Random resonances - the Law of the Gulathing Province and the First Book of Samuel

As a historian, I am trained to look for patterns and connections in history. Not in the sense of how the learned understood history in the Latin Middle Ages, which was founded on the idea that history was shaped by a divine creator, and that the patterns, symmetries and repetitions of history were part of God's plan. In modern academic history, we have thankfully lost this methodological principle, a principle that I believe to be both bad history and bad theology. In modern academic history, however, the patterns and connections have to do with detecting influences and offering hypotheses about how impulses and ideas might have travelled, and whether phenomena appearing in one part of the world is connected to similar phenomena elsewhere. 

In general, it is fair to say that people in my geography of expertise, Western Europe, have received and passed on impulses across a much larger chronological scope than we often tend to given them credit for, and that roads of trade, travel, pilgrimage and plunder have been established much earlier than the surviving sources allow us to ascertain. Yet despite the undoubtable un-reconstructable routes of contact, it is also important to keep in mind that some similarities have nothing to do with influence, but are rather random resonances. These resonances are such that they might allow one individual familiar with both ideas or impulses to recognize the similarity, but this similarity would be more of a surprise, something uncanny, perhaps, rather than the kind of recognition that comes from something familiar. 

The concept of random resonances was something that occurred to me as I was preparing a presentation for a conference on Mostertinget, the Moster assembly, which traditionally has been regarded as the place where Christian law was introduced to Norway in 1024. Modern scholars are doubtful about this narrative, at least when it comes to the claims about the importance of this assembly. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to accept that something important happened at this assembly, and that we are still unlearning a lot of the accumulated tradition in order to better understand the importance of this historical event.  

Moster, an island south of Bergen in Western Norway, was part of the law province that is called Gulatinget, the Gula thing or the Gula assembly, which covered most of Western Norway south of Møre up until the implementation of a law of the realm in 1274. The rules of this provincial law were passed down orally until they were written down in the second half of the twelfth century. One of these rules lay out the proper and legal conduct for when a ship called out to defensive service in the event of an attack from the sea, is running out of food and needs to replenish its stores. This rule is found in the part of the law that Erik Simensen, in his 2021 translation of the Older Gulathing Law, has rendered as 'The book on the naval levy'. In his translation, the rule is as follows: 

Now they return northward and run out of food, then they should call other ships to witness and show them their food, that they have no more food than one month’s rate of each kind for two squads, then they may slaughter two head of cattle from a householder with impunity, and they should pay two aurar for a cow and the same (amount) for a three-year-old ox, and two and a half aurar for a full-grown ox; and they should leave the head, the hide and the feet behind; then they are free of guilt if they slaughter in that way. But if they take away the head or the feet or the hide, then they are liable to punishment. 

- The Older Gulathing Law, translated by Erik Simensen, 2021: 203

The rule is typical of the old Norwegian laws: detailed an eminently practical. The command that the head, the hide and the feet should be left behind is probably to be understood as a form of receipt, a physical proof of what a family had lost in the name of the kingdom's defence. Perhaps we might also see this as a way of leaving parts of the animal that would also yield some food in the even that the family in question were likewise in dire straits.  

The age of the Gulathing law is an unsolvable historical question, especially because it underwent changes across centuries, and even though it is a very conservative law - as most laws tend to be - it is far from as stable as some people might imagine. Consequently, when talking about the random resonance to this passage, some caveats are in order. The resonance I encountered - as randomly as is the resonance itself - comes from 1 Samuel, one of the books of the Old Testament that would probably have not been widely known in Norway by the eleventh century. I emphasise this caveat because we know very little about the transmission of the Bible in medieval Norway. Christianity is likely to have arrived in Norway much earlier than we traditionally think - which is the second half of the tenth century - but it is only in the eleventh century that a Norway-wide church organisation came into being. The transmission of the Bible, in this early period of Christianisation, was predominantly oral and conveyed through the sermons of the priests. Some books of the Bible might have been available at certain religious centres, but I very much doubt that any one-volume edition of the Bible ever existed in medieval Norway. This is all to say that big chunks of the Old Testament are likely to have been unknown to most medieval Norwegians until at least the twelfth century. 

Given the probability of the books of Samuel having had little cultural impact in the time when the section on the levy of boats in the Gulathing Law was implemented, I was struck by how someone familiar with the Gulathing Law might have reacted to the following passage from 1 Samuel: 

And the next day again, when they rose in the morning, they found Dagon lying upon his face on the earth before the ark of the Lord: and the head of Dagon, and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold 

- 1 Samuel 5:4 

  

The passage in question relates the destruction of the statue of the god of the Philistines following their stealing of the Ark of the Covenant, which was brought to the land of Azotus and placed next to the statue. The breaking of the head and the hands was the culmination of a series of signs that led the Philstines to return the Ark to the Israelites. In a way, the hands and head of Dagon can be understood as a kind of receipt, evidence for the stronger power of the god of the Israelites, and a manifestation of a certain hierarchy. However this was encountered, whether written, spoken or, which is unlikely, in pictures, to Norwegians familiar with the Gulathing Law, this story would perhaps have resonated in a particular way, seeing that the head and the feet - or the head and the hand - carried a specific legal connotation that also marked the trust to be placed in a higher authority, in this case the king of Norway. By bringing the feet and the head of the commandeered cattle, Norwegians had hope for restitution, a hope that in turn legitimised the government of the king over that of local lords. Norwegians might, therefore, have understood the importance of this display of power enacted on the statue of Dagon, precisely because their own culture had a similar symbolism that was also connected with the hierarchy of power. 

Of course, we do not know of any medieval Norwegians, at least outside the clergy, who knew of the fate of Dagon's statue. The juxtaposition has laid the ground for an entirely hypothetical scenario, but one that might be of some academic value nonetheless. Because the imagery of the head and the hands in the Bible is older than the Gulathing Law, but did most likely not influence the latter. The similarity between these two texts, that each in their own way pertained to the recognition of power and authority,  is an entirely random resonance - one that might have taken on a particular meaning to a particular audience owing to complete coincidence. Such resonances might affect the reception of the new, unfamiliar element of the juxtaposition. Consequently, even though we cannot assert any historical examples of such receptions, we might imagine that they existed, and by imagining this we might come closer to acknowledge how the patterns and similarities that we encounter in the study of history might be nothing but coincidence.