So very wrong.

[mrissa]

Today I read Queen Emma and the Vikings, which had some interesting bits, but oh, Harriet O'Brien's strong suit is not Viking culture. (To be frank if snarky, I'm not sure what Harriet O'Brien's strong suit is. But definitely not Viking culture.) But this line was the one where I knew I was just going to have to take some of this book with a grain of salt:

Their wergild, literally meaning 'man-price,' was an early form of life insurance.

Umm...no. It wasn't. At all. Unless you pay your insurance agent nothing, and then your agent pays up iff he/she kills you. I don't think that's what markgritter's company offers, though. And talk about missing a fundamental aspect of the culture! She goes on to earnestly not understand the cultural concepts surrounding it. Of course.

Why is this one so hard? WHY??? Why do so many freakin' idiots go on about other cultures' focus on revenge when our punishment for murder doesn't do a single concrete thing for the victim's family? YARRRRG!

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have read Viking Age Iceland. Also Medieval Iceland and Feud in the Icelandic Saga. Love the Jesse Byock.

Arbitration, yes: it made much sense to me. Much sense indeed. So much I've been playing with it (among other things) in Dwarf's Blood Mead and related works.

Well.. that's sort of..

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

not... playing how? I am stamping hard on a Prince Humperdinck quote here. (Time etc)

The piece that caught me was the absence of the judicary and executive branches.. which is not to say anythng about implementing in current systems aside from what I recognize as actually happening.

And also, I am afraid I have to admit that I was cushing a bit to Egil and also to realizing something about history, and myself, and that was that I did assume a lesser type of cognisance.

The Byock Egil thing.. he was working towards demonstrating that there is historical relevance in the stories also.

Re: Well.. that's sort of..

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Playing in the sense of turning over what it'd mean for people, what assumptions it'd produce and how they'd go right or wrong or sideways. The fiction-writer kind of playing.

You assumed a lesser type of cognizance when/where/with whom?

Re: Well.. that's sort of..

[(Anonymous)]

I am going to reply to this in email, mainly because I think it dovetails in.

But so that I don't leave the thread hanging here, the word I was really looking for was prejudice. It just struck me, that as much as I think about different types of intelligences, that I was so surprised when I read about Egil's verse. And why that was says something about my assumptions about Icelanders (or people maybe of that time.)

It relates to several other non-LJ conversations about differences, that as much as we try to understand and discuss etc, it is very hard to be unbiased. This I really feel is at the root of that situations I mentioned to you at work, that is really is a culture clash. There are personal elements and they don't help but the base is cultural. But then too I lived within another culture for a while (yes, I know we have them here too) and experienced that from the reverse.

Re: Well.. that's sort of..

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

sorry, that one is me.