Bergþór's Voice: Orality in the Homicide Laws of the Old Icelandic

Abstract

This article considers what has traditionally been called 'orality' in the oldest section of the oldest Icelandic law code, the , revising outdated, romantic notions of a universal, poetic, pan-Germanic origin for the . This article begins to describe a poetics of oral law which takes into account performance, pragmatics, syntax and a cross-cultural study of law without abandoning the philological tradition of literary studies. The most recent theories of orality break down the hard distinction between orality and literacy, revise the notion of oral formula, and challenge the distinction between verse and prose. Having redefined basic concepts such as orality and law, we conclude that the certainly shows a relationship to oral uses of law even as we affirm that the is a modern law code born of a written tradition.