Power and Political Communication. Feasting and Gift Giving in Medieval Iceland
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Power and Political Communication. Feasting and Gift Giving in Medieval Iceland By Vidar Palsson A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor John Lindow, Co-chair Professor Thomas A. Brady Jr., Co-chair Professor Maureen C. Miller Professor Carol J. Clover Fall 2010 Abstract Power and Political Communication. Feasting and Gift Giving in Medieval Iceland By Vidar Palsson Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor John Lindow, Co-chair Professor Thomas A. Brady Jr., Co-chair The present study has a double primary aim. Firstly, it seeks to analyze the sociopolitical functionality of feasting and gift giving as modes of political communication in later twelfth- and thirteenth-century Iceland, primarily but not exclusively through its secular prose narratives. Secondly, it aims to place that functionality within the larger framework of the power and politics that shape its applications and perception. Feasts and gifts established friendships. Unlike modern friendship, its medieval namesake was anything but a free and spontaneous practice, and neither were its primary modes and media of expression. None of these elements were the casual business of just anyone. The argumentative structure of the present study aims roughly to correspond to the preliminary and general historiographical sketch with which it opens: while duly emphasizing the contractual functions of demonstrative action, the backbone of traditional scholarship, it also highlights its framework of power, subjectivity, limitations, and ultimate ambiguity, as more recent studies have justifiably urged. It emphasizes action as discourse. 1 for Bragi (1975-1998) friend and role model i Table of Contents Acknowledgements PART ONE Feasting and Gift Giving as Modes of Political Communication in Medieval Europe CHAPTER 1 I. Friends II. Demonstrating Bonds through Action III. Field and Framework of Social Action IV. Preliminary Note on Layout PART TWO Power and Hospitality in the Kings’ Sagas CHAPTER 2 I. Political Culture and the Kings’ Sagas II. Power and Hospitality III. Feasting, Politics, and Power Broking ii PART THREE Managing Bonds in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Iceland and its Sagas CHAPTER 3 I. Making Friends in the Icelandic Saga II. Making Friends in the Later Icelandic Commonwealth CHAPTER 4 I. Power and Limits of Action II. Generating Status through Action BIBLIOGRAPGY iii Acknowledgements Writing this dissertation was made possible by a group of people that never failed to guide, support and encourage. It is a pleasure to name them and thank them deeply and most sincerely. To my supervisors John and Carol, and to Tom and Maureen; it was my greatest fortune to become their student. Also at Berkeley, to Chris Ocker and Geoff Koziol. To my fellow students and friends, among whom are Charity Urbanski and Mike, and Tyler Lange and Rebecca Moyle. To Andrew Wawn for countless corrections and advice. To Guðrún Nordal and all the people at Árnastofnun in Reykjavík, where I wrote the best part in wonderful company; and especially to my “neighbors” Jóhanna Katrín and Grégory Cattaneo, for their endless help and enthusiasm. To Helgi Þorláksson, Torfi Tulinius, Sigurður Pétursson, Sverrir Jakobsson, Ármann Jakobsson, Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson, and Valur Ingimundarson, all at the University of Iceland. To Hafsteinn Þór Hauksson for reading the entire piece and helping me to file it. Last but not least, to my family and best friends Jónína, Hrafnkell and Þórdís, and to my parents. iv PART ONE Feasting and Gift Giving as Modes of Political Communication in Medieval Europe 1 Chapter 1 I Friends Feasting and gift giving were fundamental modes of political communication in medieval Iceland. Any exploration of the political narratives that twelfth-, thirteenth-, and fourteenth-century Iceland left behind soon produces references to veizlur and gjafir, “feasts” and “gifts,” with vinir and vinátta, “friends” and “friendship,” probably lurking close by. These feasts, gifts, and friendships are echoes of a political discourse widespread in pre-modern Europe. Although they bear the unmistakable marks of the specific and the individual – as do all historically particular things by their nature -, they also speak to discursive and ideological traditions extending further back than those habitually labeled medieval, to which they are closely related. These traditions unmistakably link formal hospitality and exchange with amici and amicitiae. The present study has a double primary aim. Firstly, it seeks to analyze the sociopolitical functionality of feasting and gift giving as modes