| A.D. | 965. | Reform (bill) carried by Thord Gellir, who organised the courts and settled the political divisions of Iceland. |
| ” | 1004. | Institution of the Fifth Court (of Appeal). |
| ” | 1024. | Repudiation of the King of Norway’s attempt to annex Iceland. |
| ” | 1096. | Tíund or tithes introduced. |
| ” | 1117-18. | The laws codified, written down, and adopted by the Althing. This code was afterwards called Grágás. |
| ” | 1262-64. | Submission to the King of Norway. |
| ” | 1272. | Second written code (Járn-siða) introduced. |
| ” | 1280 | (?). Third written code (Jóns-bók) introduced. |
[123] Traces of some two hundred Things remain in the “Standing Stones” of Great Britain. Mr Dasent, from whose study of the Iceland republic (Introduction, etc., Burnt Njal, pp. li.-lxvii.) these lines are abridged, shows our meeting to be “Mót-Thing,” a public gathering of the district freeholders: as Husting is “House-Thing,” an assembly of householders. In Norway the Things were founded by Hákon, son of Harold Fair-hair, and the conquest over the Jarls was at once followed by the constitution.
[124] Sir Thomas Hungerford in 1377 was the first Speaker, and Sir John Busby in 1394 was the first Speaker formally presented for royal approval. These officials were the mouth-piece of the House, and by no means so called on the lucus-a-non-lucendo principle.
[125] The word is liable to misapprehension. It is used of the place as well as of the body sitting there; of the Sacred Circle (Vé-bönd) as well as of the lawmen who occupied it. Moreover, under the Commonwealth, it was the legislative session that met on the Lög-berg; and after the union with Norway it was the public court of law at the Althing considerably modified. The term is also variously derived from Rètt, a fence, a sheep-fold; or from Að rètta lög, to right (or make right) the law (Cleasby). Moreover, the Lög-berg (Hill of Laws) of the Althing was called Thing-brekka (Parliament brink, or high place) at the local assemblies.
[126] Lög (i.e., “laws,” used only in the plural; from “lag,” a lay, layer, stratum) also signified the legal community or State.
[127] The Anglo-Saxon Leode, probably akin to June (ærra Liða) and July (æftera Liða); the Irish Fo-leith, and our modern “leet,” properly the law-court of the hundred. In the Saga times (tenth century) the Leið was a kind of county assembly; during the rule of the Grágás (twelfth and thirteenth centuries), the Leið was held where the Vár-Thing used to sit, in common with all the three Goðar of the Quarter (Sam-leið).
[128] The Northlanders, by a provincial arrangement which the central authority hardly recognised, claimed four instead of three judicial circles (Thing-sóknir). The reason was, that the heads of houses east of the Eyjafjörð and west of the Skagafjörð, whose Quadrant-Things lay in the middle of the Tetrad, refused to ride so far.
[129] Nat. A.D. 930; converted to Christianity, 998, and murdered, 1014. Cleasby derives “Fimtar” from “Fimt,” the heathen week, a pentad or five days; whilst the Swedish “Femt,” a court before which one has to appear a “fimt” from the citation, seems to have floated before the minds of the founders.
[130] Fat and ferocious Ólafr Helgi (Olaf II., or the Saint), when succeeding to the throne of Norway, doomed to death and slavery, to exile and confiscation, all who opposed the new faith. The blood of martyred pagans was not the seed of their Church; and persecution, vigorously carried out, took, as usual, wide effect. After his death at the battle of Stikklestad, he became the tutelar saint of Norway, the “Lamb” of the calendar. His remains ranked as relics in the ancient cathedral at Throndhjem, till Protestantism, or rather Lutheranism, under Gustavus Vasa (A.D. 1527), and Christian II. (1536), replaced Romanism in the Scandinavian peninsula. The Royal Order of Norway, founded in 1847 by the late king, Oscar I., bears his name. London has boasted of four “St Olaves;” and Tooley Street of the Tailors, according to Mr Peter Cunningham, notes the site of the first church. To retain due reverence for such a “Saint,” we must believe with Pliny (Epist., viii. 24): “Reverere gloriam veterem, et hanc ipsam senectutem, quæ in homine venerabilis, in urbibus sacra. Sit apud te honor antiquitati, sit ingentibus factis, sit fabulis quoque.”
[131] It was a classical dream which made Odin or Sigge (whence Sigtuna), and his followers the Æsir (minor gods), fly from Pompey in the days of Mithridates. It was a philological dream of Finn Magnússon’s which identified Bragi with Bramhá, and the ferocious and sanguinary Odin with the moral and holy Buddha, the prototype of the Christian exemplar. The casual resemblance to the Etruscan Tina has not been more fortunate. Some one well remarks that “a man born about A.D. 333, and dying seventy-eight years old (A.D. 411), would, in respect to time, perfectly represent the personage whom the Scandinavians and the Anglo-Saxons call Odin and Woden, and who are the roots of their royal dynasties.”