ein lǫg ok einn siðr: Law, Religion, and their Role in the Cultivation of Cultural Memory in Pre-Christian Icelandic Society

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The transmission of law in pre-Christian Iceland was an oral process in an oral society. In oral societies, such transmission processes may be characterized as a cultivation of cultural memory, which suggests that it was transmitted through a ritualized performance by a memory specialist. In the Icelandic context, this specialist was in all likelihood the lǫgsǫgumaðr. However, the connection between the transmission of law by the lǫgsǫgumaðr and ritual and religion has not yet been established explicitly. This is the subject of the present article, which first views the intricate relationship between law and religion in pre-Christian Iceland through the lens of Max Weber’s theory of value spheres and subsequently treats the transmission of early Icelandic law as a cultivation of cultural memory.