Ordernr.

2080071

A D IVIDED S OCIETY: P EASANTS AND

THE A RISTOCRACY IN M EDIEVAL ICELAND

Orri Vésteinsson

I
t is a view of long standing that before the political turmoil of the thirteenth
century, political power in Iceland was in the hands of a uniformly free and
independent class of farmers. These farmers are not only supposed to have
owned their own farms by and large, they are also supposed to have had political
influence through a system of near-democratic assemblies and through their free-
dom to associate themselves with whichever chieftain they chose. The chieftains
are considered to have had relatively limited authority, their powers kept in check
by each other and by the farmers’ right to move their allegiance between chieftains.
There were in theory thirty-nine chieftains in Iceland from ca 965 to the end of
the Commonwealth in 1262. These were the owners of goðorð and they were called
goðar or goðorðsmenn. According to Grágás every householder had to choose a goði
or goðorðsmaðr to follow. This did not incur any formal responsibilities on behalf
of the householder except that he had either to follow the goði to the Alþing or pay
a fixed sum towards the travel expenses of those who did. It is clear from the sagas
that the power of the goðar, their ability to be active chieftains, relied in large part
on their following, the þingmenn (lit. ‘assembly men’). Unsuccessful goðar lost fol-
lowers to other goðar, and there are many cases where such failures result in them
handing over their goðorð to their competitors rather than suffer the humiliation
of not having a following and/or not being able to act successfully as chieftains.1

1
For example when Þórðr Böðvarsson in Garðar gave Snorri Sturluson half of his goðorð to stop
defections to Snorri’s brother Þórðr Sturluson (Sturl 210), or when the brothers Jón and Ásgrímr
gave Guðmundr dýri their goðorð in Fljót as the only way to restore order in the area (Sturl 130).
In Ljósvetninga saga Guðmundr ríki owns two goðorð (Björn Sigfússon 1960, 57–58) and in

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This fairly unique system was seized upon by the nationalistic historians of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as good evidence for what they considered
to be the just and sensible form of government which the Norse settlers of Iceland
created for themselves. Although alternative interpretations have been on offer for
a very long time (see especially Boden 1905), Icelandic scholarship has continued
to ascribe to the nationalistic view of constitutional uniqueness (e.g. Gunnar
Karlsson 1972, 1977, and 2004). Even quite recently scholars, in particular Jesse
Byock in his Medieval Iceland (1988) and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson in his Frá goðorðum
til ríkja (1989), have attempted to show that the right of householders to chose
their own chieftain was very much a political reality in the late twelfth century.2 By
analysing Contemporary Sagas describing events in the late twelfth century they
have shown that the followers of chieftains were not concentrated in the areas
around a chieftain’s residence — which would have suggested territorial domi-
nance based on economic dependence or the need for defence — but rather that
they were scattered very widely so that neighbouring householders often followed
a different chieftain, and a chieftain’s neighbour often did not follow him but some
other more distant one. The inference drawn from this is that power in Common-
wealth Iceland was not territorial and that each and every householder was
politically free to a remarkable degree.
In this article I will try to show that this inference is wrong, that power was
territorial in essence but more importantly that what has become the standard view
fails to appreciate the fundamental division of the Icelandic farming class into
leaders and landowners on the one hand and farmers — more rightly termed
peasants — on the other.

What Is a Goðorð?

The fundamental problem is that it is not at all clear from Grágás what a goðorð
really was. This problem needs to be solved before we start attaching great signifi-
cance to the relationship between the goði and his þingmenn. A goðorð was clearly

Laxdæla saga (Einar Ól. Sveinsson 1934, 197) Þorgeir Hölluson simply takes by force the goðorð
of Þórarinn in Langidalur. Gunnar Karlsson (2004, esp. 179–202) has the most recent detailed
discussion of this system.
2
In a more recent work, Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth (1999), Jón
Viðar Sigurðsson has changed his mind on this score and suggested that the power of the chieftains
was in fact territorial, based on the hreppur, or commune of more than twenty households. Byock
reaffirms his earlier views in his more recent Viking Age Iceland (2001).

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something that could be owned, sold, given, and inherited. These qualities mean
that it is quite remarkable if it really was a unit of power in a political structure as
completely decentralized and chaotic as the Icelandic one apparently was. This is
even more remarkable because the owning of a goðorð was not associated with
specific places, centres, or even wealth. It is simply not credible that the Icelanders
were able to decide that a fixed number of men were henceforth to be those who
were to wield power, when there was no executive power in the country to enforce
such a decision. It is even less likely that the symmetry of three goðorð to every
region, three regions to every quarter, and therefore twelve goðorð to each quarter
actually reflected the distribution of real power when the system was first intro-
duced. Neither is this tidy political landscape at all reflected in the sagas, whether
the Sagas of Icelanders or the Contemporary Sagas. Despite the wealth of informa-
tion on twelfth- and thirteenth-century Icelandic politics it has proved impossible
to identify all the thirty-nine goðorð or their owners (Lúðvík Ingvarsson 1986;
Gunnar Karlsson 2004, 205–315). It is also clear from the sagas that many a
powerful chieftain did not own a goðorð while some goðar seem to have had little
authority. Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (1999) has therefore suggested that the thirty-nine
goðorð were an invention of the thirteenth century and that in earlier periods they
were much more numerous. This explanation creates more problems than it solves
because it supposes a pretty fundamental change — for which there is no direct
evidence — and leaves us with an incomprehensible system before the proposed
change. Helgi Skúli Kjartansson (1989) has proposed a solution which resolves the
problem much more neatly. He suggests that the goðorð was not originally a unit
of power but simply a right of representation at the Alþing, or rather, its most
august institution the Lögrétta (Law court). It is much easier to see how this sort
of system could have come into being. Very soon after the initial phase of settle-
ment, a political need would have arisen for venues where chieftains and leaders of
men could meet, make alliances, and settle differences. It is usually assumed that
the assembly, the þing, was an institution which the settlers would have been well
acquainted with from their homelands and which they would have established
fairly quickly once they were settled in a new land. Assemblies and their principal
institutions, the courts, did not need ‘permit-holding’ chieftains to function.
Assemblies could be convened by the mutual agreement of neighbouring house-
holders, leaders, and chieftains, and courts could pass sentences if generally ac-
cepted procedures were followed and if they were backed by enough political
authority. These activities cannot have been binding on absent third parties, and
the participants were hardly bound to repeat the exercise if they did not like the
company. It was only when a national assembly was to be organized that more
complex and permanent arrangements became necessary.

