astralcodexten.substack.com
It's a book review submitted to Scott Alexander's blog for his book review contest(not by me, I just enjoyed reading it). It a summary of an Icelandic Saga that's half-fable, half-historical record of a series of legal proceedings in medieval Iceland, and how society that teeters between civilization and barbarism.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Reading the Sagas was, for me, more an exploration of emotions and will to action much more so than it was about the importance of some legal process or old Iceland. Your brother was killed, now what do you do? Do people not have contemporary emotions towards that kind of scenario?
Even the overarching 'Christianization' narrative can be sidelined when reading. Kári sparing Flosi might be read as a Christian moment, but it can just as well be read as a human moment, or an Icelandic moment, or a Kári moment. The same can be said for Njál, which acts less than Jesus like on multiple occasions.
The story itself is very character driven, even if it doesn't follow a modern formula for characters. You get very clear introductions and descriptions of who the people are and what they look like, if they have done anything of note or if they are related to anyone of note. These characters then fall into disputes with one another. They are not defendant A and defendant B. These are real people who make good decisions and bad decisions and they are treated as such.
To that end I'm not all the fond of the broader narratives of Christianization or American notions of freedom. You can contextualize the story in such a way, sure. But you can also contextualize it in the Hávamál:
In that sense we are not living in civilization, just the echoes of cowardice and submission of those who came before us and failed to maintain honor and dignity. And our tradition is to carry on with their cowardice and indignity in return for the same poultry amount of silver shillings some loser, whose name was never recorded, had accepted in return for swallowing his humanity.
In any case, formatting the story to the limited emotional bandwidth of libertarianism or religion is doing it a disservice. Forgiveness did not come about because of Jesus, and liberty was nowhere to be found in the day to day life of Icelandic farmers. There is, however, a whole lot of humanity on display and the story, in my opinion, is much better read as such.
That's certainly a very different take than the reviewer's. Their attitude was that if instead of accepting silver, a person sought blood to avenge their kin, blood feuds would never end. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. But 50 silver shillings for an eye lets people get back to stability.
I'm sure there is, but there are also tons of stories with deep emotional resonance. I had to read a couple every year in highschool English. I found the historical/political/legal analysis much more interesting.
I know that's their point, and that's a very common point being made, but it loses all significance. The humanity exists inbetween killing and making amends. Swinging from one to the other. I think 'everyone', on some level, understands that just the same as people obviously understand you can't avenge every killing with more killing. Which equally goes for the people in the story.
As an example from real life, it seems very self serving and onesided to pin civilization on the meek at the same time we have hundreds of thousands of people dying from corporations selling extremely addictive drugs, where they use part of the profit to pay themselves away from any serious consequence. When 'everyone' knows many of the instigators of that system should just be tortured to death for all the harm they've caused, and that no amount of money can right their wrongs.
To that end there are tons of stories with deep historical/political/legal analysis, and they all fail to extrapolate any meaningful reality based observations since they exist as vessels to carry a theory and not as an extension of reality. I think that minimizing the humanity and reality of the story so it can exist as a self congratulatory vessel for the endlessly meek is doing it a great disservice that also distorts it quite heavily.
I don't think the instigators should be tortured to death. I think your quotes on the everyone are very wide.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link