[Rq-rules] Spells & Socie

[Andrew Larsen]

Saga literature isn¹t historically reliable.  It¹s eminently clear that the
13th century authors freely manipulated, made up, or ignored actual events
as they chose in order to produce a more satisfying story.  The Sagas
preserve memories of Norweigans departing Norway for Iceland, but even if
those memories are accurately preserved, which is highly unlikely, they are
still a highly biased set of memories, since they don¹t include the opinions
and memories of those who chose to stay and accept Harald as king.  The
depictions of Harald Fairhair as a tyrannical ruler are not reliable
indicators of how Harald actually governed, any more than American
traditions of a tyrannical George III are indications of George III¹s actual
political power.  The Sagas also embody a lot of 13th century Icelandic
sentiment, so depictions of tyrannical Harald Fairhair may well owe more to
worries about Iceland¹s relationship to Norway in the 13th century than in
the 10th.  

Andrew E. Larsen
"But for three years I had roses, and I apologized to nobody."
Alan Moore--V for Vendetta


On 3/11/08 10:03 AM, "Bjorn Stolen" <stolenbjorn at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Well, I'm not sure that either of you are wrong. It all depends on who's
> perspective you take.
> Take Norway for example:
> For individual people in norway the pre-kingdom offered a lot of freedom. Most
> of the sagalitterature and the culutre described in there is about
> individualsm and freedom written by decendants of peassants escaping from the
> emerging kingdom of norway. Iceland was finally subdued and incorporated into
> Norway some 200 years after the viking-age, an age that marks the
> high-water-mark of norway as a kingdom. Norwegian culture prospered, as did
> it's martial powers, controlling Greenland, most of the small british islands,
> parts of scotland, parts of present sweeden + iceland and feroe islands. For
> most norwegian peassants, living in feudal Norway was far from fun, beeing
> taxed and pestered by rivalling kings and heavy building-projects (most
> cathedrals and fantastic buildings are built on the blood of hundreds of
> drafted peassants).
>  
> The black plage came -weirdly enough as a relief for the peassants that
> survived it, as it practically erazed the norwegian kingdom, that colapsed
> into an elective kingdom, where the king had very little practical power, as
> he was bankerupt, and a church with big financial problems, forced to grant
> peassants more freedom, or they would simply move to some abandoned farm
> outside the church's control. In this period, the norse culture and literature
> died out, though, and present Norways myread of dialects has it's origion in
> this pereod (late 14th century/15th century), when norway was decentrelized,
> with local pariches gouverning themselves, and with loads of foregin
> oppertunists, from Hansa-states, netherlands and scotland exploring and
> enjoying the weak central gouvernment, making mutually agreeable deals with
> the locals. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 07:03:38 -0500
>> From: styopa1 at gmail.com
>> To: rq-rules at crashbox.com
>> Subject: Re: [Rq-rules] Spells & Socie
>> 
>> Yeah, what did the Romans ever give us?
>> Seriously, you're just being ironic, right?  There are PLENTY of reasons that
>> kings are the most successful form of government in pre-technological eras.
>> It's non-trivial that just about every post-stone-age society developed some
>> sort of autocratic leadership centered on an individual.
>> 
>> On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 11:44 PM, Fred Vogel <darthvogel at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> The only blessings kings ever offered to the land was that of taxation!
>> 
> 
> 
> Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! MSN Messenger
> <http://clk.atdmt.com/AVE/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/>
> 
> _______________________________________________
> RQ-Rules mailing list
> RQ-Rules at crashbox.com
> http://crashbox.com/mailman/listinfo/rq-rules


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.thinbits.net/pipermail/rq-rules/attachments/20080311/fbc151b7/attachment.html