by Chloe Herl

May 25, 2021

In 2011, in Yuendumu, Australia, an Aboriginal man was stabbed to death by fellow tribesmen. The victim’s family called for Aboriginal traditional justice, specifically, they wanted justice via a spear through the leg. The Chairwoman of the Indigenous Advisory Council, Beth Nungarrayi Price, explained in a news report that a spear through the leg was a ritualistic way to end a feud utilizing controlled bloodletting.^[1] The intertribal conflict also touched on a broader conflict between customary and state law practices in Australia. The Australian court involved in the dispute refused to cede the case to the tribe.^[2] They stated that they refused to recognize or allow any form of justice via violence.^[3] 

This disconnect between cultural and state law systems is not unique to Australia. In post-colonial and multi-ethnic states, a tension exists surrounding state and customary law practices which makes it difficult for justice to occur. As Tanja Chopra explains in her article on state and community laws in northern Kenya, “the notion of ‘justice’ in the courts can be at variance with what local communities consider as ‘just’”.^[4] This is manifest in the way that the state law is not derived from the diversity of local communities’ shared understanding of “wrongdoing” or the communities’ shared values that create right and wrong ways of being in a community.^[5] Chopra goes on to say that although conflict resolution and justice can work together, “conflict management initiatives are often severed from justice sector work.”^[6] Along with this, community involvement in reconciliation and justice practices is often replaced by the state, further fragmenting the shared understanding of reconciliation and social peace necessary for successful implementation. Reconciliation and peace efforts are focused on the creation of “right relationships” within groups of people.^[7] How can this be accomplished if there is no shared foundation of what is right and what is wrong? It is critical that reconciliation efforts remain rooted in context specific circumstances which means focusing on the people and the shared relationships involved in the dispute.^[8] From these people spring a value system which both creates the rules necessary to hold and reconcile a dispute.

Using William Ian Miller’s book Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland, I will be looking at reconciliation practices in Viking-age Iceland and how they promoted or undermined reconciliation to help reimagine what reconciliation can look like in our present and future. In explaining Conflict Transformation, John Paul Lederach writes that “relationships represent a web of connections that form the broader context of the conflict. It is out of this relationship context that particular issues arise and either become volatile or get quickly resolved.”^[9] The Viking-age Icelandic society was built around relationships and their disputes were often directly rooted in relational struggles and so was their peace. They had a complex system of laws and societal rules and roles that governed their disputing processes despite being a commonwealth, ie - stateless, society.

Viking-age Iceland refers to a period from roughly 900 AD into 1200 AD when the Norwegian crown gained control of the island. Although the Vikings existed across Scandinavia and settled along much of Europe’s coast, Icelanders left behind a particularly rich literature of laws and family sagas that grant an unprecedented look into an ancient society.^[10] Icelanders are certainly a part of our modern conception of the Viking cultural group. However, the historical understanding of the word ‘viking’ were those who actively raided others - pirates is a close synonym.^[11] Some Icelanders did go abroad to go raiding but their society was actually an agricultural and pastoral one on an island that made farming very difficult.^[12] They raised sheep on “fixed, dispersed farmland” on an island with no predatory animals besides from the occasional polar bear who arrived, starving, from Greenland via an ice floe.^[13] The land necessary to sustain a flock of sheep created a shared value for and “well-developed concepts of private property and law.”^[14]

The Icelandic society was part of the Viking honor culture without lords, warlords, or an official state. They did, however, have local Things and a national Althing which were formal meetings between freemen.^[15] Disputes were settled within these meetings which acted as courts.^[16] Local Things occurred every spring and the Althing occurred annually over two weeks during midsummer.^[17] Somewhat similar to our own system of local, state, and national courts, it was structured so that people would attend their local Thing, and if a dispute proved too complex for that Thing, then it could be taken to the Althing.^[18] Law was an integral part of Icelandic life and their culture enjoyed the complexity of creating and arguing the law.^[19] However, as noted earlier, there were no State institutions to enforce the law. Many justice systems rely on a system of deterrence through retributive justice practices. The strength of the State is a threat to potential wrongdoers that the gain will not outweigh the punishment of breaking a law. In Iceland, “law enforcement, like self-help, was the responsibility of the wronged party or his successor.”^[20]

Icelanders knew that they would have to face the strength of anyone they had wronged and would have to use their own strength to ensure no one committed a wrong towards them. People’s connection to a feud meant they were active participants who shouldered part of the risk. Group liability was the reason that social control was so effective in maintaining a generally peaceful society - more than just the wrongdoer would face the consequences.^[21] Icelanders built this web of “practical kinship” through “shared blood, marriage, or even fictive kinship relationships” like fostering.^[22] Icelanders intimately understood the costs and benefits of right and wrong action because their kin would have to pay or mete out justice.

