The Icelandic Free State


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For those who claim that a libertarian form of government
will not work in the real world and has never been tried,
You might wish to study the history of a country that had
just such a government for 300 years...



The Icelandic Free State

by Loren Cobb

As I write this it has been snowing steadily for three days,
and the world outside is white beyond white. My cat and I
are gathered warm around the hearth, thinking about another
cold and snowy place one thousand years in the past: the
Free State of Iceland. Here is the story.

In the year 866 Norway was little more than a collection of
small coastal kingdoms, smaller chiefdoms, and individual
farms, the whole united only by common traditions and
language. The richest agricultural lands of Norway were in
Vestfold, a coastal zone to the west of Oslo. Harald
Fairhair, proud King of Vestfold and beneficiary of its
agricultural riches and shipbuilding prowess, began in that
year to unify of all Norway under his rule.

In this Harald was merely continuing a centuries-old
European expansion of feudal powers to every corner of the
continent, but to the independent farmers of Norway, who had
never owed fief or paid land tax to anyone, the sudden
arrival of royal tax collectors came as a rude shock. By
ancient custom and law, the independent landowners of Norway
owned their land in allodial title, free of any tax or
feudal service obligation. They weren't about to give up
those rights without a fight.

As told in the Heimskringla saga of Iceland, Harald's ships
defeated the assembled forces of all the petty kings in a
naval battle at Hafrsfjord. In the climax of the battle the
great berserker Thor Haklang laid his ship alongside King
Harald's, and the fighting was hand-to-hand between the
king's men and crazed berserk warriors clad only in
wolfskins. Thor Haklang fell on that day, and all of Norway
soon fell under iron-fisted feudal rule.

For each province in his new kingdom, Harald appointed a
jarl to give judgments at law, to impose fines, to collect
taxes, and to raise an armed militia. As told and retold in
scores of Icelandic sagas, there were many landowners who
could not accept the new legal and social order. Beginning
in the 880s, a Norwegian diaspora began. Disgruntled farmers
and chieftains outfitted ships, then rounded up their
cattle, wives, slaves, and retainers, and set sail for
freedom in the outlying islands of the Viking realm: the
F?roes, the Shetlands, the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and above
all, Iceland.


Iceland: The New Frontier

Not much at all was known about Iceland in those days, other
than that it was empty, fertile, and very remote. The island
had been discovered in 850 by a Viking ship that was blown
off course, but the first permanent settlements began only
in 874. Given their twin needs for freedom and distance from
King Harald, it was almost ideal for the families of the
Norwegian diaspora. A land rush ensued.

As recorded in the Icelandic Landn mabok ("Book of the Land
Taking"), farming families by the hundreds set sail for
Iceland, each hoping to find and claim a place in some
secluded fjord where they could disappear from tax
collectors and feudal jarls forever. The earliest settlers
claimed enormous tracts, but they were accused by later
settlers of taking too much. In the end King Harald himself
set the rule: no man could take possession of an area larger
than he and his crew could carry a cauldron of fire across
in a single day.

There was a different rule for a female head of household:
she could take only as much land as she could walk around
from dawn to sunset on a spring day, while leading a
two-year-old well-fed heifer. At least one woman, Aud the
Deep-Minded (Auor Ketilsdottir), laughed at that rule and
claimed a huge spread. By 930 all useful land had been
claimed, and the era of the land-taking was over.


How to Govern?

The great question for the new nation was how to set up a
government that freedom-loving Icelanders could tolerate.
They wanted a society with no king, no jarls, no sheriffs,
no jails, no taxes, no feudal obligations whatsoever. What
did that leave? Was it even possible? The Icelanders' answer
had elements of genius; it survived peacefully and
successfully for more than three centuries at a time when
the rest of Europe was convulsed with wars, crusades, mass
migrations, famines, and troubles without end.

An essential and unique feature of Icelandic society in
those times was the complete absence of towns and villages.
Each farm stood by itself as a self-contained economic and
social unit, consisting of the farmer and his wife and
children, their unmarried relatives, foster children,
slaves, employees, and indigents living under the protection
of the farmer. Every farmer kept the peace within his
domain, insofar as he was able, but disputes between farmers
required something further, some social mechanism for
conflict resolution that didn't act like an overbearing
feudal lord.

