Society, Sagas, and Power
Publisher's description:
The history of medieval Europe is incomplete if it does not take Iceland into account. Jesse Byock's reassessment of medieval Iceland uses all the available sourcesthe medieval Icelanders' historical writings, extensive saga literature, and intricate lawsto explore the way Iceland's social order functioned.
"Byock's dissection of selected sagas gives a schema (as one might expect from Iceland) which is unusually neat without being incapable of complexity. . . . The most fascinating parts of Byock's book discuss the ways in which saga characters operate within a system of checks and balances to gain their ends."—Tom Shippey, London Review of Books
"In this stimulating and important work, Byock has succeeded in rehabilitating the Icelandic sagas as important sources for the social and economic history of the Free State (c. 930s to 1262-64). . . . Highly recommended."—C. W. Clark, Choice
"Valuable both to historians and to literary scholars."—Susannah J. Baker, Mid-America Folklore
"Byock has written an important and authoritative account of how one collectivity of human beings avoided the Hobbesian war of all against all in a society that allowed almost no role for government."—Contemporary Sociology
"Byock's book is a tour-de-force of historical argument. He brilliantly reconstructs the inner workings of an intriguing society, not elsewhere to be found in the Western world."—David Herlihy, History Book Club