Medieval Iceland

When Iceland’s first settlers emigrated from Norway in the ninth century, they took a number a things with them. They took their families and they took their slaves, but they also took their lawbooks.

For the first three hundred years of settlement, law became the central pillar of Icelandic society. In a new land, with no indigenous population and scant resources, the Icelanders did without a monarch. Instead they created a commonwealth with a detailed and complex legal system which guaranteed the rights of the freemen of Iceland. (This included the rapidly emancipated slaves)

Now, this wasn’t some idyllic, egalitarian society, women had few rights and bloodfeuding was common. However, medieval Icelandic society is interesting because when contrasted to the increasingly hierarchical political culture developing across medieval Europe, it is a historical anomaly.

In Jesse Byock’s fascinating book “Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas and Power” this Icelandic society is brought to life, yet it is also examined in an unusual way. Byock takes Iceland’s most famous literary product, the sagas, and uses them alongside traditional historical sources to illustrate how this society would have functioned. The result is a brilliant book that breathes life into an esoteric topic that few people would consider ever reading about.

‘Capability’ Brown

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was an English landscape gardener who lived in the mid-Georgian period and was notorious for creating fake wilderness’ by moving hills, damming rivers and flooding small valleys.

He earned his nickname ‘Capability’ because he would tell his clients that their estates had great “capability” for landscape improvement. Generally this improvement would involve ripping out old formal gardens and replacing them with smooth, bland acres of undulating grass and serpentine lakes.

In fact Brown was so fond of landscape improvement that Richard Owen Cambridge once quipped that he hoped to die before Brown so that he could “see heaven before it was improved.”

Statues of Historians #2

W.E.H. Lecky

William Edward Hartpole Lecky was an Irish historian born in 1838 at Newtown park near Dublin. Although he originally studied divinity and published books on the history of morals he is primarily remembered for writing his multi-volume History of England during the Eighteenth Century. From this work was drawn his now canonical History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century.

His statue was created by John Goscombe in 1904 and stands on the south side of the Campanile in the Library Square of Trinity College Dublin.

(image credit: pilgab)

Statues of Historians #1

 Jean-Pierre Cros-Mayrevieille

Jean-Pierre Cros-Mayrevieille was a French historian born in 1810 just outside of Carcassonne. He dedicated a life of study to the social and economic history of the Aude region and in particular to the ruined cité of Carcassonne. In 1839 he discovered the tomb of Bishop Guillaume Radulphe in the south chapel of St. Nazaire and managed to secure the cathedral’s subsequent preservation by having it listed under the Historic Monuments Act. In 1849 he led a campaign to save to cité from demolition by the French government and hence is considered the ‘first saviour’ in the story of the cité’s preservation. His work culminated in 1850 with the publication of his book Monuments militaires et religieux de la cité de Carcassonne.

His bust sits in the Place du Chateau in the cité of Carcassonne.

(image credit: Pinpin)