the south-west of the island, about eight hours' riding from where Reykjavík the present capital now stands, and within the district of the first temple that had been founded by Ingolf, the earliest Norwegian settler. This circumstance gave the place a sort of sacredness. There was plenty of water and pasture, and the lake which washed the plain of meeting abounded (as it does to this day) with trout and wild fowl. (It abounds also with most pernicious small black flies, whereon the trout. grow fat, but which make fishing not always a pleasure.) Here, accordingly, Úlfljót having in the meantime returned from Norway with his materials for legislation, the first Alping, or General Assembly of all Iceland, met in A. D. 930, and here it continued to meet, year after year, for a fortnight in the latter half of June, till the year 18001, one of the oldest national assemblies in the civilized world, and one of the very few which did not, like the English Parliament and the Diet of the RomanoGermanic Empire, grow up imperceptibly and, so to speak, naturally, from small beginnings, but was formally and of set purpose established, by what would have been called, had paper existed, a paper constitution, that is to say by the deliberate agreement of independent groups of men, seeking to attain the common ends of order and justice.

There was thus created, before the middle of the tenth century, when Athelstan the Victorious 2 was reigning in England and defeating Scots and Northumbrians at Brunanburh by the help of the Icelandic warriors Thorolf and Egil, sons of Skallagrim3, when the Saxon king Henry the Fowler was repelling the Magyar hosts and laying the foundations of the German Kingdom, and

1 Since this lecture was delivered the Alþing which since 1843 had led a feeble life at Reykjavík as a sort of advisory council, has been re-established as a representative governing assembly under a new constitution granted to Iceland in 1874. It now meets every second year at Reykjavík.

The Saga of Egil calls him Aðalsteinn hinn Sigrsæli (lit. 'blessed with victory'). It is curious that this title should have been preserved in Iceland and ap parently have been forgotten in England.

See Egils Saga Skallagrimssonar, chap. 54.

when the power of the last Carolingians was beginning to pale in Gaul before the rising star of the Capetian line, a sort of republic embracing the whole isle of Iceland, a republic remarkable not only from its peculiar political structure, but also, as will presently appear, from the extremely limited range of its governmental activity. About thirty years later its constitution was amended in some important points, and forty years after that time, about the year 1004, further alterations were made, the details of which are too much disputed as well as too intricate to be explained here. Its general outline, in its completed shape, was the following. The total number of regular pings, and priest-chieftaincies or Goðorðs, was fixed at thirty-nine, nine for each of the four Quarters into which the island was divided, except the North Quarter, which, in order to allay certain local susceptibilities, was allowed twelve. Each of these thirty-nine local pings was presided over by its Goði. Then, for certain purposes, three of these pings were united to form a larger ping-district (pingsokn), of which there were therefore thirteen in all, viz. four for the North Quarter, and three for each of the other Quarters. There was also one still larger ping for each Quarter, called the Fjórðungsping. It seems to have grown up before the institution of the Alping, and to have represented the first stage in the organization of a larger community out of the small local pings. But it tended in course of time to lose its importance.

Ordinary lawsuits and questions of local interest were determined in these minor pings, while graver suits, or those in which the parties belonged to different pings, or where it was sought to reverse the decision of a local ping, as well as all proposals for alterations of the general law, were brought before the Alping, at its annual meeting in June. It seems to have been therefore partly a court of first instance and partly a court of appeal. Now the Alping was open, like other primary Teutonic and Hellenic assemblies, to all freemen who

chose to attend; but its powers were practically exercised by a limited number of persons, viz. the Goðis and certain members nominated by them.

For judicial purposes, the Alping acted through four Courts, one for each Quarter. Each Quarter Court (fjorðungsdómr) consisted, according to one view, of thirty-six members, viz. the Godis of the Quarter with twenty-four nominees, and, according to another view, of nine persons nominated by the Godis of the Quarter. There was also a fifth Court (called the fimtardómr), instituted later than the others (A.D. 1004), on the suggestion of the famous jurist Njál, son of Thorgeir. This Court, which exercised jurisdiction in cases where one of the other Courts had failed, was composed in a somewhat different way, acted under a more stringent oath, and gave its decisions by a majority, whereas in other Courts unanimity was required. It seems to have been intended not only to avert armed strife by providing a better method for settling disputes, but also to organize the country as a whole and give it something approaching to a central authority. This result, however, was not attained, the social and physical obstacles proving insuperable.

