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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Home And Homelessness In The Middle Of Nowhere, William I. Miller
Home And Homelessness In The Middle Of Nowhere, William I. Miller
Book Chapters
In Iceland one must have a home; it is an offense not to-in some circumstances, a capital offense. A sturdy beggar was liable for full outlawry, which meant he could be killed with impunity. The laws are hard on vagrants. Fornication with a beggar woman was unactionable; it was lawful to castrate a vagabond, and he had no claim if he were injured or killed during the operation. One could take in beggars solely for the purpose of whipping them, nor was one to feed or shelter them at the Thing on pain of lesser outlawry. Their booths at the …
Some Aspects Of Householding In The Medieval Icelandic Commonwealth, William I. Miller
Some Aspects Of Householding In The Medieval Icelandic Commonwealth, William I. Miller
Articles
There has been much, mostly inconclusive, discussion about how to define the household in a manner suitable for comparative purposes. Certain conventional criteria are not very useful in the Icelandic context, where it appears that a person could be attached to more than one household, where the laws suggest it was possible for more than one household to be resident in the same uncompartmentalised farmhouse; and where headship might often be shared. Definitions, for example, based on co residence or on commensalism do not jibe all that well with the pastoral transhumance practised by the Icelanders. Sheep were tended and …