asked who was their lord; and men thus minded were not likely to spend their time casting dice in King Harold's court, even if their independence meant the wolf's lot of exile. What kind of a political organization they were likely to form can be seen from two examples of the Viking age. One is Iceland, described by Lord Bryce[1] as "an almost unique instance of a community whose culture and creative power flourished independently of any favoring material conditions,"—that curiously decentralized and democratic commonwealth where the necessities of life created a government with judicial and legislative duties, while the feeling of equality and local independence prevented the government from acquiring any administrative or executive functions,—a community with "a great deal of law and no central executive, a great many courts and no authority to carry out their judgments." The other example is Jomburg, that strange body of Jom vikings established in Pomerania, at the mouth of the Oder, and held by a military gild under the strictest discipline. Only men of undoubted bravery between the ages of eighteen and fifty were admitted to membership; no women were allowed in the castle, and no man could be absent from it for more than three days at a time. Members assumed the duty of mutual support and revenge, and plunder was to be distributed by lot.
- ↑ "Primitive Iceland," in his Studies in History and Jurisprudence (Oxford, 1901), pp. 263 ff.
