Gilduin Davy, La Saga des diseurs de loi: Esquisse juridique de l’Islande médiévale, Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021, 00, 000 pp.

Abstract

Abstract This thorough study is both long overdue and comes from an unexpected quarter. Davy is professor of history of law at l’Université Paris-Nanterre. The lawman (lgmaðr) of his title and other legal advisors are well known to readers of the sagas of Icelanders but, as is the case of the master litigator Njáll Þorgeirsson, “Burnt Njall,” it is more as active players in court cases generated by feud than as more elevated and distant patrons of the law as institution. The best-known feature of the office of law speaker, as he is also known, was to have memorized the entire law code, at the pre-literate stage of this society, and to proclaim one third of it each year at the island-wide assembly over which he presided. This is the first modern study of the office of law man and its author is uniquely placed, by virtue of his familiarity with the Icelandic and Norwegian material, to trace its insufficiently studied development. Davy is also alert to the possible origins of law in what began in historical time with the settlement, and social and legal organization of an unpopulated North Atlantic island. As is to be expected, the laws of Norway, where a majority of the settlers originated, would have offered a ready model and there does seem to have been a transfer en bloc of Norwegian jurisprudence. But many of the settler generation would have had experience of raiding, trading, and residence in the British Isles, particularly Ireland, which had its own large body of jurisprudence, possibly dating from the seventh century. Davy’s project is even more ambitious in that he seeks to discover the very foundations of law, its mythical and legendary origins, and conceptual underpinning.