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There is a fundamental difference in the nature of the local assemblies and the
general assembly, the Alþing, in that the latter required a permanent agreement by
a large group of people (who otherwise were not in regular contact on account of
long distances) to assemble at a particular location at a given time every year. The
exercise would have been futile unless a significant proportion of those who
wielded power in the country agreed to attend. It is certain that once the most
powerful began to attend regularly others would have followed suit, because not to
be present would then have risked being left out of the political game. Once general
attendance was assured, the need for a body which could make binding decisions
on laws and procedures would soon have arisen. The more the general assembly
grew in political importance the more need there would have been for a formal
procedure to achieve consensus on technical matters. This was the tricky part be-
cause in order to accomplish such a consensus a method had to be found which
guaranteed that no one individual, group, or region became too influential and that
the resolutions were generally accepted. The organization of the Lögrétta seems to
have been just such a compromise. It seems originally to have been made up of
thirty-six goðar, three from every þing, or spring-assembly area, of which there were
originally twelve, three in each quarter (Gunnar Karlsson 2004, 63–68).3 By divid-
ing the country into more or less equally-sized constituencies and giving each
constituency three representatives in the Lögrétta, its founders not only guaranteed
that no single family or region would dominate the proceedings, they also guaran-
teed that the membership of the Lögrétta would reflect regional political landscapes
rather than that of the whole country. It is not known how the first thirty-six
goðorðsmenn were selected. Because a goðorð was regarded as property — which
could be sold and inherited — the selection had only to be done once, at the outset.
It is impossible to know how important representation in the Lögrétta was in the
beginning, and there may well have been powerful chieftains who shunned the
whole business and took no part. It is likely, however, that as the Alþing grew in im-
portance as a venue for high-level politics, no major chieftain could have afforded
not to participate; fairly soon membership of the Lögrétta would have become as
much a prerequisite for local authority as the result of such power. The establishment
of the Lögrétta would therefore have helped to stabilize local politics and consoli-
date powers in the hands of those families which happened to be influential when
the Lögrétta was initiated. We can therefore assume that within a few decades of

3
This is the accepted interpretation, but it is quite possible that the original arrangement
included the thirty-nine goðar.

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A DIVIDED SOCIETY 121

the establishment of the system each goði — the owner of a seat in the Lögrétta —
was one of three of the most powerful chieftains in his spring-assembly area.
That, of course, does not mean that the thirty-six goðorðsmenn were the thirty-
six most powerful chieftains in the country. In the Eastern Quarter, for instance,
although there were nine goðorð attributed to it, it seems there were always fewer
than nine families which held real power. There may have been as few as four or
five families in the eleventh century and there were certainly only two in the
twelfth century and only one by the beginning of the thirteenth. In this region it
seems that the chieftains either owned more than one goðorð each or that the fami-
lies arranged matters in such a way that junior members or side-branches were
allowed to own a goðorð even if they did not have much real political authority. In
other regions, the west and the north in particular, it seems that up until around
1200 there were always more than nine or twelve chieftains who wielded real
power in each quarter respectively. In those regions there were quite powerful
chieftains who held either no goðorð at all or only part of one but who were
nevertheless movers and shakers in regional politics.4
It is therefore a fallacy to consider the goðorð simply as a unit of power. In
technical terms it was only the right to representation at the Lögrétta, a body which
while no doubt august, was nevertheless not really significant in regional politics.
The Lögrétta interpreted existing laws and ratified new law (Gunnar Karlsson
2004, 106–11) but was not an instrument which could be manipulated for politi-
cal ends — a political fact in a society where legal procedure was only one of several
ways available to solve conflicts (Byock 1982; Miller 1990, 179–299). A seat in the
Lögrétta therefore did not bring automatic influence for the holder. On the other
hand it seems to have become a necessary accoutrement to real power — without
a goðorð a chieftain could not hope to be taken seriously by the powerful members
of society. A goðorð was therefore rightly considered a necessary possession for
those who strove to wield influence and wanted to be accepted among those who
considered themselves as the country’s leaders. It was, however, only a possession.
A weak chieftain did not automatically grow stronger if he happened to inherit or
was able to buy a goðorð. And a chieftain could grow quite strong without owning
a goðorð.
The relationship between the goðorðsmaðr and his followers, the þingmenn, was
no doubt based on political reality. That is, a chieftain’s power was measured in the

4
Markús Gíslason in Saurbær in Rauðisandur (d. 1196) and Jón Brandsson in Staður in
Steingrímsfjörður (d. 1211) are examples of chieftains in the west who did not own a goðorð. Grímr
Snorrason in Hof in Höfðaströnd (d. 1196) is an example from the north.

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number of followers he managed to acquire and maintain. Without a following a

chieftain would be little more than a pirate — a situation which is not in fact
recorded in our sources. The law required of all householders in the country that
they proclaim themselves for one goðorðsmaðr, but we cannot assume that these
groupings were always coterminous with real political groupings. That is, house-
holders who were de facto followers of one of the powerful chieftains of the
Eastern Quarter might be persuaded to proclaim themselves for one of the puppet
goðorðsmenn of the quarter so that they could hold their family’s seats in the
Lögrétta. Conversely householders who were de facto followers of one of the chief-
tains of the west who did not own a goðorð would have had to declare themselves
for some other goðorðsmaðr. Such a retinue could be enormously significant for the
goðorðsmaðr if the chieftain and all his followers declared themselves for him, but
it could also be completely meaningless if the chieftain’s followers declared them-
selves for many different goðorðsmenn, a fact, incidentally, which explains the
influence goðorð-less chieftains were sometimes able to wield. The support of such
a chieftain with all of his following could make or break a goðorðsmaðr.

Who Were the Þingmenn?

