[ssf] Iceland Re: [sheffield-anti-war-coalition] Bread and circuses!

[adam]

john wrote:

> http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/wasdin/wasdin10.html

> Space may be the final frontier, but the ocean is the frontier that can actually be populated now, and for less money. Living in international waters has a few distinct libertarian advantages: no government, taxes, or stupid laws. This would help to assure that the really nasty people (government, police, prosecutors, clergy, and god) would not want to join us, as they would not have the thieving, oppressive police state to help them with their plunder.     

"I must tell you now
  briefly how
  these people cognate
  to our own dominant race
  got to their Isle of Refuge,
  and then say
  a little of the character
  of their literature,
  but really only as
  a kind of introduction to the subject.

  I have said before
  that a kind of native feudalism
  developed of itself in Norway as in England:
    a certain number
    of the old tribal chiefs yielded,
    generally very sullenly,
    to the claims of the overlord,
    but the bolder spirits
    could not stomach it
    and resisted King Harald Fairhair,
    with whom indeed
    history in the North begins,
    with all their might:
      this resistance culminated
      in the great battle of Hafrsfiorð (Goat-firth)
      on the Norway coast
      in which the king was triumphant,
      and the malcontent chiefs
      had to submit
      or seek their fortunes elsewhere:
         Russia,
         Normandy,
         England,
         Ireland,
         the islands of Scotland
         felt the effects
         for good and for evil
         of the emigration which followed:
             but where the Norsemen
             settled themselves
             amongst important populations
             whom their desperate courage had overcome,
             as notably in Normandy,
             they gradually mingled
             with the native population
             and soon lost their language and traditions.


   With the settlers in Iceland
   it was different:
      the land was uninhabited,
      they brought with them
      their tribal customs and traditions
      and kept them for long
      together with their language:
         this of course
         was the deliberate intention
         of the emigrants:
            the chief who fled before
            'kings and scoundrels'
            as we are told
            the pillars of his high-seat
            on which Thor,
            the favourite God of the North was carved,
            and when they neared the land
            threw them overboard
            for the wind and tide to carry:
                then when he landed
                the chief went along the coast
                till he found the spot
                'where Thor was come aland'.


   And there once more
   the home was founded,
   the chief claiming the land he needed
   by going around it with fire:
      of course
      many adventurers came out
      who had so such pretensions
      to leadership as these
      besides the freemen and freedmen
      who went out with the chief
      and his thralls
      many of whom he freed
      and gave land to
      on his coming to the new country;
          all these would form
          a kind of following to the chief,
          who presently on settling
          formed a priesthood
          as it was called
          and undertook the necessary religious rites
          and the care and guardianship of the thingstead,
          the place of meeting,
          over which he presided,
          and which
          was what
          would now be called
          the seat of government,
          the parliament,
          and the law court of the district:
              there about the middle of June
              all the freemen of the district met,
              and quarrels were prosecuted
              or arranged, fines imposed,
              and offenses taken note of
              and dealt with,
              all in the open air;
                  no court being allowed
                  to be held within doors
                  or on cultivated ground
                  (ne en akri nè engi).


   All this sounds very systematic and orderly;
       and indeed in many of the sagas,
       whereof more hereafter,
       there is a great deal
       of law-quibbling of course
       always founded on custom and precedent.


    ... I may finish
    by saying a word
    on the present condition of Iceland:
        they have suffered very much there
        from bad seasons of late:
            but I cannot help thinking
            that in spite of that
            they could live there very comfortably
            if they were to extinguish individualism there:
                 the simplest possible form
                 of co-operative commonwealth
                 would suit their needs,
                 and ought not to be hard to establish;
                 as there is no crime there,
                 and no criminal class
                 or class of degradation
                 and education is universal:
                      and unless by some special perversity
                      should the question of politics stand in the way: 

                          the only persons
                          who would be losers by it
                          would be the present exploiters
                          of this brave and kind people:
                              and if these men were all shipped off to --
                              well to Davy Jones,
                              there would be many a dry eye
                              at their departure.

    I speak of this
    from the sincere affection
    I have for the Icelandic people
    who treated me so kindly when I was among them,
    and who are the descendants,
    and no unworthy ones,
    of the bravest men
    and the best tale-tellers
    whom the world has ever bred."


   One thing you must remember however,
   that though our present Society
   is founded on a state of things
   very like this,
   this state of things was really
   so very different from ours
   in spite of our using
   the same words as our forefathers,
   that many people find it
   a difficulty even in conceiving of it.

   Political society
   was not yet founded;
      personal relations between men
      were what was considered
      and not territorial:
         when a priest or chief
         moved as sometimes happened,
         many of his thing-men accompanied him,
         there was no political territorial unit
         to which loyalty was exacted.


--
http://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1887/iceland.htm
The Early Literature of the North - Iceland