What is the cultural context for “burying gold or silver in the ground for safekeeping” being punishable with Lesser…

6 thoughts on “What is the cultural context for “burying gold or silver in the ground for safekeeping” being punishable with Lesser…”

1. Paging goosemaster Jason Morningstar.

2. I don’t know precisely but my assumption is that wealth you have to hide is wealth ill-gotten.

3. Very cool! That was where my mind jumped to initially, but I wasn’t sure if someone had the skinny on the matter. Thanks!

4. Hello! I teach a university class on the Icelandic sagas, and from reading them and the gragas, I can tell you that Mr. Morningstar is correct–any action that has to be hidden is generally bad (hence their distinction between killing and murder, etc). Additionally, wealth and resources that are brought in from abroad should be shared and distributed as gifts. Despite the numerous blood feuds in the sagas, the Icelanders had several mechanisms in place to avoid violent confrontations, and conditional reciprocity was one of them–if you have friends, you give them gifts. If you want someone to settle a case legally and let you arbitrate, you give them gifts. You receive gifts graciously, earning honor (social capital) and bestowing it. To hoard wealth would be to cut yourself off from the cooperative mechanisms that let Iceland work as an independent commonwealth for 350 years. 

   Lesser outlawry (3 year exile from Iceland) was a way to punish someone for offences while still letting him come back and redeem himself. If someone did it right, they could go abroad, gets lots of wealth and honor, make connections, kill people who weren’t going to chase after you, and come back to show that he’d learned his lesson by, for example, sharing some of his wealth.  

5. Avedan Raggio that is fantastic! Thank you for such a detailed response! That sheds a lot of light on how to read some of the laws and punishments in SotI. Really great stuff 🙂

6. Alfred Rudzki Happy to help! 

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