There is no reason to doubt the traditional view that in many cases, possibly the
majority, the following of a goðorðsmaðr represented a political grouping of some
sort. This certainly seems to have been the case in the late twelfth century — the
only period prior to the break-up of the goðorð system for which we have fairly
detailed historical accounts of political machinations in some parts of the country.
In both Dalir and Eyjafjörður, the regions studied by Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (1989)
and Jesse Byock (1988) respectively, all the principal chieftains in the late twelfth
century owned a goðorð and their þingmenn seem to have been real political
followers. Yet it can still be argued that this pattern does not give an accurate
picture of the political landscape in these regions. The fact that all the powerful
chieftains in these regions owned a goðorð gives a false impression of the nature of
their support. Following the argument presented above the goðorð was not the
essence of their power, and their professed þingmenn varied enormously in their
relationships with their chieftain. Some were clearly personal followers often
connected to the chieftain through blood-ties or marriage.5 Others were much

5
The sons of Þórðr Laufæsingr followed their uncle Guðmundr dýri although their father was
a þingmaðr of another chieftain (Byock 1988, 116–17).

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more distant and do not appear in supporting capacities but rather as allies who
could call upon the help of their chieftains, or whose petty quarrels became fuel for
the more serious political struggles of their goðorðsmenn.6 What all these þingmenn
which our sources identify as such7 have in common is that they were themselves
owners of major estates and many of them were clearly leaders of men.
It is also important to note in this context that the legal definition of a
þingmaðr was, more precisely, that of þingfarararkaupsbóndi, that is a householder
who owned a stipulated minimum amount of property. Only þingfararkaupsbændr
had to pay their peers for accompanying their goðorðsmaðr to the Alþing and only
they could take part in the proceedings at the assembly (Grágás Ia, 44, 63, 159–60;
Grágás II, 320–21; Grágás III, 173, 431–32; DI I, 536). In other words there were
farmers who did not qualify, on grounds of poverty, for political participation.
Whether they could be called þingmenn or not is a moot point, but they were
clearly inferior and we do not see their type described in the sources (compare
Gunnar Karlsson 1972, 25–26).
When we look at the maps of the ‘locations’ of goðorðsmenn and their þingmenn
in Dalir and Eyjafjörður (Jón Viðar Sigurðsson 1989, 26, 28) it immediately
becomes apparent that the information is based on a very small sample of the total
number of householders. In the region of Eyjafjörður (including Fljót and the
western half of Þingeyjarþing) there were about five hundred farmsteads, but the
sources only contain information about the political allegiances of twenty-seven
householders. In Dalir there were about 180 farms and there the sources contain
information on the allegiances of just fifteen householders. This would not be a
problem if we could be sure that the sources give a representative view of the
political landscape in twelfth-century Iceland. In recent historiography, nearly all
the inferences drawn from the Icelandic sagas, both the Sagas of Icelanders and the
Contemporary Sagas of the Sturlunga compilation, are based on the assumption
that these sources give a balanced view of Icelandic society — that all classes and
types of people are equally represented and that the sources deal equally with the
high and the low. This assumption is not only naïve but demonstrably wrong.

6
Sumarliði Ásmundarson in Tjörn in Svarfaðardalur, a þingmaðr of Guðmundr dýri, is an
example of such a follower (Sturl 134–37).
7
A different group from the þingmenn listed by Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (1989, 25–29) and
Byock (1988, 16–17), many of whom are included on the basis of inference.

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Tax Values and Social Status

In the Sturlunga compilation and Árna saga biskups, which together contain the
bulk of historical information on Icelandic society in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, some 598 different farmsteads are named. That is just less than 15% of
the total number of the ca four thousand farmsteads of Iceland (Björn Lárusson
1967, 33).8 Of these 598 farmsteads, tax values can be attached to 477.
Information on tax values is only available for the country as a whole from the
end of the seventeenth century, but enough examples of individual farmsteads’ tax
values exist from the Middle Ages that we can be sure that these were as a rule not
subject to change (Björn Lárusson 1967, 32). Of the rest, ninety-five were benefices
(tax-exempt church property), four were cottages assessed as parts of other
farmsteads in the early eighteenth century, eleven had been long abandoned when
the land registers were compiled, and eleven cannot be identified. If we compare
the distribution of the tax values of the 479 farmsteads to the distribution of the
country as a whole a clear picture emerges (see Fig. 1). The poorest farms, those
valued at 12 hundreds or less, and the poor to middle-sized, valued at 13–24 hun-
dreds, are heavily under-represented in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century sources.
In fact only 1.2 % of farmsteads in the 1–12 hundred category are mentioned in
the Sturlunga compilation and 3.9 % of farmsteads in the 13–24 hundred category.
The middle-sized farms (25–36 hundreds) are slightly better represented, but the
large ones are heavily over-represented and would be even more so if benefices,
which were generally the very largest estates but for which values are not always
given in the later sources, were also included in these figures.
Of the farmsteads mentioned in the Sturlunga compilation and Árna saga
biskups, 403 are associated with named individuals. This is important because the
tax value of a farmstead can reasonably be expected to give an indication of the
social status of its householder vis-à-vis other householders of known farmsteads.
Of those 403 farmsteads, 307 have known tax values and their distribution is also
shown in Figure 1. This distribution follows the one described above, but the trend
is even more marked, with even fewer farmsteads in the poorest categories and even
more in the richer group.

8
Björn Lárusson’s statistical analysis of the late seventeenth-century land registers will be used
in the following comparison. His number of 4020 farmsteads is a useful median of the 3812 tax-
paying farmers counted in 1311 (DI IV , 9–10) and the 4247 farmsteads named in fourteenth-
century charters (Sveinn Víkingur 1970, 219).

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Figure 1. The proportion of farmsteads mentioned in the Sturlunga

compilation (and Árna saga biskups) in different tax-value ranges according to
late seventeenth-century land registers (Björn Lárusson 1967, 33).

