[157] The Sýsla (pl. Sýslur, and in compounds Sýslu) is derived from Sýsl, “business”—að sýsla, “to be busy.” As a law term, it signifies any stewardship held from the king or bishop; in a geographical sense, it means a district, bailiwick, or prefecture. At present it answers to the Thing of the Icelandic Commonwealth (Cleasby).
[158] Not to be confounded with the Sókn, or parish proper. Cleasby is disposed to date the Rapes from the eleventh century, and he remarks that the district round the bishop’s seat at Skálholt is called “Hreppar,” showing that the house was the nucleus of the division.
[159] From pp. 703-909, the Skýrslur um Landshagi á Íslandi, vol. 4, Möller, Copenhagen, 1870, a portly octavo of 934 pages. Mr Longman’s list of the Sýslas (p. 34, Suggestions for the Exploration of Iceland) was quite correct, except in point of orthography, but it is no longer so.
[160] The Múla-Sýsla (“mull” county) was formerly divided into three parts, the northern, the central, and the southern, each with its Sýslumaðr. The present distribution dates from the year 1779.
[161] Hèrað (or Hierat) is the Scotch “heriot,” a tax paid to feudal lord in lieu of military service. In Icelandic the Hèrað is a geographical district generally, and is specially applied to the river-basin of the Skagafjörð (Cleasby).
[162] The sheriff does not attend parish meetings, he has no schools to inspect, for there are none, in fact he has nothing to do with education at all, that being the business of the parish priest under the superintendence of the prófastr (dean) of the district.
[163] The name of this Icelandic code of laws, which must not be confounded with the Grágás of Norway, is variously explained from the grey binding or from being written with a grey goose-quill. It was adopted in Iceland in A.D. 1118, and it contained a Lex de ejusmodi mendicis (sturdy vagrants) impune castrandis. Some writers suppose that the Icelandic Commonwealth had written laws but no code. After the union with Norway the island received its first written code, the Iron-side, Járn-Síða (A.D. 1262-1272), and this was exchanged in A.D. 1272 for the Jónsbók, so termed from John the Lawyer who brought it from Norway. Uno Von Troil (p. 73) removes the date of the latter to A.D. 1272.
[164] Mr Dasent, Introduction to Diet, (xlviii.), remarks that the jury was never developed in Norway, and only struck faint root in the Danish and Swedish laws. When asserting the jury to be purely Scandinavian, the author speaks of Europe, neglecting the admirable Panchayat system which arose in the village republics of Hindostan, and a multitude of other similar institutions.
[165] Dillon notices forty-one women who had passed ninety: the number has now greatly fallen off. There is a further decline from the days of Olaus Magnus, who informs us that “the Icelanders, who, instead of bread, have fish bruised with a stone, live three hundred years.” The general longevity of Norway proves that the climates of the north, the vagina gentium of Jornandes, have nothing adverse to human life. In Scotland the census of 1870 gave a total of twenty-six centagenarians—nine men and seventeen women.
[166] Innuit (Eskimo), like Illinois (from Illeni), means simply “a man”—a frequent tribal designation amongst savages. So Teuton and Deutsch, with the numberless derivations, are derived from Goth. Thiud, a people; Alemanni from “All-men,” and “German perhaps from Guerre-man” (Farrar, Families of Speech).