Icelandic society of one thousand years ago did not use
writing. History was entirely oral, in the form of sagas
that were repeated over and over as evening entertainment
around the central hearth of the long houses. The many laws
of the land were memorized word for word; in fact one of the
principle duties of the leader of the legislature - the
"law-speaker" - was to recite one third of the laws every
year at their annual meeting. It was a very litigious
society, despite the absence of written law - everyone, it
seemed, knew every wrinkle and detail of the law by heart,
and played the angles for their best advantage. Every famous
legal case that established a precedent or revealed a defect
in the law quickly became the subject of its own saga, and
in that way became known to everyone.

The annual meeting of representatives of all the people of
Iceland, known as the althing, was established in 930 for
the purpose of reviewing and amending laws, and hearing
disputes and accusations. Thus the althing was
simultaneously a legislature and a court of law. A person
could be found guilty of a capital crime at the althing, but
by design the althing lacked any public officials empowered
to apprehend or execute an outlaw. Instead, the outlaw had
to be captured and killed by private citizens - which in
practice meant the family and friends of the injured party.
By eliminating the role of peace officer, the law of Iceland
in effect regulated and gave legitimacy to the blood feud.
It was an astonishing experiment.


Privatized Justice

Icelanders quickly recognized that some farmers were much
better than others at handling religious matters, working
with the law, and mediating disputes. Even before the
althing was established, such a farmer was known as a gooi,
or chieftain (literally, speaker for the gods). When the
althing was founded the number of chieftains in all Iceland
was limited by law to just 39. Although they were chieftains
in origin, these were the people who gradually became the
representatives of the people at the althing. At the same
time, a chieftaincy became a private possession that was
normally inherited from father to son (women were
ineligible), or it could be sold, given as a gift, or shared
among several farmers.

Chieftains were not elected in formal elections, but the
weight and influence of a chieftain at the althing depended
critically on the number of Icelanders who declared that he
was their representative. Every free Icelander had to select
a chieftain to represent him; in doing so he became one of
the chieftain's thingmen. An incompetent chieftain would
lose thingmen, and his chieftaincy would rapidly lose value.
Finally he would either give it away, or share it with
someone more competent. Thus the people were represented in
the althing in a way that was, in the end, democratic - even
though the chieftaincy itself could be bought and sold at
will.

To obtain the support of a chieftain and all of his thingmen
in a dispute, an Icelander first needed to convince him to
take the case. Depending on the complexity of the dispute,
and the potential dangers involved - no dispute in Iceland
was ever free of physical danger - the chieftain would
propose a price for his assistance. This price was
customarily high, unless the petitioner was a close friend
or relation of the chieftain. Support, mediation, and
justice could be purchased, but only if you were willing and
able to pay the price.

Their system was set up so as to give disputants a powerful
incentive to settle disputes quickly, usually with one party
offering to pay the other a settlement. If that failed, then
each party would attempt to enlist the aid of a chieftain to
represent him in mediation, or before the althing. If either
of the disputants failed to find a chieftain, or didn't like
the decision that the mediator or the althing offered, then
his or her final recourse under the law was physical
violence, either a formal duel or a deadly attack (which had
to be preceded by a public announcement). The ever-present
threat of deadly violence served as a further incentive to
all parties to agree to a settlement, but the demands of
medieval honor occasionally outweighed any possible monetary
compensation. The Icelandic sagas are replete with the
tragic stories of multigenerational blood feuds that began
with a simple disagreement among parties too stubborn or too
concerned about their honor to agree to a financial
settlement.


The End of the Free State

Iceland lived at peace under the unwritten constitution of
the Free State for 300 years, from 930 to about 1230, with
little social disruption and what seems to have been a very
low level of serious crime (at least by medieval standards).
The powers of the chieftains were strictly limited by the
farmers and the power of the althing. It was not until 1230
that any strongman or warlord or feudal jarl could establish
a foothold - and this was not for lack of trying! There are
many theories about the decline of the Free State, but in
the end I think it was brought down by two influences that
seemed harmless or actually beneficial at the time: a
growing economy and the medieval Christian church.