of political communication in later twelfth- and thirteenth-century Iceland, primarily but not exclusively through its secular prose narratives. Secondly, it aims to place that functionality within the larger framework of the power and politics that shape its applications and perception. Unlike modern friendship, its medieval namesake was anything but a free and spontaneous practice, and neither were its primary modes and media of expression. None of these elements were the casual business of just anyone. The argumentative structure of the present study aims roughly to correspond to the preliminary and general historiographical 2 sketch with which it opens: while duly emphasizing the contractual functions of demonstrative action, the backbone of traditional scholarship, it also highlights its framework of power, subjectivity, limitations, and ultimate ambiguity, as more recent studies have justifiably urged. It emphasizes action as discourse. There are two particular polarizing concepts that have served decisively to redefine our modern notion of friendship from what it probably meant to most medieval people: the modern state and the free market. In societies where power has been institutionalized beyond the imagination of the medieval mind, and in which modes and media of disinterested exchange of goods occupy ideological as well as real positions thoroughly alien to medieval societies, the conceptualizations of social and political ties are bound to be profoundly reshaped and transformed. To the mind brought up in a world in which the state and the market have virtually established themselves as the natural and normative base-structures of society, with their institutionalized impersonality promoted as one of their greatest virtues, friendship is primarily private in nature. But to those brought up in a world where the exercise of power was far more personal and less centralized than is the case today, there could be no clear divide between the “private” and the “public.”1 Medieval Europe knew abstract institutions and offices of power, but society in its totality, the polity of men, was nevertheless seen as holistically consisting of, and practically being brought into existence by, personal ties of men. It was a world in which an institutionalized public sphere, with its characteristic monopoly of force – “government” or “administration” in statist parlance –,2 had not yet exiled personal ties and friendship to the private. It was a political culture that placed the highest value on personal and social ties, which were not seen to be more private in nature than the society that they formed.3 This way of thinking appears foreign to modern minds, that commonly associate the intermingling of political authority and personal friendship with corruption. The friendship we speak of in the political culture of post-Roman and pre-modern Europe gains meaning and context both in terms of the overall political development of the period as well as its cultural and philosophical origins. The former refers to the way in which politics was exercised and thought of in societies lacking political structures of the type or level (non-qualitatively) that we customarily describe by means of concepts of 1 An early critique of the application of modern constitutional and legal historical concepts to pre-modern political culture, such as the dichotomous “private-public” binary is Otto Brunner, Land und Herrschaft. Grundfragen der territorialen Verfassungsgeschichte Südostdeutschlands im Mittelalter, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Geschichtsforschung und Arkivwissenschaft in Wien 1 (Baden: Rohrer, 1939), transl. from rev. 4th ed. (Vienna et al.: Rohrer Verlag, 1959) as Land and Lordship. Structures of Governance in Medieval Austria, transl. Howard Kaminsky and James Van Horn Melton (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992). 2 Max Weber’s classic, and ritually cited, definition of “state” was that it was a territorial monopoly of coercive force. 3 On the centrality of personal bonds and associations in early medieval political culture, see Gerd Althoff, Verwandte, Freunde und Getreue. Zum politischen Stellenwert der Gruppenbindungen im früheren Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990), transl. as Family, Friends and Followers. Political and Social Bonds in Early Medieval Europe, transl. Christopher Carroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 3 statehood. The latter obliges us to recognize the Greco-Roman traditions and theoretically identifiable base-types of friendship. The Roman legacy provided medieval Europe not only with its language of record but also a comprehensive range of philosophical and political terms and concepts. Throughout the Middle Ages, political thought