In these judicial committees of the Alping lawsuits were brought and argued with an elaborate formality and a minute adherence to technical rules far more strict than is now practised anywhere in Europe, a fact which will appear the more extraordinary when we remember that in those days both the law and all the appropriate forms of words which the parties were obliged to employ were not written, but preserved solely by the memory of individual men.

For legislative purposes the Alping acted through another committee of 144 persons, only one-third (fortyeight) of whom, being the thirty-nine Godis and nine nominees, had the right of voting. The nine nominees were persons chosen by the Godis of the East, South, and West Quarters, three by each Quarter, in order to give

each of these Quarters the same strength in the Committee as the North Quarter had with its twelve Goðis. Each of the forty-eight appointed two assessors who advised him, sitting one behind him and the other in front of him, so that he could readily seek their counsel, and thus the 144 were made up, the forty-eight being described as the Middle Bench. This Committee was called the Lögrétta (lit. 'Law Amending '), and by it all changes in the law were made, and all matters of common interest discussed. It was essentially an aristocratic body, as indeed the whole Constitution bore an aristocratic colour, though there was no such thing as a formal distinction of rank 1, much less any titled nobility. After the introduction of Christianity in A. D. 1000, the two bishops were added to the Lögrétta, while at the head of all, making up the number of members to 147, stood an elected officer, called the Speaker of the Law.

This last-named personage, the solitary official of the republic, is one of the most curious parts of the system. He was called the Lögsögumaðr, literally 'Law-sayman,' or, as we may render it, Speaker, or Declarer, of the Law, and was the depositary and organ of the unwritten common law of the country. It was his duty to recite aloud, in the hearing of the greater number of those present at the ping, the whole law of Iceland, going through it in the three years during which he held office; and to recite once in every year the formulas of actions, this being the part of the law which was of most practical importance. Besides this, he presided in the Lögrétta, giving a casting vote where the votes were equal; and he was bound to answer every one who asked him what the provisions of the law actually were, although not required to advise applicants as to the course they ought to follow in a given case. When in any suit a question of what was the legal rule arose, reference was made to him, and his decision was accepted as final.

1 Although the penalty for killing a man of high lineage was heavier than that for an ordinary freeman; and one perceives from the Sagas how carefully genealogies were preserved and what great respect was paid to long descent.

For these labours he received a yearly salary of two hundred ells of Vaðmál (the blue woolen cloth which then served as currency, and which continued to do so, for some purposes, down to our own time), besides one-half of the fines imposed at the Alping. He was of course selected from the most accomplished lawyers of the time. His declarations of the law were conclusive, at least during his three years' term of office, in all causes and over all persons. Thus he exercised a kind of quasi-judicial or quasi-legislative power, and has been fancifully compared to the Roman Praetor, also an officer elected for a term, also by his edicts the declarer of the law he had to administer 1. But the Law-Speaker was in reality neither judge nor magistrate, nor, indeed, a legislator, except in so far as the right to enounce and interpret borders on legislation. He delivered no judgements, he had no power of enforcing a decision or of punishing an offender. He did not even open the Alping and take the responsibility for keeping order at it, for these functions belonged to the Gooi of the district, called, because the Alping met within his jurisdiction, the Allsherjargoði (priest of the whole host). The Lögsögumaðr was in fact nothing but the living voice of the law, enunciating those customary rules which had come down from the foretime, rules which all accepted, though they were not preserved in any written form, and though they must have been practically unknown to the great majority of the citizens.

The office, although more important in Iceland from the absence of a king or local prince, was one of which we find traces among other Scandinavian peoples, or at least among the Norsemen. It appears in Norway, in the Orkneys, and in the Hebrides (though there the name is Lögman, which in Iceland means merely one learned in the law).

Thingvellir, where the Alping met from the year 930

1 Viva vox iuris civilis was the description which the Romans used to give of their Praetor, as to whom see Essay XIV, p. 691.