Miller uses Hrafnkels Saga, which features a feud between one Hrafnkel and Sam, to share a dramatic example of this type of collective liability and kinship connection to conflict parties. Hrafnkel was a very successful chieftain who was out maneuvered with underhanded tactics by neighboring Sam and forced to give up his land to Sam’s control. Years pass and Hrafnkel has moved east and obtained a new chieftaincy but has not forgotten the dishonor he was dealt by Sam. Meanwhile, Evynd, Sam’s brother, who has been abroad all these years achieving great success in the merchant trade, has notified his brother of his return home. In an unfortunate turn of events for Eyvind, his path to Sam’s farm takes him by Hrafnkel’s new farm. Hrafnkel intercepts him, kills him as revenge on Sam, and then uses the shock of the moment to outmaneuver Sam and reclaim his old farm and chieftaincy. Evynd was completely innocent of the whole sordid affair and yet his connection to Sam is enough to cause him to receive the consequence. There is fascinating contextually and culturally specific significance to Hrafnkel’s choices of victim which I will not do justice to Miller or Hrafnkel by describing here. Suffice it to say that because Eyvind was so successful in trade abroad, Hrafnkel was able to balance Eyvind’s life against the injustice Sam had enacted against him without recognizing Sam as an equal.^[23] 

For the Icelanders, respect for their opponents was a part of the entire process as each side sought to position their own honor above the others. Sometimes, as is the case with Hrafnkel and Sam, this meant that each party could benefit from someone on the opposing side being greater than themselves so as to best them - physically, mentally, or legally - and increase their own standing. Lederach writes that just as conflicts are rooted in relationships - so is peace.^[24] Thus, reconciliation efforts focus on the building of relationships between hostile groups.^[25] However, at its core, a “feud is a relationship (hostile) between two groups.”^[26] After all, “only people who do not deal with each other do not fight.”^[27] Icelanders did not need to build relationships - relationships were the playing field for the entire dispute process.

Pentikäinen and Hauss also write that “reconciliation requires the participation of something approaching the entire population of the community or country involved.”^[28] In this aspect, Icelanders are set up for successful reconciliation because although kin ties obligated individuals to participate in disputes and share risks as discussed above, there were few truly “neutral” parties to conflict. In fact, there was an expectation that neutral parties would intervene in disputes and actively break up fights when necessary.^[29] “Somewhat paradoxically, the support-mustering process, the recruitment of forces, that is, the very process of escalation, helped create the conditions that ensured the emergence of peacemakers.”^[30] These “góðjarnir menn - men of good will” were often caught up in the middle of the conflict and bound in some way to both sides.^[31] Although their intervention was not wholly without personal gain - other’s feuds were an opportunity to further one's own interests and standing - peacekeepers were respected for their ability to bring a dispute to a close by weighing the claims of disputants and bringing them into balance.^[32]

Balance and equivalent exchange was an integral part of Icelandic culture. Miller writes that their feuding process especially was based around “balance and reciprocity.

The central notion was one of requital, of repayment… Wrongs done to someone, like gifts given to him, unilaterally make the recipient a debtor, someone who owes requital. But in the world of feud, unlike the world of gift-exchange, the debts are debts of blood.”^[33]

This form of dispute prioritized keeping score and had a rhythm that alternated between taking and giving.^[34]

The record keeping embedded in the Old Icelandic dispute and dispute resolution processes is a key piece to its effectiveness. Pentikäinen and Hauss write that “until there is widespread agreement about what happened and who is responsible for past actions, it is also hard to imagine a community truly overcoming divisions.”^[35] Although their record keeping was open to interpretation - Miller writes that “reinterpretation of the significance of past actions” was a significant part of the process - the creation of a shared narrative within each dispute helped outline the necessary action to be taken by parties to the dispute to either retaliate or resolve the conflict.^[36] This practice is in line with a central tenet of modern day reconciliation, “to be reconciled, two parties have to reach something akin to closure and mutual satisfaction on whatever it was that divided them.”^[37] From this sprang a return to “right relationships” within the immediate conflict parties as well as the broader social community.^[38]

It was not, however, a perfect system. For one thing, as we have already seen from Eyvend’s unfortunate end, objectively innocent people were often caught in the crossfire of conflict and either suffered serious damage or lost their lives. For another, the system favored the elites in Icelandic society which were the free landholders. In both a blessing and curse, slaves, servants, and other less fortunate people were not part of the disputing system except in their supporting role as part of disputing party’s households.^[39] The violence of the system was another failing despite its necessity. Clement writes that non-violent means achieve true reconciliation more than violent struggle.^[40] Although the majority of Icelandic disputes did not devolve into feuds and were resolved non-violently via the law, the backbone of the system relied on the threat of violence and willingness of parties to uphold justice claims through violence. Due to this, what the system gained in peace it sometimes lost in true reconciliation between groups. In many instances, the root cause of the issue was not addressed, and the settlement was used to fuel further violence.

Miller explains this with a fictitious example in his book Eye for an Eye. One Edmund gives up revenge for the death of his uncle in exchange for an agreed upon amount of shillings.^[41] The price was agreed to be worthy of the life of Edmunds uncle and thus, Edmund cannot bring himself to spend the money for it symbolizes his uncle’s life.^[42] Unable to spend it, the very presence of the coin purse reminds Edmund that he chose not to take revenge and goads him into eventual action.^[43] He kills his uncle’s killer’s brother and in the following settlement, Edmund simply hands back the coin purse used to settle his uncle’s death which is recognized by the receiver in a move dripping in poetic justice.^[44] “These people understood only too deeply the grim ironies of how compensation could provide the means of undoing the peace it secured.”^[45]

An example of this actually occurs within the larger feud documented in Njal’s saga which could have been avoided had the heads of household gotten to the root of the problem. Njal and Gunnar are close friends, but their wives do not get along. When their wives exchange insults over a holiday gathering, their husbands do not seek to address the issue.^[46] Undeterred, the women take their vengeance into their own hands. The next summer, Hallgerd, Gunnar’s wife, sends a slave named Kol to kill one of Njal and Bergthora’s slaves named Svart.^[47] Gunnar and Njal settle the dispute between themselves by having Gunnar pay Njal twelve shillings for the life of Svart.^[48] Njal’s wife, Bergthora, is not satisfied and she sends a servant to kill Kol the next summer.^[49] Gunnar and Njal again agree to settle the dispute themselves for twelve shillings.^[50] Miller quotes Njal’s saga directly; “Njal took the purse and handed it to Gunnar, who recognized it as being the money that he himself had given Njal [for Svart’s death].”^[51] Njal and Gunnar keep settling the death of their slaves and servants but they do not resolve the conflict between their wives.^[52] This leads to a long and bloody dispute between the two households that comes to a dramatic conclusion that could have been avoided had the heads of household addressed the concerns of their wives.^[53]

From our modern-day perspective, the Icelandic dispute system was extremely violent and even Icelanders were aware that violence was a crucial aspect of the system. “But,” writes Miller, “could we not also describe the culture as fairly stable with violence rather constrained or at least constrainable to reasonable levels?”^[54] In Viking-age Iceland, the community was an active participant and community connections served to keep the conflict in check whether or not it was in line with participants beliefs. This greater participation by the individual in community life was in part necessitated by the lack of a State centric institution and in part due to the collective liability intrinsic to their relationships. This relational accountability is something that the peace field is already beginning to theorize about. Clement writes of the danger of “narrow circles of compassion” because they “are effectively narrow circles of responsibility.”^[55] In other words, we must begin to forge wider community ties which will increase individual accountability and engagement.^[56] The Icelanders did this through blood ties. We must pursue our own route that is rooted in relationships and the culture of communities involved in disputes.

Sandrine Lefranc notes that embedded in many post-conflict peacebuilding practices there is “an underlying individualist, relationist conception of social functioning and change. The individual becomes the only true agent of peace…”^[57] The hope is that change on an individual level will begin to work towards a society with “peace writ large” as Woodrow and Chigas phrased it.^[58] Simon Keyes states that most authors agree that reconciliation “can not be imposed, only chosen.”^[59] The onus is on the individual to volunteer to participate in dispute resolution practices. If an individual remains set in their resistance to reconciliation or determined to continue the conflict, then reconciliation efforts will either need to give up or get creative in cajoling the individual into the reconciliation effort. Meanwhile, the community continues to suffer the ill effects of the conflict. The emphasis on ‘the individual’ has disempowered ‘the community’. Reconciliation practices need to be practical and effective before they can promote personal enlightenment.

