the Alþing. He was of course selected from the most accomplished lawyers of the time. His declarations of the law were conclusive, at least during his three years’ term of office, in all causes and over all persons. Thus he exercised a kind of quasi-judicial or quasi-legislative power, and has been fancifully compared to the Roman Praetor, also an officer elected for a term, also by his edicts the declarer of the law he had to administer[130]. But the Law-Speaker was in reality neither judge nor magistrate, nor, indeed, a legislator, except in so far as the right to enounce and interpret borders on legislation. He delivered no judgements, he had no power of enforcing a decision or of punishing an offender. He did not even open the Alþing and take the responsibility for keeping order at it, for these functions belonged to the Goði of the district, called, because the Alþing met within his jurisdiction, the Allsherjargoði (priest of the whole host). The Lögsögumaðr was in fact nothing but the living voice of the law, enunciating those customary rules which had come down from the foretime, rules which all accepted, though they were not preserved in any written form, and though they must have been practically unknown to the great majority of the citizens.

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Footnote 130:

_Viva vox iuris civilis_ was the description which the Romans used to
give of their Praetor, as to whom see Essay XIV, vol. ii. p. 274.

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The office, although more important in Iceland from the absence of a king or local prince, was one of which we find traces among other Scandinavian peoples, or at least among the Norsemen. It appears in Norway, in the Orkneys, and in the Hebrides (though there the name is Lögman, which in Iceland means merely one learned in the law).

Thingvellir, where the Alþing met from the year 930 down to a time within the memory of living men, is a spot not less remarkable physically than memorable for the stirring events of which it was the witness. It is a slightly undulating plain, some five miles long by three wide, washed on the south by a broad island-studded lake, and girdled in at its northern end by lofty mountains, their black volcanic rocks streaked here and there with snow-beds. The surface is all of lava, sometimes bare and rugged, sometimes covered with thin brushwood, dwarf birches and willows, sometimes smoothing itself out into sweeps of emerald pasture, but everywhere intersected by profound chasms, formed when the whole was a molten mass. East and west it is hemmed in by two lines of precipices, whose rugged sides seem to show that the plain between them has, at some remote period, perhaps when the lava-flood was cooling, sunk suddenly down, leaving these walls to be the edges of the plateau which stretches away backwards to the east and west. Under the western of these two walls, on the margin of the lake, just where it receives the stream which has flung itself in a sparkling cascade over the precipice, the place of meeting was fixed. The chieftains, who came from every corner of the island with a following of armed companions and dependents, because broils were frequent, and armed strife might interrupt the progress of a lawsuit, built their booths—erections of stone and turf roofed for the time with cloth or canvas—along the banks of the Öxará river, and turned out their horses to pasture by the lake. Places were appointed for the holding of the several courts, while the Lögrétta or legislative committee sat on a spot which nature seemed to have herself designed for the purpose. Two of the extraordinary chasms by which the plain is seamed, each some eighty feet deep, and filled for the lower fifty feet by bright green water, enclose a narrow strip of lava some two hundred yards long, cutting it off, except at one point where there is a narrow entrance which three men might hold, from the surrounding land. The surface is nearly level, covered by short grass now browsed by a few sheep; and there is nothing to tell that in this space, in the full sight of the assembled multitude, the heroes of ancient Iceland spoke and voted their laws, and gave their verdicts; while from an eminence in the midst of the enclosure, still called the Lögberg, or Hill of Laws, the Law-Speaker recited the law of the nation in the sight and hearing of the multitude that stood on the further side of the chasms[131]. Not only so: there is all round nothing whatever to show that the place has ever been different from what it is now. Between the Lögberg and the lake stands the little wooden church and its humble parsonage. No other house is near, nor any sign of human life. Only the islet is still pointed out in the river where the solemn duels which the laws of Iceland recognized were fought, and the deep green swirling pool into which women condemned for witchcraft were hurled from the brink of the precipice. In most of the spots to which the traveller is drawn, by memories of constitutional freedom or of political struggles, his imagination is aided by the remains of the buildings where assemblies met or monarchs sat enthroned. Here man has left nothing to speak of his presence, and it is hard to realize, when one looks on this silent and desolate scene, that it was once filled by so much strenuous life, and so often resounded to the clash of arms.

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Footnote 131:

Since this was written, some eminent antiquaries, including my
lamented friend Dr. Guðbrand Vigfússon, have argued that the true
Lögberg is to be sought not in this spot which tradition indicates,
but on the edge of the great lava rift called the Almannagjá to the
west of the river. See _The Saga Steads of Iceland_, by W. G.
Collingwood and Jón Stefánsson, 1899, pp. 14-17.

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