Astral Codex Ten

medieval Iceland

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medieval Iceland

Article

medieval Iceland is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 16, 2023 and April 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “medieval Iceland surely deserves a place beside it in this pantheon”; “drawing, of course, on medieval Iceland”. It most often appears alongside Elon Musk, 80,000 Hours, @msamalam.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: June 16, 2023
  • Last seen: April 22, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: Njal’s Saga
June 16, 2023 · Original source
I found Njal’s Saga hard to follow. Halfway through, a friend reassured me it wasn’t my fault. The medieval Icelanders had erred in releasing it as a book. It should have been the world’s wackiest Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney spinoff1.
Inline links: 1
Remember, medieval Iceland was an early attempt at anarcho-capitalist utopia. When Harald Fairhair declared himself King of Norway, the Norwegians who refused to bend the knee fled west to build a makeshift seastead on a frozen volcanic island. No lords, no kings, no masters. Only lawsuits. So, so many lawsuits.
Inline links: medieval Iceland was an early attempt at anarcho-capitalist utopia
Once a year, the Icelanders would meet at the Althing, a free-for-all open-air law court. There they would engage in that most Viking of pastimes - suing each other, ad nauseam, for every minor slight of the past twelve months. Offended parties would sell their rights to prosecute a case to the highest bidder, who would go around seeking fair arbitrators (or, in larger cases, defer to a panel chosen by chieftain-nobles called godi2). Courts would propose a penalty for the losing side - usually money. There were no police, but if the losers refused to pay, the courts could declare them “outlaws” - in which case it was legal to kill them. If you wanted to be a Viking in medieval Iceland, you needed a good lawyer. And Njal was the greatest lawyer of all.
Inline links: 2
Links For April 2025
April 22, 2025 · Original source
34: Related: the Trump administration seems to be refusing to comply with a 9-0 Supreme Court order to bring back a specific deported immigrant. This is obviously terrifying, but superforecaster Peter Wildeford says it is not technically a constitutional crisis yet (X) because there are still some formalities the courts need to go to before they have officially “ordered” Trump to bring back the immigrant, and he won’t have officially “defied” the order until the formalities are complete. This doesn’t make me too much calmer but I guess is good to keep in mind. Related: Nicholas Decker asks when a violation of the Constitution becomes the sort of wolf-at-the-door dictatorship that we are supposed to violently rise up to prevent; people are mad at him but I think you have to either admit that some level of tyranny reaches this level or else just lie down and die. My proposed solution (drawing, of course, on medieval Iceland) is that the Supreme Court should be able to directly enforce its decisions by declaring violators to be “outlaws”; not only do outlaws lose the protection of the law, but anyone who uses force to defend of an outlaw becomes an outlaw themselves. See here for discussion of the pluses and minuses of such a system.
Inline links: refusing to comply with a 9-0 Supreme Court order, it is not technically a constitutional crisis yet, that we are supposed to violently rise up to prevent, here