Miller, William Ian. Making Sense of the Sources

• Author: Miller, William Ian
• Title: Making Sense of the Sources
• Published in: Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law and Society in Saga Iceland
• Place, Publisher:  Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 1990
• Pages: 43-76
• E-text:
• Reference: Miller, William Ian. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

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Annotation

Miller opens his discussion of the available source material by noting the complications inherent to the interpretation of textual evidence that is not just temporally displaced from the period that it purports to depict but also in some cases internally inconsistent and skewed by literary convention. He acknowledges the untenability of reading works of narrative literature as representations of absolute historical truth, but nevertheless advocates for their utility as indicators of social and legal norms in ‘Saga Iceland’. Specifically, he argues that the oral tradition on which the sagas were based must have been preserved well enough to retain the essence of the social and legal conventions that the sagas depict, even if the particulars of the overall mentality therein may have been altered and to varying degrees anachronistic. Miller examines in detail an excerpt from the tale of Þorsteinn stangarhögg to illustrate how the saga narratives can reflect legal and social conventions, and in doing so identifies another potential obstacle: that English translations of certain terms and phrases from the original Old Icelandic often prove inadequate because they do not retain the complete cultural context associated with the original term. He cross-examines the literature with the legal codes in order to attain a fuller understanding of the social and legal context of insult and injury, particularly with regard to how the processes behind the dispensation of justice and the payment of compensation were handled. The economy of honor inherent to medieval Icelandic society as represented in the sagas made the prospect of a bloodless settlement uncertain due to the mutable condition of one’s reputation, a situation that could be augmented by the exchange of explicit, symbolic, or even accidental insults and the obsession with emerging from a conflict without any loss of face. Peaceful resolution of conflict, as Miller’s examination indicates, tended to be contingent on the mutual magnanimity and humility of both parties involved, as well as their willingness to ignore the pressure exerted upon them in the form of goading by family and friends. While likely far from explicitly accurate historical accounts, the saga literature retains considerable social historical value in Miller’s view.

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See also

• Miller, William Ian. Introduction: The Institutional Setting and the Ranks of Persons
• Miller, William Ian. Some Aspects of the Economy
• Miller, William Ian. Householding Patterns
• Miller, William Ian. The Bonds of Kinship
• Miller, William Ian. Feud, Vengeance, and the Disputing Process
• Miller, William Ian. Law and Legal Process
• Miller, William Ian. Peacemaking and Arbitration
• Miller, William Ian. Concluding Observations

Links

• Written by: Samuel Levin
• Icelandic/English translation: