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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ferratus" data-source="post: 4674957" data-attributes="member: 55966">Being free doesn't mean they were independent of their lord, or had their own property.  A karl for example, was essentially a tenant farmer who had not amassed his own wealth and property, but worked as a hand for a bondi.  A "House carl" was the term for a warrior in service to a lord, which means some men were hired because they were good killers.Also, just because someone could challenge someone for a duel, people didn't fight to the death all the time.   For one thing, it is a very risky activity.  For another, usually nobody wanted the bad blood from killing someone with relatives whether in a duel or not.  You've read the Icelandic Sagas, so you know people are generally attached to their friends and relatives, and aren't likely to just shrug their shoulders when a duel is over.So you have ordeals so people who are unable or unwilling to fight to the death can have some way to prove their innocence.  The ordeal wasn't a replacement for dueling because people didn't solve all their judgements by dueling.  It was a germanic alternative to dueling, and not a christian invention.If you were involved in a feud or disagreement, and you didn't feel like facing a duel or an ordeal, you turned to a man who was wealthier, better connected, and stronger than you.  This "big man" would thus be your advocate and make sure you weren't competely screwed over, in exchange for a favour or money.So despite your protestations about it being free, Iceland like most other areas, devolved the power to fewer and fewer strongothar and stronbodi (again to lazy to fetch the proper characters) and eventually became an Earldom.   Yep, good old Diocletian.  I have all of those, but I'm not someone who trusts my own interpretations alone.  After all, it would be like declaring yourself an authority on the old testement without knowing jewish history, language, or literature.  People can't just read something and understand it without the proper guidance and context. The Saga of Grettir the Strong is one of my favourites too.  My favourite saga is Njal's Saga, because it is almost like a legal primer.  Every case is similar to the one that came before it, but is just a little more complex.  That is true.  Power still coalesced around a few strongmen though in Iceland, and then eventually an Earl who was a vassal to a foreign king.Yes, they disliked the crossbow because they felt it went against the established proper order and caused the disruption of the peace.  I'm not sure if I would necessarily call the aristocrats their allies the whole time they wanted a ban on the crossbow (it wasn't very long after all) since often times the cities and republics were on the side of papacy against the Imperial crown. I think the ban on the crossbow was basically a pope taking an earnest stand against a weapon in hopes it would change things and reduce violence, kind of like the Canadian government who banned one handed crossbows.  A lot of other countries have laws against crossbows too, as a substitute for banning all weapons or part of a larger weapons ban.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_on_crossbows" target="_blank">Laws on crossbows - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</a> I see echoes of Pope Innocent II and the Lateran council in those regulations.  Of course, there seems to be some debate as to whether crossbows were attempted to be banned at all.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbow" target="_blank">Crossbow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</a>No, you're thinking late antiquity. Conversion from paganism in former roman provinces was pretty much sorted out by Cluniac monastic movements of the 6th - 8th centuries, who had generally impressed the locals with their art and liturgical chanting.  The Germans outside of Rome's borders were converted without too much trouble from th 6th - 9th centuries, because religion wasn't a particularly personal faith, so when their local gothar (I'm too lazy to make an edth) or priest-chiefs converted, since he was the one who did all the sacrifices and looked after the local shrines, everyone else converted too.   By the high middle ages, the only pagans that really still existed in Europe would have been people like the Latvians in northeastern Europe.   Even far off Iceland converted by act of the Althing in the year 1000, so that all would live under the same law.  You can find an account of that in Njal's Saga of course.</blockquote>

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