Kinship and Economy in Modern Iceland: A Study in Social Continuity

Abstract

A primary purpose of this paper is to provide an accurate listing of modern Icelandic kinship terms. A second objective 1S to discuss the meaning of the consanguineal kinship terminology in order to show that patrilineal principles of social organization have persisted in spite of the abrupt economic development in Iceland. The Icelandic economy was greatly expanded as a result of its profitable role in fishing during World War II. Earlier descriptions of Icelandic kinship include a description of medieval kin terms by Merrill (I964) which is basically accurate, although two cousin terms are missing. A second article has introduced into the anthropological literature a modern Icelandic kinship terminology which is inaccurate in its cousin terms and which includes affinal kin terms that were actually constructed by the author (Rich I976). Both authors describe the social organization of medieval Iceland in relation to such economic institutions as allodial land rights and a system of wergild payments. In contrast to other areas of Scandinavia, however, allodial forms of land-holding did not exist in medieval Iceland2 (Benediktsson I967; Gudmundsson I967; Phillpotts I9I3). It is questionable whether wergild payments were made in that period in either Norway or Iceland (Phillpotts I9I3). Modern Icelandic kinship terminology is one in which affinal and consanguineal relationships are defined by separate terminologies These-two categories are not made by either Merrill (I964) or Rich (I976: I7), who claims that affinal ties are increasingly classiSed with relationships of consanguinity as part of a centrifugal trend in conceptualizing relationships. A more accurate description of the economic institutions and the social strueture in Iceland will point to why exactly the opposite trend has occurred in Icelandic social organization. In a paper describing the lineage pattern of kinship nomenclature, Dole (I965: 40-4I) wrote that kinship systems which exhibit this kind of terminology include such European kinship terminologies as medieval Icelandic and Russian, nineteenth century Swedish, Scotch, Irish, and Polish and modern Serbian and, also, the nonEuropean kinship terminologies of China, India, and certain pastoral societies in Asia and Africa. This form of kinship terminology was correlated with forms of social organization that combined principles of unilineality and differential inheritance rules, usually, primogeniture (Dole I965: