Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793-1241 (36 page)

All freemen had the right to attend and speak, but the Althing was essentially an aristocratic and oligarchic form of government. All judicial and legislative power was in the hands of the thirty-six
goðar,
who alone had the right to vote in the
Lögretta
, the Althing’s legislative council (the number of
goðar
was increased to thirty-nine in 965 and to forty-eight in 1005). The Icelandic Free State (also described as a Commonwealth) had only one public office, that of the Lawspeaker (
Lögsögumaðr
). There are no precedents for this office in Scandinavia, so it was a uniquely Icelandic institution. The
goðar
elected the Lawspeaker on the first day of the Althing for a three-year renewable term immediately after the outgoing Lawspeaker had opened proceedings. It was quite common for Lawspeakers to be re-elected: the longest serving Lawspeaker, Skapti Thórodsson, served for nine successive terms (1004 –1030). The Lawspeaker’s most important duty was to recite the Icelandic laws from the Law Rock. Until the Icelandic laws were written down in 1117 –18, the Lawspeaker had to recite the laws from memory: one third of the laws were recited in each year of the Lawspeaker’s term of office. If in doubt, the Lawspeaker could consult with five or more
lögmenn
(legal experts) before reciting the laws. The Lawspeaker was also chairman of the
Lögretta
but he had no executive authority.

Although the Althing was ultimately controlled by the
goðar
, decision-making tended to be consensual as they needed to consider the opinions of their ‘thingmen’ (followers). Failure to do this might lead them to transfer their allegiance to another
goði
. From around 965, legal disputes that could not be resolved at the district things were heard at the Althing’s
fjórðungsdómar
(‘quarter courts’), named after Iceland’s four geographical quarters, the Court of the North Quarter, East Quarter, South Quarter and West Quarter. Around 1005 a fifth court was constituted to adjudicate in cases that had become deadlocked in the Quarter Courts. The
goðar
were expected to argue the cases of their followers at the Althing. The
goðar
were also expected to help enforce judgments on behalf of their followers as the Icelandic state had no law enforcement officers. In return for their advocacy and protection, the
goðar
could call upon the armed support of their followers in their feuds with other
goðar
. And those
goðar
with the largest numbers of followers to back them up, naturally enjoyed more influence at the Althing. For many of those who attended the Althing, however, legislation and litigation were side issues. The Althing brought the widely dispersed people of Iceland together like no other occasion, making it the most important social event of the year. There people could meet their friends and relatives, strike business deals and arrange marriages. Tradesmen and entertainers flocked to Thingvellir to tender to their every need.

Conversion
to
Christianity

The Althing was highly successful at resolving problems: not the least of its achievements was ensuring a peaceful conversion to Christianity in 999 or 1000. In 995 Olaf Tryggvason became king of Norway. Only a year before, Olaf had converted to Christianity and he now set about persuading his subjects of the virtues of the new religion by force rather than preaching. Like other Christian medieval European rulers, Olaf saw pagans as fair game, exempt from the normal rules of diplomacy. In 995 Olaf had intervened in Orkney to impose Christianity and it was clear that he would do the same in the Faeroes and Iceland as soon as the opportunity arose. By this time, many Icelanders had converted to Christianity as a result of missionary activity. The first missionary was a young Icelander called Thorvald Kodransson (‘the Far-Travelled’) who had converted while in Germany. He returned to Iceland around 981, but enjoyed little success and was eventually outlawed after killing two men, ending his days in a monastery in Russia. Other equally violent missionaries soon followed. Early in his reign, King Olaf sent Stefnir Thorgilsson, an Icelandic convert, to convert the Icelanders. He set about destroying pagan temples and in response the Althing called on families to prosecute any family members heard blaspheming the old gods. After Stefnir failed to make progress, Olaf sent an intemperate German priest called Thangbrand, who travelled the countryside with a small band of converts, preaching and killing anyone who spoke against him. Thangbrand’s mission also failed and, in 999, King Olaf turned to economic sanctions and hostage-taking. He closed Norwegian ports to Icelanders – a severe blow because Norway was Iceland’s main trading partner – and imprisoned all the Icelanders then in Norway. Olaf threatened to maim or kill his prisoners unless Iceland accepted Christianity.

