Critique de Choice

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). The value of the work lies in Byock's use of the sagas to illuminate advocacy, whereby chieftains gained power and wealth through their knowledge of the law used on behalf of farmers at meetings of the assemblies and courts. In a society whose basis was a consensual system of government, law and its manipulation played a crucial role in maintaining order because farmers had no executive power to carry out their legal rights. Numerous instances of transfers of wealth (usually land) to chieftains in return for "friendship," protection, and support in legal affairs are cited in the sagas. Farmers transferring allegiance from overaggressive chieftains to others formed a counterbalance to usurpation of supreme power by any one chieftain. So, too, the nonterritorial basis of the chieftain's authority checked the acquisition of a landed power base. Useful maps; extensive bibliography. Byock's work complements Kirsten Hastrups's Culture and History in Medieval Iceland (1985). Highly recommended for upper-division undergraduates and above. -C. W. Clark, St. Andrews Presbyterian College