Last Christmas while on vacation I used the opportunity to read some of the lesser known works in my country’s body of literature, the Sagas. The more popular sagas like Egils Saga and the Saga of Grettir Ásmundarson have become somewhat familiar to people in the United States and Europe, but there are dozens upon dozens of sagas that even most Icelanders do not know. One of them is “Hænsna-Þóris Saga”, or “the Saga of Chicken-Þórir.” The full text can be found here: http://www.sagadb.org/haensna-thoris_saga.en2
A relatively short saga, it details a feud between two powerful families in Borgarfjörður district shortly after the adoption of Christianity, sparked by a dispute between Blund-Ketill, a popular and powerful figure in the region, and Chicken-Þórir, a man of little prestige but immense wealth. Why do I think this Saga is important? Because the crux of the dispute is an economic and ethical dilemna centering on a bail-out.
Like in all Sagas, there is more to the plot than that, but the impetus for the murder and mayhem that follows is a bad harvest season that prompts Blund-Ketil, a powerful community leader with thirty farms allied to him, to advise his clients to cut down on their stocks of cattle:
That summer the hay crop was small and poor because of wet weather, and hay supplies were low. During the fall, Blund-Ketil went around to his tenants and told them that he wanted all his rents paid in hay.
He said, We have many cattle to feed, and there is not much hay to be had; I shall also decide how many animals each of my tenants must slaughter this fall, and then things will work out alright."
But unfortunately many farmers, reluctant to reduce their capital stock, allowed more livestock to live than they should, most likely hoping for a mild winter - the end result: feed shortages before spring, threatening their entire stock with hunger and death.
The summer passed and winter came, and soon there was a great shortage of feed around Hliðina [the Slope], with not much laid by, so that many men ran out of hay. Things went on this way until Yule-tide. When mid-winter came, people were in such a bad way that many were ruined. One evening, a tenant came to Blund-Ketil and said that his hay was gone, and he asked Blund-Ketil to help him out.
Blund-Ketil said, How can that be? I thought the arrangements we made last fall were sufficient, and I assumed that all would go well for you.
The tenant confessed that he had not slaughtered as many cattle as Blund-Ketil had ordered.
Blund-Ketil said, Let’s strike a bargain: I will help you out of your difficulty this time, but you must promise not to tell anyone about it, because I don’t want all the tenants coming to me for help, especially since they didn’t follow my orders.
The man went home and told his friend that Blund-Ketil was the best of men in all dealings, and that he had given him help when he needed it. The friend told his friend in turn, and so the news was soon known throughout the district. A little later when Goi month [February 19 to March 19] came, two more of his tenants came to Blund-Ketil and told him that they were out of hay.
Blund-Ketil said to them, You have done wrong in not following my orders, because the fact is, though I have a good supply of hay I also have a lot of stock to feed. So, if I help you, then I won’t have enough for my own herd, so take your choice.
The tenants argued more persistently, and told of their misery until it distressed Blund-Ketil to listen to their wailing. He had one hundred sixty horses driven to the home farm and had the forty worst ones killed. Then he gave the tenants the feed that had been intended for those forty, and they went home satisfied. The weather grew even worse as winter wore on, and conditions became hopeless for many.
Now, having bailed out the most undeserving(i.e those that took the highest risk and failed first), Blund-Ketill has nothing to spare when the winter drags on into the springtime, and those of his tenants that DID follow his advice and did not overinvest are also threatened by hunger. Come April, the land is still covered with snow.
Now One-month [March 19 - April 19] came, and two more of Blund-Ketil’s tenants came to him. They had started the winter with adequate supplies, but even so they were out of hay now, and they asked him for help. He answered that he did not have enough hay for his own stock, and that he did not wish to kill off any more animals. Then they asked whether he know anyone who did have hay to sell. Blund-Ketil said that he did not know for certain. They pressed their case, however, saying that their animals would die if he did not help them.
Blund-Ketil said they had only themselves to blame, but added, I’ve heard that Hønsa-Thóri might have some hay to sell.
They replied, We won’t get anything from him unless you come along with us, but he’ll sell to us right away if you vouch for us in the sale.
Blund-Ketil said, I’ll go with you. It is only right that those who have extra hay should be willing to sell it.
But Chicken-Þórir doesn’t want to sell. Not at market price, not at twice the market price, not even when Blund-Ketill promises to replace all the hay next summer ON TOP of the payment in silver, or any goods of Þórir’s choice right now. Faced with a man who seems to value seeing others suffer more than any amount of profits, Blund-Ketill elects to take the feed anyway, leaving behind a handsome payment.
The rest of the story centers on Chicken-Þóris quest for “justice”, which in his mind can only come if Blund-Ketill is convicted of thievery. He will accept no form of monetary compensation, nothing short of censure in a public court will do for him, which would be a major affront to Blund-Ketil’s personal reputation and the prestige of his clan. Inevitably, violence ensues and many people die needlessly. Few Sagas base their plot and drama as heavily on what is essentially a question of private property and under what conditions it is just to violate another man’s private property. Whether or not Chicken-Þórir, portrayed as a bitter, envious man of low birth who gloats over the possibility of seeing Blund-Ketil, a popular, altruistic and prestigious lord humiliated, is acting rationally or irrationally is to me the central question.
The hay that is stolen belongs to him. No question about that, and not a single character in the Saga claims otherwise. Blund-Ketill does not invoke any appeal to the common good, or Þórir’s civic duty or anything like that. He simply feels that necessity in averting hunger compels him to override Þórir’s wish not to sell his property at any price, but he leaves ample compensation, far above the market price of the product in question, something he did not have to do. A powerful lord like him could have simply taken what he needed. But his act was still coercive in nature - the optimal outcome for Þórir was to see Blund-Ketil humiliated by not being able to help his clients. “Forcing” him to steal provided the pretext neccesary to mount a legal attack against him, one that spirals out of control into a major conflict with dozens of casualties.
But Blund-Ketil’s main mistake in my opinion happened earlier; when he bailed out the negligent and greedy who did not heed his investment advice to cut back on their stocks of cattle - the people who overinvested. By not sending them home empty-handed, he A) signalled that even those who had acted irresponsibly could go to him seeking a hand-out and B) Drained his coffers so that he could not help those who, later on in the harsh winter, had acted responsibly but been hurt nevertheless by a longer-than-average winter(a force majure?) This meant he had to go begging for assistance from a third party that had his own interests in mind.
There are no easy answers here, which speaks to the keen sense of drama and plotting on behalf of the authors. I suggest you read the entire Saga(it’s not very long), as it shows that even in a society devoid of a coercive central government, there are still very hard choices to be made.