Under this intense pressure, the Icelanders divided into pro- and anti-Christian camps. The Christians threatened to set up their own parallel system of things and courts, pushing the country to the edge of civil war. Things came to a head at the Althing in 1000, but violence was averted by treating the issue like a blood feud that needed settling and submitting it to arbitration. Mediators chose the Lawspeaker, Thorgeir Thorkelsson, to settle dispute. Thorgeir was a pagan but had strong links with Christians too, making him acceptable to both sides. According to the account of the conversion in
Íslendingabók
, Thorgeir spent a day and a night huddled under a cloak while he deliberated his decision. After receiving assurances from both sides that they would abide by his ruling, Thorgeir announced ‘that all people should become Christian and that those who here in the land were yet unbaptised should be baptized...’ If they wished, people might sacrifice to old gods in private but it would be outlawry if this practice were verified by witnesses
.
Even though pagans were in the majority, Thorgeir’s compromise was accepted peacefully and there was no pressure to revert to paganism, even when King Olaf was killed later that year. When he returned to his home in the north of Iceland, Thorgeir demonstrated his own commitment to the decision by demolishing his pagan shrine and throwing its idols into a waterfall, known since as Goðafoss (‘falls of the gods’). A few years later, with the crisis safely passed, pagan worship was outlawed completely.

By following their traditional methods for resolving disputes the Icelanders not only avoided violence but also denied King Olaf the pretext, which a civil war might have offered, to assert any kind of sovereignty over their country. Olaf was more successful in the case of the Faeroe Islands. In 1000, Olaf commissioned Sigmundur Brestisson, a Faeroese exile in Norway, to convert the Faeroe islanders to Christianity and to bring them under Norwegian sovereignty. The leader of the pagan party was Tróndur of Gøtu, who publicly cursed Christianity by Thor’s hammer. Sigmundur and his men broke into Tróndur’s home one night and offered him the choice of conversion or having his head cut off. Confronted with such a persuasive theological argument, Tróndur chose Christianity and the rest of the islanders took the hint and followed suit. Sigmundur’s methods of conversion made him a hated figure and he was murdered in 1005, but the islands remained under Norwegian sovereignty.

The Gunnbjorn Skerries

Once the Norse had settled Iceland, it was probably only a matter of time before some storm-driven seafarer discovered Greenland. Some time between 900 and 930, Gunnbjorn Ulf-Krakuson was blown off course on a voyage from Norway to Iceland and sighted a group of islands to the west of Iceland, known after him as the Gunnbjorn Skerries. This is generally reckoned to be the first European sighting of Greenland and, as Greenland is geologically part of North America, of the American continent. The exact location of the skerries is uncertain. Ivar Bardarson, a fourteenth-century Norwegian traveller, located them two days sail due west of Snæfellsnes on Iceland’s west coast. This makes it most likely that the skerries were the Sermiligaaq archipelago, a group of ice-free islands east of Angmagsalik on Greenland’s heavily glaciated east coast. Gunnbjorn did not land on the skerries and his discovery excited little interest at the time because there was still good land to be had in Iceland: Gunnbjorn himself settled there. As the Icelandic population grew, people were forced onto more marginal land. In 975 –6 there was a cold summer and the grass didn’t grow well enough for many farmers to harvest enough hay to keep their livestock alive through the winter. People died of starvation. Gunnbjorn’s skerries began to look more attractive and in 978 Snæbjorn Galti set off to look for them with twenty-four followers. They built a house on the skerries and spent a dreadful winter completely snowed in until the beginning of March. Confinement did no one’s mood any good, quarrels broke out, turned bloody and after Snæbjorn was murdered the would-be colonists left for Norway.

Brattahlid

The first successful Norse settlement in Greenland was led by the red-bearded, red-haired Erik Thorvaldson, better known as Erik the Red. Born in Norway, Erik emigrated to Iceland while still a child, after his father was exiled for a blood feud. As all the best land was claimed, his family were forced to settle on Iceland’s barren and icy south-east coast. When he grew up, Erik’s attempts to claim better land for himself involved him in many disputes and several killings and in the early 980s he was outlawed for three years. As he had to leave the country anyway, Erik sailed off to look for Gunnbjorn’s skerries, promising to return if he found them. Erik made land on Greenland’s east coast, near a prominent glacier, which became known as Blåserk (‘blue shirt’), probably Rigny Bjerg, well north of the Arctic Circle. Erik followed the inhospitable coast south, eventually rounding Cape Farewell, Greenland’s most southerly point. Sailing north again Erik discovered Greenland’s eastern fjords, in the sheltered reaches of which he found good grazing land and birch woods. The land was completely uninhabited but Erik found the remains of boats and dwellings along the shores. These were relics of the prehistoric Dorset Inuit people who had abandoned the area a century before because of climate change. The Norse expansion into the North Atlantic coincided with the beginning of the Medieval Warm Period, a period lasting from
c.
900 –
c.
1250 when the climate of the North Atlantic region was warmer than the long-term average. The Inuit way of life depended on seal hunting, which was best done in late winter and spring when the seals were exposed on sea ice. In the warmer climate, the eastern fjords had become largely ice-free so the Inuit retreated north to better hunting grounds.