To this effect, we need to begin creating and strengthening shared justice practices in our modern societies. At the beginning of this paper, I briefly outlined an Aboriginal dispute that occurred in Yuendumu, Australia. The Australian court refused to allow the tribe to enact any justice deemed to be ‘violent’. Yet, as we have seen from the Viking-age Icelanders, a violent system can still effectively meet people’s needs. The problem is not the violence. Rather, it is that Aboriginal justice practices have been diluted and disrupted since the colonization of Australia and are not functioning in the way they were intended to meet community justice needs. Chairwoman Price shared the following insight, “nowadays, this generation just don’t understand how customary law did work. They just haven’t had enough time to understand how it worked, and what's happening now is that these younger people, they don’t know both laws.”^[60] The system that regulated the violence has been disrupted but the violence has remained. The tragedy is that Aboriginal people are not part of an active and functioning culture of reconciliation and the Australian State is not meeting their justice needs either.

The question is, are we in a better place? Do we in the United States have a shared and functional justice and reconciliation system? I would say no. Arguably, we used to have a shared and localized reconciliation practice through the churches in communities across the country. However, as we have distanced ourselves culturally from our religious roots over the centuries, we have lost even this culturally specific reconciliatory space. Now, even those who regularly attend church services do not necessarily turn to the church for reconciliation within their communities. Aside from the church, the west also has our legal practices of dispute resolution. However, our justice system is not without its own violence. The prison industrial complex, police brutality, racial injustice, and financial costs that impact the ability of the poor and impoverished to access the system are only a few of the issues that separate Americans from the only system of justice available to them.

Even when functioning as it should, our system replaces the victim with the State in many instances which severely detracts the effect of justice on the victim and the community.^[61] Furthermore, it can impede the offender’s ability to take responsibility, hold themselves accountable, and reintegrate with their community after they have committed a harm.^[62] These issues have grown over time and so has the divide between Americans and our justice system. We have only to look at the violence that resulted in 2020 from protests surrounding George Floyd’s murder and the riot on Capitol Hill on January 6th, 2021. Both groups have needs for justice and truth; both felt that those needs were not being met through the justice system. Until they are met, reconciliation is a distant hope.

There is already work being done to correct the injustices within our justice system and working towards greater “equality of power, privilege, and opportunity” will be “a fundamental contribution” in reformation efforts.^[63] Even more, though, we must envision a society that emphasizes culturally specific, practical reconciliation systems rooted in local communities. Lederach writes that “to increase justice we must ensure that people have access to political procedures and voice in the decisions that affect their lives.”^[64] In this regard, reconciliation practices need to involve and engage the community in process and practice. As discussed above, Icelanders did not need to build relationships, but we do. We must work towards communities that are created from active, involved individuals. We must re-examine our relationship with State justice practices in the sense that we hand over our community problems to the courts and wash our hands of the responsibility. We must examine ways to increase local accountability and personal investment. We must widen our “circles of responsibility” not disempower ourselves by disconnecting from our justice system.[65]

In their book Multi-Level Reconciliation and Peacebuilding, Clements and Lee write that the role of the community in contemporary peacebuilding has been understudied in favor of state institutions.^[66] Although the community as a conflict party may have been understudied, it has not been under-represented in conflict spaces. We simply have to broaden our view from modern Western practices. History is ripe with case studies for the role of the community in conflict situations and reconciliation practices. Additionally, smaller countries, communities, religions, and indigenous groups across the globe are practicing alternative forms of justice and reconciliation that are specific to the needs of the people practicing them.

I would like to be able to say that there is an easy solution, but social change happens slowly overtime. However, the key theme is that society does change. As Ricigliano reminds us by quoting Shakespeare, the fault is not in our stars and we do have the power to create that change.^[67] Both Western and non-western systems of justice and reconciliation have the potential to meet the needs of their respective communities. It is not that one way is right or wrong but that they are operating from a foundation of community understanding of justice. This is something that many people are already thinking of as evidenced by the amount of people who envisioned “life is local” in Elise Boulding’s envisioning exercise.^[68] It needs to be local because it needs to be shared in understanding and practice. We must begin making these changes now, within our 200 year present, so that our small ripples can create waves of positive change in the future.^[69]

Bibliography

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Keyes, S. (2019). Mapping on Approaches to Reconciliation. Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers. https://www.peacemakersnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Mapping-on-Approaches-to-Reconciliation.pdf

Lederach, J. P. (2003, October). Conflict Transformation (G. Burgess & H. Burgess, Eds.). Beyond Intractability; Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/transformation

Lederach, J. P. (2005). The Moral Imagination : The art and soul of building peace. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.mutex.gmu.edu

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Miller, W.I. (1990). Bloodtaking and peacemaking : feud, law, and society in Saga Iceland. University of Chicago Press.

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