View source for Writing Fiction as Law: The Story in Grágás/minimal

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[[Category:Thomas McSweeney]]
[[Category:Medieval Iceland]]
{{Quote
| text = In essence, the Icelanders who compiled the Grágás manuscripts were doing the same thing as libertarian scholars who hold up Iceland as proof that a society with minimal government can work. They were creating a golden age that probably bore very little resemblance to any period of Iceland’s actual history. The society reflected in Grágás and in so many of the family sagas represents thirteenth-century Icelanders’ vision of what society should be like. In an age when they were beholden to powerful chieftains and made to pay tribute to a king, some bondi thought that a free and equal society looked ideal and played up these aspects of their laws and their history... If Grágás is meant to construct a golden age that never actually existed, its usefulness to libertarian scholars as evidence for a working stateless community must be called into question.
| cite = [[Thomas McSweeney]], "{{Link |Writing Fiction as Law: The Story in Grágás}}"
}}