Erik spent three summers exploring Greenland before returning to Iceland, where he hoped to persuade others to join him in colonising the eastern fjords. A born salesman, Erik decided to call his discovery Greenland ‘because men would be drawn to go there if it had an attractive name’. Thanks to the recent famine, many families were interested and when Erik headed back to Greenland next summer, twenty-five ships set sail with him.
Íslendingabók
mentions that this happened fourteen or fifteen years before Iceland accepted Christianity, that is around 985 –6. Of the twenty-five ships that set out with Erik, only fourteen made it safely to the eastern fjords: the rest turned back or were lost at sea. Thorbjorn, a friend of Erik’s who emigrated to Greenland a few years after the initial settlement, brought thirty people with him in his ship. If this was typical, the Greenland colony would have started with little more than 400 people. However, this was still enough to found two settlements, the larger Eastern Settlement (Eystrbyggð) in the south around modern Qaqortoq, and the smaller Western Settlement (Vestribyggð) 300 miles further north around Nuuk. Later, a small Middle Settlement was founded half way between the two. The settlement was organised on Icelandic lines with an annual thing that Erik presided over in a role similar to the Lawspeaker’s.

Erik’s own estate was at Brattahlið (‘steep slope’), about 60 miles from the open sea at the head of Tunuliarfik Fjord, which in his day was known as Eriksfjord. Erik’s descendents continued to live at Brattahlið until the fifteenth century. Excavations at Brattahlið have uncovered the stone foundations of three longhouses with associated outbuildings, a probable thing place, a probable forge, and the foundations of a stone church. All of the stone structures date probably to the thirteeth or fourteenth centuries. In all likelihood, Erik’s farm was built of turf, like contemporary buildings in Iceland, and its traces have been destroyed by the later buildings. The church had an associated burial ground containing around 144 burials, some of which had gravestones: one was engraved with a short runic inscription reading ‘Ingibjørg’s grave’. In the middle of the burial ground excavators discovered the traces of a very small turf church with an interior space of little more than 6 feet broad and 11 feet wide. The turf walls are so thick that its external dimensions are around 12 feet broad by 15 feet long. This building can be directly connected to Erik’s wife, Thjodhild (another Icelander who could trace her descent back to Cerball mac Dúnlainge). While visiting King Olaf’s court in Norway in
c.
1000, Erik’s son Leif converted to Christianity. When he was ready to return home, King Olaf asked Leif to preach Christianity in Greenland and provided him with a priest to baptise and instruct the people. Erik was not pleased by his son’s conversion and refused to accept the new faith. Thjodhild, however, embraced Christianity at once and built a small church near their farm, where she and other new converts prayed. Erik became even more unhappy after Thjodhild’s conversion: she refused to sleep with him any more because he was a pagan.

To begin with the Greenland colony flourished. By around 1100, the colony’s population had grown to around 4,000 people. The Eastern Settlement had 190 farms, twelve parish churches, an Augustinian monastery, a Benedictine nunnery, and a rather modest cathedral at Garðar (now Igaliku). The Western Settlement had ninety farms and four churches, while the Middle Settlement had twenty farms. Sheep, goat and cattle rearing formed the basis of the economy, but in sheltered areas it was even possible to grow a little barley. The colony was not self-sufficient as it lacked timber, grain and iron. Fortunately, the colony had unique access to valuable resources that were much in demand in Europe: walrus ivory and hide (used for making ships’ ropes), sealskin (for waterproof cloaks and boots), polar bear skins, and gyrfalcons. Gyrfalcons were the most expensive of all birds used for the elite medieval sport of falconry. In the Islamic world a gyrfalcon cost around 1,000 gold dinars, the equivalent of £120,000 ($186,000) today. Narwhal tusks were even more valuable: medieval Europeans believed them to be the horns of the mythical unicorn and would pay more than their weight in gold for them. The Greenlanders obtained these products on annual hunting expeditions to the Norðsetr, the area around Disko Island, about 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Recently, a probable Norse camp has been found at Tanfield Valley on Baffin Island’s south coast, suggesting that hunting expeditions may have been made to this area too.