Summary:

Sirpa Aalto, “Center” and “Periphery” in intergroup relations – The Norse-Icelandic cultural sphere as an example

The article deals with concepts of “center” and “periphery” which are mainly used in geopolitics to describe relations between different areas, but in this case they are applied to group identities. The Norse-Icelandic relations and the formation of Icelandic group identity in the Middle Ages are taken as an example. The article discusses how Icelanders as a group came into being when the island was inhabited by Scandinavians and to some extent Celts from about AD 870 onwards. The settlers had to create a group identity for themselves and rules for their society. Legislation and assemblies of free men were adopted from Norse culture, and they came to define the Icelandic society. 

Group identities are born out of comparison to other, so called out-groups. In the case of Icelanders, the relations to the closest out-group, Norwegians, were complicated. On the one hand, the majority of Icelanders descended from Norwegian settlers, but on the other hand Iceland was not in the beginning part of the Norwegian realm but independent of it. Norwegians had twofold opinions about Icelanders: they were thought to be somewhat lazy and maybe simple people, but yet their literary culture and poets (skalds) were praised. Icelanders had by 1150s all the qualities to be called a “nation” in medieval context. They had their own language that had gradually separated from Norwegian, they had laws and even myths about their past, namely the sagas concerning the settlement. Despite the peripheral geographical location Icelanders were self-confident and their group identity was strong, thus not “peripheral”. Historical, cultural and economical ties between Icelanders and Norwegians bound them together, so that we can speak of Norse-Icelandic cultural sphere and in this sense, Icelanders were in the “center”.

However, Icelanders could not sustain their sovereignty, because the society ended up in internal conflicts in the first half of the 13th century and they were economically dependent on trade ships coming from Norway. Iceland was annexed to Norway in 1262–1264, and after the annexation Icelanders were left literally in the periphery: they did not play a major role in the Norwegian kingdom.