Thorgny. Behind the chair and around in a circle stood the peasant congregation.’ After
a persuasive speech by Thorgny that appealed to the congregation, the people made
noise with their weapons: ‘þá gerði lyðrinn þegar vápnabrak ok gny mikinn’ (then the
people there clashed their weapons and made a loud noise).
In Óláfs saga ins helga there is also the story of the sly lawman Emundr from
Skara among the Västgötar, the most influential man in Västergötland after the jarl
Ro ̨gnvaldr. In this episode Emundr has a meeting with the king of the Swedes in
Uppsala where he tries to settle a problem, in which the law of the Götar differed from
the law of the Svear: ‘er lo ̨g vár greinir ok Upsala-lo ̨g’ (when our law differs from
Uppsala law). Thus, at least for Snorri in the thirteenth century, the Västgötar had their
law in the early eleventh century, and the Svear theirs.
This is, of course, medieval literature, and we have to take the stories for what they
are, literary constructions, but if we can qualify statements and details by Snorri and
others with information from sources other than literary sagas, we ought to be able to
listen to the authors of the sagas in a more historically observant way.
From what we know, it seems obvious that in early Scandinavia it was the custom
to make a noise with weapons at thing assemblies for expressing opinions, thus the
divisions of wapentakes in the Danelaw inform us, but the custom is also mentioned in
the much later Magnus Lagabøter’s Law (landslo ̨g) (I: 5 ; NGL 1 : 409 ), where it says that a
verdict is not legally valid unless the people on the thing assembly, who stand outside
the marked-out and hollowed-out area where the judges sit, lo ̨grétta, give their consent
to the verdict by rattling or raising their weapons in the air (vápnatak or þingtak).
In a famous episode in the saga of Egill Skallagrimsson the assembly at Gula þing in
western Norway is described: ‘Where the court was established there was a level field,
with hazel poles set down in the field in a ring, and ropes in a circuit all around. These
were called the hallowed bands (vébo ̨nd). Inside the ring sat the judges.’ How accurate
may this account be? Is it to be looked upon as a fictitious literary invention by the
author without any historical bearings? Most probably, it is not. In the Gulathing
Law itself (ch. 91 ) it says that the þing site should have a round shape (þinghringr; cf.
Robberstad 1937 : 198 ; Schledermann 1974 : 374 ), and in the early Frostathing Law (I: 2 )
the word vébo ̨nd is actually used; it says that the ármenn (bailiffs) from all fylki shall with
vébo ̨nd enclose the place of the men in the lo ̨grétta. In the so-called Hundabrævið from
the Faroe Islands vébo ̨nd is mentioned in a context with lo ̨gþing: Var þetta gort a logþingi
innan vebanda (Barnes 1974 : 386 ), ‘This was done at the law þing within the hollow
bands.’ Finally, the regulation of the use of vébo ̨nd is also found in Magnus Lagabøter’s
landslo ̨g ( 3 : 2 ) and bylo ̨g (town law) ( 3 : 2 ). The background of the usage of hazel poles
to fasten the vébo ̨nd on, mentioned in Egill’s saga, may also be based on fact. This
custom is for example known from Frankish Law (Lex Ribuaria 67 : 5 ) in the eighth
century.
THE THING SITERegarding the legal assemblies in Viking Age Scandinavia, we know for certain of their
existence (see Jesch 1998 ). A famous piece of contemporary evidence is the Bällsta rune
monument in the parish of Täby, just north of Stockholm. On two runestones erected
here one can read [ulfkil] uk arkil uk kui þir kariþu iar þikstaþ ‘Ulvkel and Arnkel
and Gye they made here a þing site (þingstaðr)’ ( Jansson 1977 : 121 ). Several other þing
–– Stefan Brink––