This leads to the conclusion that the Sturlunga compilation and Árna saga
biskups deal almost exclusively with the rich — the wealthy landowners and the
well-off independent householders — and shed virtually no light on the majority
of the householders in the country, the three quarters that occupied farmsteads
with tax values less than 24 hundreds. In fact when we look at the twenty cases of
named individuals associated with the very poorest farms, those in the 1–12
hundred category, the cottages, and the abandoned farms, we find that some of
these are actually due to changes in the tax values of the farms in question. The
estate of Svínafell, home to the powerful Svínfellingar in the thirteenth century, is
a good example. It was valued at only 12 hundreds in 1695, but had been valued at
23 2/3 hundreds as recently as 1686 (Björn Lárusson 1967, 333); it was no doubt
valued much higher in the Middle Ages. A quirk of farm valuation also helps to
explain why some of these farms with low values are mentioned in the thirteenth
century. In the north-west, farmsteads tended to have lower tax values than else-
where and so some four farmsteads valued at 12 hundreds might really be classified
as mid-sized, for example, Hvalsker in Patreksfjörður.
Occasionally, though, we do seem to be getting glimpses of the real underclass.
Among them are Guðmundr guðiþekkr in Ásgrímsstaðir and Snæbjörn in Sandvík
(abandoned farms by the seventeenth century) who both had visions in 1238 (Sturl
411, 427); Hallr Þórðarson, the house-carl who saved up money to build his own
cottage in a marginal valley (Sturl 52); Steinunn Þorsteinsdóttir, the concubine of
irresponsible adventurer Ari Þorgeirsson and mother of Bishop Guðmundr góði,

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a truly lower-class girl it seems (Sturl 102); Indriði from Rauðsgil (10 hundreds)
and Sigurðr in Kálfanes (a cottage) who were among the retinue of Bishop
Heinrekr when he crossed Hvítá in 1253, mentioned only because they were saved
from drowning at the ford (Sturl 614); and Erlendr from Svínaskógur in Dalir (12
hundreds), the deceased husband of Ólöf, a concubine of the chieftain Sturla
Þórðarson (Sturl 52). In these examples we do not get a clear picture of these
people’s relationships with chieftains or their political status, except for Hallr
Þórðarson who is said to have loved Sturla Þórðarson when he was young and to
have become his fosterer.
Hallr deserves further discussion. He seems to have been a trusted member of
the household of Þórðr Gilsson at Staðarfell and to have been some sort of a father
figure to the young Sturla, who was later to become the region’s major chieftain.
Hallr seems to be mentioned in the saga because his sons were later involved in
political conflict in the region (Sturl 69, 75). However it would be wrong to iden-
tify Hallr as a þingmaðr of Sturla Þórðarson, as Jón Viðar Sigurðsson does (1989,
29). The text does not use the term þingmaðr, and there is no reason to assume that
Hallr ever acquired that status even though he managed to build himself a cottage
on the property of Staðarfell and raise a family. It is interesting, however, that while
one of his sons became a householder (probably through his marriage to a daughter
of Sturla Þórðarson) and stood surety for Sturla in a peace agreement in 1171,
another of Hallr’s sons, who seems not to have risen to the householder class,
befriended Sturla’s enemies and became his opponent (Sturl 69).
There are six examples of householders on farms valued at 12 hundreds or less
being involved in political conflict. Most of them were victims. One is Jón Pálsson,
householder at Gröf in Dalir (10 hundreds), who was mortally wounded by the
agents of Kolbeinn ungi in a raid in Dalir (Sturl 508), presumably on account of
Jón’s participation in some foray of the Sturlungar against Kolbeinn, although this
is not spelled out. It may be that he was just a randomly picked victim in a revenge
spree aimed at demoralizing the Sturlungar by striking terror among their tenants.
Another example is Eyjólfr tjúga from Hvarfsdalur in Dalir (12 hundreds), who
refused to give some raiders food and board. He killed one of the unwelcome guests
and took flight. Unfortunately for Eyjólfr, he later had to relinquish his land to his
relative and (more powerful) neighbour, Þorbjörn from Búðardalur, who settled
the case with the dead raider’s chieftains (Sturl 362–63, 369). This is a rare exam-
ple of a minor householder owning his farmstead, but one which also suggests just
how precarious the hold of such free-holders was over their property when they ran
into trouble.

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A third victim is Magni of Múli (12 hundreds) who had long been a house-carl
of Kolbeinn ungi and had received a horse from him and taken on the task of keep-
ing a look-out for Kolbeinn’s enemy Þórðr kakali. Þórðr’s spies came to Múli to
attack Magni. Although Magni managed to sneak out the back door, he was caught
by his attackers and swiftly killed. When his wife arrived at the scene, the killer dried
the blood off his sword on her clothes (Sturl 500). The text does not say whether
Magni owned his farm, but it may be surmised that he was Kolbeinn’s tenant.
In 1194 one Nikulás Runólfsson, householder in Mjóafell in Fljót (10 hun-
dreds), described as ‘poor and of rather insignificant parentage’ (‘Hann var félítill
og heldur kynsmár’), led his fighting horse to a bout with the horse of a Nikulás
Bjarnarson, son of the householder at Griðill (35 hundreds), described as ‘rich and
well respected among householders’ (‘Hann átti vel fé og var í góðra bónda
virðingu’). When the fight had started the poor Nikulás felt that his namesake’s
horse was being given an unfair advantage on account of their unequal status, and
he decided to intervene by striking the rich Nikulás’s horse with his staff. The rich
Nikulás saw what his opponent was up to and raced to intervene — only to be hit
himself. He then slammed his axe against the head of the poor Nikulás who was
not, however, seriously wounded. Runólfr, son of the poor Nikulás, then struck the
rich Nikulás between the shoulders so that he was seriously wounded. He recov-
ered, but Runólfr absconded. The rich Nikulás was a close relative of Kolbeinn
Tumason, the greatest chieftain of Skagafjörður, but he was a þingmaðr of chieftain
Guðmundr dýri. A settlement was reached where the two Nikulás’s were deemed
to have been equally at fault, but Runólfr was made an outlaw from the region ‘and
was not to reside anywhere where Guðmundr or Kolbeinn were in control of men’
(‘og skyldi hvergi vera þar er þeir ættu mannaforráð Guðmundur og Kolbeinn’)
(Sturl 145). All this is told as a prelude to how Runólfr managed to stir up further
enmity between the chieftain Guðmundr dýri and his main competitor, Önundr,
whose aid Runólfr eventually sought after having made submissive gestures to both
Kolbeinn and Guðmundr. The saga does not state that the poor Nikulás was a
þingmaðr of Önundr (as in Jón Viðar Sigurðsson 1989, 27), and Önundr is not
mentioned as having had anything to do with the settlement when the two Niku-
lás’s were found to be equally at fault, something Önundr would have been bound
to do if he really was the goðorðsmaðr of the poor Nikulás. As the saga records it,
Önundr only gets involved when he manages to dupe Runólfr into giving him
horses which he had already promised to Guðmundr dýri as recompense for his
transgression. It seems therefore that the poor Nikulás was either not a þingmaðr,
or at most, that whichever goðorðsmaðr he followed considered his support to be
of so little consequence that he could not be bothered to try to defend him and his

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son. Either way this is further evidence that there was a class of householders who
could not count on the same level of protection and support from the chieftains
as other more wealthy ones could. Önundr may have taken the family of the poor
Nikulás on as his clients, but his interest in them was only roused when he saw a
way of using Runólfr to humiliate Guðmundr dýri and to recruit into his following
a band of desperate young men in Runólfr and his two brothers. Such young men,
compromised because of some crime or political mistake, and therefore dependent
on the protection of a chieftain, were becoming increasingly important to the
chieftains as their struggle for power intensified in the last years of the twelfth
century and the beginning of the thirteenth. The chieftains’ armed bands seem
predominantly to have been made up of such men.
The only example of an instigator of conflict in this group is Þorgils Skeggjason
in Tunga in Lundarreykjadalur (10 hundreds). He lost an eye trying to defend his
daughter’s virtue and later took part in an attack on the seducer (Sturl 184–85),
leading to the conflict known as Rauðsmál which we will consider at greater length
below.

The Social Status of Householders in the Sagas of Icelanders

The examples recounted above are the exceptions. As I have already demonstrated,
the Contemporary Sagas deal primarily with chieftains and householders of
middle- to large-sized farmsteads. I have not studied the Sagas of Icelanders in the
same way, but it is clear that the same general pattern holds for them as well, even
if it is less marked. For one thing it is quite common that primary settlers are said
to have built their first farm at sites which later were either small cottages or
abandoned altogether — Geirmundarstaðir on the estate of Skarð is one such
example recorded in both Sturlunga saga and Landnámabók (The Book of Settle-
ments) (Sturl 3; Jakob Benediktsson 1968, 153). This is a topos used systematically
by the authors of Landnámabók (Adolf Friðriksson and Orri Vésteinsson 2003)
and was not meant to indicate the low status of the settlers as they or their
descendants invariably moved to sites that became major estates.
Another difference between the Contemporary Sagas and the Sagas of Ice-
landers is that the former clearly reflect later, more stable medieval settlement
patterns in that the greatest chieftains are invariably placed at the richest and most
strategically placed estates which were political and ecclesiastical centres through-
out the Middle Ages and beyond, whereas the Sagas of Icelanders sometimes place
their heroes on estates or farmsteads which were not centres later on. To give two
famous examples, neither Bergþórshvoll nor Hlíðarendi, the estates of Njáll and

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Gunnarr of Njáls saga, were centres of their respective regions in the later Middle
Ages and Bergþórshvoll did not even have a chapel as far as is known. They were
not, however, typical properties — Bergþórshvoll was valued at 30 hundreds, and
Hlíðarendi at 60 hundreds had its own church, which clearly placed both heroes
among the aristocracy. The reason saga authors sometimes chose to place their
heroes on farmsteads which were not centres in their own times may be literary:
that is, they wanted to create a sense of distance by making the past a slightly
different land, but it is equally likely that in the majority of cases the authors were
making use of traditions which connected their heroes to particular farmsteads.
That would then indicate a shift in the location of centres between the tenth
century, when the events described in the Sagas of Icelanders take place, and the
thirteenth century, when the late medieval pattern had been established. Another
example of this might be Grund in Svarfaðardalur in northern Iceland, one of two
estates established by the settler Þorsteinn svörfuðr, according to Svarfdæla saga,
and thereafter his descendants’ main bastion in their conflicts with the men of
Vellir from the other side of the valley. Grund was a major estate with its own
church in the late Middle Ages, valued at 80 hundreds in 1550 (DI XI, 877), and
the householders of Svarfaðardalur held their local assemblies there. The parish
church, however, was at neighbouring Tjörn and it is a householder at Tjörn that
we meet in the Sturlunga compilation as a powerful bully and a þingmaðr of Guð-
mundr dýri in the 1190s (Sturl 134). The surviving property boundaries between
Tjörn and Grund suggest that Grund is the earlier farm because it would have
included precious meadowland along the Svarfaðardalsá river in front of Tjörn and
several other smaller farmsteads. Svarfdæla saga’s account is therefore entirely be-
lievable and we must assume that the householders of Tjörn managed, in the course
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, to outshine the men of Grund and establish
their farmstead as the centre of the parish. It is likely that the establishment of
permanent ministries and tithe areas — the foundations of the late medieval
parishes — in the twelfth century (Orri Vésteinsson 1998b; Orri Vésteinsson
2000, 97–101) shifted the balance of power in some areas, so that original centres
became overshadowed by neighbours who were quicker to establish churches and
permanent ministries of priests. In many cases this kind of change might explain
the discrepancies between the political landscape of the Sagas of Icelanders and the
Contemporary Sagas.
There are episodes in the Sagas of Icelanders, however, where relationships
between aristocratic householders and poor farmers are described. A good example
is that of Atli from Grenjar (12 hundreds), a tenant of chieftain Þorsteinn Egilsson
who was ordered by his landlord to accompany him, along with a house-carl and

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a Norwegian, and bring a spade and shovel to rebuild a booth at the local assembly
site (Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson 1938, 53). Atli plays no role in the
narrative as far as can be seen other than to reassure the reader that Þorsteinn
would not actually do manual labour himself. This group includes people of ques-
tionable integrity like the Hebridean sorcerers Kotkell and Gríma who were first
settled at Urðir in Skálmarfjörður — a cottage holding not farmed in later times
— and later became tenants of Þorleikr Höskuldsson at Leiðólfsstaðir in Laxár-
dalur (16 hundreds) (Einar Ól. Sveinsson 1934, 95 and 101). Such poor farmers
are, however, never principal players or protagonists; their appearances in the sagas
always serve as anecdotes or embellishments to the descriptions of the main char-
acters, who invariably belong to the aristocracy. That these characters occur more
often in the Sagas of Icelanders is, however, one of the stylistic differences between
them and the Contemporary Sagas.

