Icelandic Commonwealth

The Icelandic Commonwealth, also called the Icelandic Free State, was the political order that held Iceland between the founding of the Althing in 930 and the pledge of fealty to the Norwegian king in the Old Covenant of 1262. Apart perhaps from a few Irish hermits, the island had been empty until Norse settlers came around 874. The Commonwealth had a singular system: the chieftains, the godar, made a common legal code and settled their quarrels at the Althing, the national assembly at Thingvellir, but no executive stood behind the law to enforce it, and the age is read as a stateless society. The settlers carried Norwegian habits with them; they had fled the strong central kingship of Harald Fairhair, yet they wanted the Norwegian tradition of laws and district assemblies. The arrangement held for three centuries. In the thirteenth century the island fell under the Kingdom of Norway, and the Commonwealth ended.