1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910784616703321

Autore

Miller William Ian <1946->

Titolo

Bloodtaking and peacemaking [[electronic resource] ] : feud, law, and society in Saga Iceland / / William Ian Miller

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, c1990

ISBN

1-282-08992-7

0-226-52682-8

9786612089923

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (407 p.)

Disciplina

306.094912

306.2/5/09491209021

Soggetti

Customary law - Iceland

Kinship (Law) - Iceland

Sagas

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Spelling -- Prologue -- 1. Introduction: The Institutional Setting and the Ranks of Persons -- 2. Making Sense of the Sources -- 3. Some Aspects of the Economy: The Problem of Negotiating and Classifying Exchanges -- 4. Householding Patterns -- 5. The Bonds of Kinship -- 6. Feud, Vengeance, and the Disputing Process -- 7. Law and Legal Process -- 8. Peacemaking and Arbitration -- Concluding Observations -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Dubbed by the New York Times as "one of the most sought-after legal academics in the county," William Ian Miller presents the arcane worlds of the Old Norse studies in a way sure to attract the interest of a wide range of readers. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking delves beneath the chaos and brutality of the Norse world to discover a complex interplay of ordering and disordering impulses. Miller's unique and engaging readings of ancient Iceland's sagas and extensive legal code reconstruct and illuminate the society that produced them. People in the saga world negotiated a maze of violent possibility, with strategies that frequently put life and limb in the balance. But there was a



paradox in striking the balance-one could not get even without going one better. Miller shows how blood vengeance, law, and peacemaking were inextricably bound together in the feuding process. This book offers fascinating insights into the politics of a stateless society, its methods of social control, and the role that a uniquely sophisticated and self-conscious law played in the construction of Icelandic society. "Illuminating."-Rory McTurk, Times Literary Supplement "An impressive achievement in ethnohistory; it is an amalgam of historical research with legal and anthropological interpretation. What is more, and rarer, is that it is a pleasure to read due to the inclusion of narrative case material from the sagas themselves."-Dan Bauer, Journal of Interdisciplinary History