Settlement Patterns, the Church, and Social Status

A study of medieval settlement patterns in Iceland (Orri Vésteinsson 1998a) has

suggested that from the outset properties were very unequal in size and value. The
major estates of medieval Iceland tend to have been situated on the best land for
haymaking, providing a base for major cattle farms. In the late Middle Ages these
estates were often divided into a main farm and several small cottages, either within
the homefield or on the edges of the property. Estate owners therefore not only
ruled their own household, they were also lords over a small — and often fluctu-
ating — number of cottagers’ households (Orri Vésteinsson 1998b). As a rule we
find a number of small farmsteads in the immediate vicinity of the great estates,
and when medieval written evidence is available it shows that such farms were
owned either directly by the estate householder or by his church. Again the house-
holders of these small farms would be dependent on the estate householders as his
tenants and as parishioners of his church, but their social status would be a rung
higher than that of the cottagers.
Further afield we find basically two types of farmsteads. On the one hand there
are small estates, situated on good quality land, usually with their own church or
chapel, but rarely an attached parish and with as few as just one dependent house-
hold. On the other hand there are small to middle-sized farms often strung out
along valley floors or coasts, situated on reasonably good land, but nowhere near
as good as the estates. The existence of groups of such farms seems to represent
organized settlement. They seem to have been planned by the first generations of
estate householders who were able to claim large tracts of land and decide how it

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was settled. It can be assumed that these estate owners either rented out the
properties or sold them, but either way they would have secured some degree of
authority and control over the settlers. The renting of livestock — one of the most
conspicuous features of the Icelandic land tenure system — seems to have been the
principal way of maintaining the economic dependency of householders on the
planned settlements (Orri Vésteinsson and others 2002). We can also assume that
the chieftains used this and other methods to secure the support of the
householders on the planned settlements. It is them, along with the cottagers,
about whom our sources are largely silent, but whose subjection was the basis of the
territorial rule of the chieftains.
As a rule parish churches came to be situated on most of the major estates in the
course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. There were some 330 of these in the
country, but as we have already seen not all the estates became centres of parishes,
so the total number of ‘great estates’ is probably closer to four hundred. In addition
there were some three hundred small estates, with their own church but no parish
(Orri Vésteinsson 1998b). It is the householders of these two types of estates which
we find as the political players in both Sagas of Icelanders and the Contemporary
Sagas. The other 3300 householders in the country hardly figure at all and those
that do had farms mainly in the intermediate category of farms in the 20–40 hun-
dreds range which often had their own chapel, probably indicating some kind of
economic independence and social respectability although negligible political
clout.
If we work on the assumption that the seven hundred or so householders
running the large and small estates represent the aristocracy of medieval Iceland,
a very different political landscape from that of traditional historiography emerges.
Instead of thirty-six or thirty-nine chieftains who were primes inter pares among
the four thousand or so householders of the country, we have a situation where
almost five-sixths of the householders were economically and politically dependent,
no doubt largely tenants of the remaining one-sixth of the householders, the estate
owners. This still fairly large group makes up the society of the sagas. The majority
of the estate owners was neither influential nor particularly rich. The majority
would own little more than their own estate, maybe one or two dependent farms,
but this would be enough to make them leaders of men at the parish or commune
level, a commune being an association of twenty householders (Magnús Már
Lárusson 1962). Major landowners would have been an even smaller group, and it
is among those that we find the chieftains who in turn had to compete for the
thirty-nine goðorð. If the estate owners were in control (either directly or
indirectly) of some 85% of the households in the country then it makes sense that

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the chieftains had to be concerned mainly with the allegiances of these aristocrats.
By securing the support of an estate owner a chieftain was effectively gaining
control of a much larger number of households. It is these estate owners who we
find labelled as þingmenn in the sagas; even if ordinary householders might tech-
nically be þingmenn it was only the estate owners who were politically significant
as such.
A dispute which took place in Lundarreykjadalur in Borgarfjörður in 1195,
alluded to earlier, illustrates these relationships well. Lundarreykjadalur is a long
and narrow valley with typical planned settlements on both sides of the river run-
ning along the valley floor (Orri Vésteinsson 1998b, 23–24). The political centre
of the valley was on the northern side, in the shape of two small estates, Lundur (60
hundreds) with the parish church and Oddastaðir (40 hundreds) with its own
chapel. Unlike other farms in the valley these owned large tracts of heathland
providing good summer pasture and they also divided between them the only good
meadowland in the valley. Lundur seems to have been the traditional seat of power,
and its owners had once owned a goðorð, Lundarmannagoðorð, but by 1195 it had
passed into the hands of the Garðamenn from Akranes.
The householder at Lundur was Hámundr Gilsson who is said to have been a
þingmaðr of Þórðr Sturluson in Snæfellsnes, some 90 km away; the householder of
Oddastaðir, Þórðr rauðr, was a þingmaðr of Kolbeinn Tumason in faraway Skaga-
fjörður. We are told that Hámundr and Þórðr had a disagreement over firewood
rights and that there was an ongoing rivalry between them. After them, two lesser
householders are introduced: Þorsteinn brattsteinn at Reykir (16 hundreds) and
his sons, Guðmundr and Steinn, and Þorgils Skeggjason from Tunga (12 hun-
dreds), whom we have already met. Guðmundr Þorsteinsson had a friendship with
Þórðr in Oddastaðir while Þorgils Skeggjason was a cousin of Hámundr in Lundur.
So the sides were clearly drawn: any local dispute was likely to set Þórðr rauðr,
Þorsteinn, Guðmundr, and Steinn against Hámundr, Þorgils, and Finnr.
The dispute which is described starts when Guðmundr Þorsteinsson leads
Þorgils’s daughter away from a church service one day. Seeing this, the worried
Þorgils runs after them only to receive an accidental blow from Guðmundr’s axe
and thereby lose an eye. After this Hámundr from Lundur tries to reconcile the
two but no settlement is reached. Later in the winter Guðmundr, Finnr (a son of
Þórðr in Oddastaðir), and a third man are on their way past Lundur, but when the
household becomes aware of this Hámundr, Þorgils (who seems to be staying at
Lundur), and two house-carls run after them and a fight breaks out. Finnr, Guð-
mundr, and Hámundr are all wounded before people come and stop the brawl.
Next we are told that in the following spring a settlement is reached with the men

