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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0931-7413

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Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin

Poland

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Islandzka dziesięcina w świetle teorii grup interesu

Włodzimierz Gogłoza

History Notebooks, Issue 146 (4), 2019, pp. 673-687

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844069PH.19.039.11655

Iceland was the first Nordic country which introduced mandatory tithe. According to the medieval authors the swift introduction of the church tax in Iceland was a result of an extraordinary deference Icelanders showed towards the bishop Gissur Ísleifsson. Contemporary scholars, on the other hand, point to the unusual structure of the church tax itself as the reason behind the acceptance of tithe by Icelanders. The Icelandic tithe was divided into four parts, two of which were collected by the wealthy owners of private churches. Therefore, some scholars argue, the tithe law of 1097 favored the most powerful members of society, who could impose their will on others without facing significant resistance. The aim of this article is to analyze the introduction of tithe in Iceland using the basic tools of the Public Choice School of economics – the interest group theory, and the free rider theory.

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Anarchist Visions of the Medieval Icelandic Non-State Socio-Political Order – an Outline of a Critique

Włodzimierz Gogłoza

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Special Issue, English Version 2018, Special Issues, pp. 47-67

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.18.031.9119

Between the late 9th and the middle of the 13th century, Iceland was a pre-state society with a political system based on “private” creation, adjudication and enforcement of law. The functioning of this society has been a subject of numerous studies conducted within various disciplines, including legal history, political anthropology and institutional economics. In recent decades, medieval Iceland has also become an object of interest to the various branches of the modern anarchist movement, whose members are prone to looking for historical examples of societies which lack a coercive government. The aim of this article is to critique the anarchist reconstructions of the medieval Icelandic mode of governance. In particular, I try to demonstrate that the anarchist visions of the non-state Icelandic socio-political order are anachronistic and substantially differ from the accounts found in the Old Icelandic narrative sources, as well as in the private collections of the medieval local law, known as Grágás.

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Włodzimierz Gogłoza Email

Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin ( Poland)

Włodzimierz Gogłoza