Within each quarter, three chieftains would hold a spring assembly (várþing)
together, so that the Western, Southern and Eastern Quarters had three such assemblies
each, while the Northern Quarter had four.
The court system consisted of the spring assembly courts (várþingsdómar), the
quarter courts and the Fifth Court (fimtardómr), which was the highest court of the
Commonwealth, established around 1005.
All the 48 chieftains (goðar) sat in the Law Council (lo ̨grétta), with two assembly men
each to advise them. The chieftains and their chosen men thus made up 144 of the
members of the Law Council. In addition, the Lawspeaker (lo ̨gso ̨gumaðr) and, later, the
country’s two bishops brought the total to 147 , but only the 48 chieftains had the right
to vote. The Law Council had three particular tasks: to make new laws, to interpret
the laws when there was disagreement about them and to decide on various kinds of
exemption from the laws.
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTThere are two main opinions in the discussion about the political development in
Iceland in the period c. 930 – 1120. The first one, which has dominated the discussion for
more than a century, is based on the view that it is the constitutional paragraphs in
Grágás, and not the family sagas, which give the most coherent picture of the political
system in the period c. 930 – 1120 , that is that the number of chieftaincies were thirty-
six to thirty-nine. As a result, the history of the Free State in this period has for the most
part been a constitutional history (i.e. Jón Jóhannesson 1956 ). The second opinion
rejects Grágás as a source for the political system, and relies on the ‘picture’ given by the
family sagas. According to this view there was at no time a fixed number of chieftains,
and moreover that their numbers reduced from about fifty to sixty to about twenty in
the period c. 930 – 1120 (Jón Viðar Sigurðsson 1999 ).
There is however no disagreement among scholars over the main features of political
development c. 1120 – 1262 / 4. This period is characterised by the concentration of
power: in c. 1200 seven families controlled most of the country. By 1220 it is possible to
divide the country into ríki, small domains with fairly fixed boundaries ( Jón Jóhannes-
son 1956 ; Jón Viðar Sigurðsson 1999 ).
After 1220 the Norwegian monarchy started to interfere in the political development
of Iceland, and the king’s involvement resulted in the fall of the Free State. After 1238 ,
both of Iceland’s bishops were appointed from Norway, and served partly as agents of
the king’s policies. In the power struggle, Icelandic chieftains considered it advanta-
geous to become a member of the king’s hirð (‘body of retainers’). The chieftains’
positions in Iceland were strengthened by this, but they had to pay for this support by
giving their goðorð, or their permission to administrate the goðorð, to the king. Thus, by
c. 1250 the king had managed to acquire control over all of the goðorð in the country except
in the Eastern Quarter, which were acquired in 1264. Having taken control over the
goðorð the king started to appoint his own governors and arguably became the country’s
leading ‘chieftain’ (Berlin 1909 ; Jón Viðar Sigurðsson 1999 ). Once this process had
started, it was only a matter of time before Iceland became part of the Norwegian
kingdom, and in 1262 / 4 the leading persons in the country swore fealty to the king.
If we return now to the constitution it is worth mentioning that most scholars
disregard how the political development eventually influenced it and the fact that most
–– chapter 42 : Iceland––