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of Reykir, the amorous, axe-bearing Guðmundr, but that the cases of Hámundr
and Finnr were prepared for the courts at the Alþing. All the major chieftains’
families took sides in the issue and fighting broke out at the assembly between the
Sturlungar and their allies on the one hand and the Haukdælir and the Ásbirningar
and their allies on the other (Sturl 184–85).
This story is told at the start of Íslendinga saga, the central piece of the Stur-
lunga compilation, and it is clearly selected to draw attention to early differences
between the Sturlungar and the Haukdælir/Ásbirningar — the families who were
to battle for control over Iceland throughout much of the thirteenth century. The
details are interesting to us, however, because they give a rare glimpse into the
everyday political reality of a late twelfth-century community. It was a community
split by strife for reasons unknown to us, but it seems that matters had become so
volatile by this point that a seemingly innocent amorous overture could spark
armed conflict (although it is of course possible that Guðmundr was taunting his
opponents by taking a public interest in the daughter of one of them). The instiga-
tors of the conflict, Guðmundr Þorsteinsson from Reykir and Þorgils from Tunga,
quickly disappear from the scene and the dispute is taken up by their respective
leaders, Þórðr from Oddastaðir and Hámundr from Lundur. These two we can
regard as petty chieftains. Each led his faction in the valley competing with the
other for dominance of the community. It is these two who are identified in the
saga as þingmenn. It is not said whose þingmenn Þorsteinn and Þorgils were, and
it is easiest to assume that they were not followers of a goðorðsmaðr, or at least that
such support was only nominal, and that their allegiance was primarily to the petty
chieftains of their valley.
In this sense power was territorial in medieval Iceland. The ordinary house-
holders of every community had no choice but to ally themselves with the nearest
petty chieftains, and it does not matter in this context whether they did so because
they were economically dependent on the chieftains or whether they had to plead
allegiance to get protection. The geographical extent of the authority of such petty
chieftains would usually have been quite small, and not necessarily an unbroken
territorial block — this was clearly the situation in Lundarreykjadalur — but the
authority of men like Hámundr in Lundur would have been limited to his imme-
diate vicinity. It is interesting that neither Hámundr from Lundur nor Þórðr from
Oddastaðir were þingmenn of the goðorðsmenn in the region, the Garðamenn in
Akranes — heirs to the old goðorð centred on Lundarreykjadalur — or the
Reykhyltingar in the next valley to the north. Instead they allied themselves with
stronger but more distant goðorðsmenn in completely different parts of the country.
This must indicate that Hámundr and Þórðr were both trying to guard their

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independence vis-à-vis the chieftains of their own region: they were preserving
their own status as petty chieftains by side-stepping the chieftains of the region and
seeking the protection of faraway goðorðsmenn. For goðorðsmenn the support of
þingmenn in different regions can have had little value except in terms of prestige,
although they could probably count on their support in disputes at the Alþing. An
extreme example of this sort of arrangement is that of Markús Gíslason in
Rauðasandur who was the þingmaðr of Jón Loptsson in Oddi in the South (Sturl
892). Markús was a petty chieftain who seems to have been in complete control of
his home turf, and even though he was the cousin of the region’s goðorðsmaðr
(Hrafn Sveinbjarnarson) he allied himself with the distant Jón, an arrangement
clearly intended to preserve Markús’s independence.
In Dalir we see the same basic pattern but on a smaller scale. The region seems
to have had at least three chieftains in the late twelfth century, Einarr of Staðarhóll,
Sturla at Hvammur, and Snorri at Skarð. The latter pair each owned a half of the
same goðorð, but the men of Skarð were mostly passive in the political struggles
described in our sources and can be counted as supporters of Sturla in Hvammur.
In truth it is only for the northern part of Dalir that we have information on
political struggles — the men of Laxárdalur or Miðdalir do not figure in the sources
and we can assume that they had their own leaders or chieftains. From the 1150s
onwards Sturla of Hvammur was in continuous dispute with the chieftain Einarr
of Staðarhóll, with Sturla slowly but surely eclipsing Einarr’s power. Sturla’s
original sphere of influence seems to have been Fellsströnd and the southern part
of Hvammssveit and his move to Hvammur from Fell seems to have been strategic,
designed to encroach on the authority of the men of Staðarhóll who seem to have
been in control of most of the region in the early twelfth century. By the early
1170s Sturla could claim þingmenn not only in Hvammssveit where Einarr had
previously had followers but also much closer to Einarr’s home turf, in Fagridalur.
The exceptions are interesting: Staðarhóll was one of two estates with parish
churches in the Saurbær area and the other, Hvoll, was in the hands of a þingmaðr
of Sturla in Hvammur. Conversely, Hvammur was one of three estates with parish
churches in the Hvammssveit area, one of which, Sælingsdalstunga passed from
Einarr’s to Sturla’s control by 1166 but the other, Ásgarður, was in the hands of a
þingmaðr of Einarr. That is, the nearest neighbours of significance to the two
goðorðsmenn chose to follow the more distant goðorðsmaðr, no doubt in order to
preserve their own independence as petty chieftains. The same principle explains
why two of the other few householders we know of in this region, Þórhallr at
Hólmlátur and Tanni of Galtardalstunga, chose to follow the more distant Þorleifr
from Hítardalur rather than either Einarr or Sturla.

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Indeed the same picture emerges when we consider the map of Eyjafjörður.
There we have a fairly clear picture of four core regions each dominated by a
goðorðsmaðr: Fnjóskadalur ruled by Þorvarður Þorgeirsson of Ljósavatn; Fljót ruled
by the brothers Jón and Ásgrímr, who later gave their goðorð to Guðmundr dýri;
Öxnadalur ruled by Guðmundr dýri; and the lower parts of Hörgárdalur ruled by
Önundr Þorkelsson. The upper part of Hörgárdalur was an area of mixed alle-
giances as were many other areas, Ólafsfjörður and Galmaströnd for instance, all
no doubt representing similar conditions as in Lundarreykjadalur, with petty
chieftains fighting each other and staving off the encroachments of neighbouring
chieftains by allying themselves with more distant ones. Kálfr Guttormsson in
Auðbrekka, a major estate (80 hundreds) with its own church across the river from
Laugaland, the estate of Önundr Þorkelsson, is yet another example of an influen-
tial petty chieftain who resisted the overlordship of a neighbouring chieftain by
allying himself with a more distant one. In that case Kálfr’s alliance with Guð-
mundr dýri was very significant in terms of local politics because Kálfr held a large
estate with many households right in the middle of Önundr’s sphere of influence,
thus breaking it up and no doubt making it harder for Önundr to consolidate his
grip on other lesser neighbours.

The Territorial Nature of Power in Commonwealth Iceland

The Sagas of Icelanders contain many references to territorial divisions of power.

Sometimes a goðorðsmaðr is said to have ruled or owned the goðorð in this or that
area (Miðfjörður in Þórðar saga hreðu (Kjalnes 170); Ísafjörður in Hávarðar saga
Ísfirðings (Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson 1943, 291); Ölfus, Flói,
Grímsnes, and Laugardalur in Harðar saga (Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni
Vilhjálmsson 1991, 25)) indicating at least a territorial centre of his authority. In
other sagas limits of domains are defined: ‘Ásbjörn hafði goðorð um Flateyjardal
ok upp til móts við Þorgeir, mág sinn’ (Kjalnes 253) (Ásbjörn had a goðorð in
Flateyjardalur up to the area of his brother-in-law Þorgeirr) and ‘Özurr var
höfðingi mikill, því at hann hafði goðorð um inn efra hlut Skagafjarðar ok út til
móts við Hjaltasonu’ (Kjalnes 190–91) (Özurr was a great chieftain because he had
a goðorð in the upper part of Skagafjörður, out towards the sons of Hjalti). Two
sagas clearly state that a goðorð had territorial limits: chapter one of Gunnars saga
Keldugnúpsfífls refers to the goðorð of Þorgrímr as covering the area between
Jökulsá and Lómagnúpur, and Kjalnesinga saga (Kjalnes 6–7, 41) states that
Brunndælagoðorð lay between Nýjahraun and Botnsá.

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Most of these sagas were written relatively late and may therefore reflect
thirteenth-century or later divisions of the country into petty states or administra-
tive areas, but the idea of territorial power was clearly there and we cannot preclude
the possibility that it was an old one. The analysis of the Contemporary Sagas
presented here suggests, however, that the territoriality of power was much more
complex before the formation of the petty states around and after 1200. All
chieftains had a nuclear territory which might comprise little more than their own
estate and nearby dependent farmsteads. The more powerful the chieftain the
larger this nuclear area and the more complex the relationships between him and
his followers. It is safe to assume that householders who lived within one of these
nuclear territories were firmly under the heel of their chieftains and could not
freely decide to follow some other chieftain. The process of power consolidation
which was taking place in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries involved extending
these nuclear areas to cover whole regions and thus creating petty states.
The ‘freedom’ of householders to choose their own goðorðsmaðr was therefore
very variable indeed. It is arguable that the vast majority of householders never had
this freedom, and that their status as þingmenn was either not recognized at all by
the chieftains or was a meaningless definition invented by lawyers. Within the
group of these non-þingmenn status no doubt varied considerably, from cottagers
eking out a meagre existence in a chieftain’s home-field to independent house-
holders, who might even be free-holders and who followed their chieftain into
armed conflict and could expect their support. In Vopnfirðinga saga we hear of
Þórðr of Tunga in Sunnudalur in north-east Iceland who was a þingmaðr of
goðorðsmaðr Brodd-Helgi and who came to him seeking help in a quarrel with his
neighbour. Helgi refused him help but offered to buy the disputed piece of wood-
land. Having bought the woods Helgi ordered his tenants to accompany him, his
housecarls, and gestir (guests) to the woods where he had them cut up every tree
and bring the wood home to his estate (Jón Jóhannesson 1950, 38–39). Here we
have, on the one hand, a householder so insignificant that his chieftain refuses him
help and, on the other, a nameless group of tenants obliged to do the bidding of
their landlord and chieftain. Both were no doubt technically þingmenn and both
were politically insignificant, but we can be sure that the difference in status
between Þórðr in Tunga and Helgi’s tenants will have been considerable and
significant in the local community.
On a level above this we find the estate owners, a much smaller group but more
significant in political terms. It is their dealings that are described in the sagas and
it is to them that the relationship between þingmaðr and goðorðsmaðr applies.

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Conclusion

The traditional interpretation of the Commonwealth political structure as made

up of about four thousand politically equal householders following thirty-nine
goðorðsmenn is wrong. The evidence on which this interpretation is based only
relates to a part of the political landscape of Commonwealth Iceland. A study of
the householders mentioned in the Contemporary Sagas with reference to the size
and location of their farms or estates reveals clearly that this is a very select group.
In fact only the very richest householders who owned estates with many dependent
households are mentioned as þingmenn, and it is rare for inhabitants of farmsteads
with low or medium tax values ever to be mentioned in these texts. If the scattering
of followers is looked at against the background of territorial division between
estates and their dependent cottages and farms it becomes clear that, as a rule, the
chieftains occupied the largest estates with large hinterlands of small or medium-
sized farms. Their followers were generally those who owned the slightly smaller
estates and it is clear that these men, who were often local leaders with their own
aspirations to power, preferred to ally themselves with chieftains who were not a
direct threat to their local interests. There is a clear pattern in the twelfth century
whereby the more powerful a local leader grew the further afield he placed his
allegiance.
Looking at Commonwealth society in this way it appears a very unequal society
with a large class of economically dependent and politically powerless householders
forming the base of each chieftain’s power. These ought rightly to be labelled
peasants. Governing these was a much smaller group of estate owners, local leaders,
and chieftains who formed an elite which dominated not only Icelandic politics
but also the narratives created by and for that same elite.

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