At inception, and for at least a century thereafter, Iceland
was extremely poor. The agricultural surplus was razor thin,
and famines were frequent. Other than a small supply of
coins from Europe, there was no money: woven cloth served as
a medium of exchange in the place of coinage. In the 11th
century things began to improve, and by the 13th the richest
landowners had sufficient financial resources to seek
additional power within the political system. Some became
storgooar - strong chieftains - who were able to buy and
control other chieftains, to raise private militias, and to
reach out for support to the King of Norway. Their armed
struggles for power and influence created chaos beyond
anything that the constitution had been designed to handle.

An earlier crisis, equally threatening to the Free State,
had occurred in the year 1000. Christianity had appeared in
Iceland, just as in other parts of Scandinavia, and many new
converts wanted the althing to declare the entire island to
be Christian. King Olaf of Norway threatened to cut trade
relations with Iceland if the island did not convert. A
civil war could have resulted, but the full power of the
althing's conflict mediation system was brought to bear on
the dispute. In the end both sides agreed to abide by the
decision of one man, Thorgeir Thorkelsson, the law-speaker
of the althing. He was himself a follower of the ancient
?sir pagan faith, but with many ties of blood to the
Christian community. After great internal struggle, Thorgeir
ultimately chose to commit all Iceland to the new Christian
religion. This was the Free State's first severe test, which
it survived without descending into a ruinous civil war.

At first the new Christian Church of Iceland had little
supervision or influence from continental Europe. In the
year 1096 the althing made a critical mistake: it granted to
the Church the right to collect a tax for its support. From
its humble beginning as a small collection of chapels built
and owned by individual farmers, the Church gradually
acquired ownership of vast lands, wealth, and properties.
With property and wealth came power and influence, despite
legal restrictions and secular control by the althing. By
the 13th century the Church had become a powerful advocate
for introducing the feudal system into Iceland. Church
leaders gave King Haakon IV of Norway an opening to
political influence. It was all he needed.

By 1262 the althing concluded that it could neither suppress
the armed battles occurring between the new warlords, nor
control the Church. The only power they could see that could
dominate both was the Norwegian crown. Public meetings were
held in every local thing with royal representatives, to lay
out the options. After several years of agonized discussion,
the people of Iceland authorized their althing to make a
petition to King Haaken to take over sovereignty of the
state, to enforce peace among the warlords, and to
counterbalance the power and wealth of the Church.

Thus ended history's first and perhaps only experiment in
governing a democratic state with no executive, no armed
forces, no police or prosecutors, and no governmental
services of any kind.


Lessons?

The fate of the Icelandic Free State suggests to me that an
isolated libertarian society can thrive for centuries with a
constitutional democracy but no executive power whatsoever -
until it grows too rich, or allows any group to become too
powerful. Such a society appears to be stable as long as it
is relatively poor and isolated, but that stability
apparently declines with increasing economic surplus and
closeness to the outside world.

It may also be true that the stability of a purely
libertarian political system vanishes when any significant
non-state center of power emerges, grows rich, and throws
off its controls. Of course, non-state power centers are
dangerous for any form of government, not just libertarian.
One of the symptoms of a failing state is the appearance of
heavily-armed militias and private armies, as we have seen
in Afghanistan and Somalia.

Modern democratic societies protect themselves from violent
overthrow by maintaining a state-owned monopoly on organized
deadly force: the armed forces and the police. The stability
of the modern democratic state is found in the dynamic
balance of powers between the armed forces, the executive,
legislative, and judicial branches, and the free press. When
this dynamic balance fails, then police states and military
dictatorships arise. The Icelandic Free State ultimately
failed for lack of an executive backed by a monopoly on
organized deadly force. The althing and its institution of
justice - the regulated blood feud - proved too weak to
overcome the gathering strength of armed and ruthless
private militias, not to mention a rich and influential
church.

Those of us who work for peace throughout the world should
contemplate the example of the Icelandic Free State with
great care and attention. What social and spiritual
institutions - and what kind of dynamic balance of powers -
will be needed to preserve democracy and to prevent war and
oppression, in a world overflowing with economic and
military powers?

"With law, the land shall be built; without law, the land
shall be laid waste..." - Saga of Brennunj l, Iceland.


Sources:
* Byock, Jesse, Viking Age Iceland. London: Penguin, 2001.
* Miller, William Ian, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud,
Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. U. Chicago Press, 1990.
* The Sagas of Icelanders: A Collection. London: Viking
Penguin, 2000
* http://tqe.quaker.org/2008/TQE160-EN-Iceland.html


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