Drekkingarhylur(Drowning Pool). 싱벨리어 국립공원(Þingvellir National Park). 아이슬란드(Iceland)

Drekkingarhylur(Drowning Pool).

싱벨리어 국립공원(Þingvellir National Park). 아이슬란드(Iceland)

Drekkingarhylur (Drowning Pool)

Punishments at Alþingi

During the time of the Old Commonwealth (930-1262) executive powers in Iceland were very limited. At the Alflingi (national assembly) at thingvellir, laws were enacted, and cases were tried in accord with those laws, but verdicts had to be enforced by individuals.

In minor cases, fines were imposed, while graver cases entailed exile for three years or even lifelong outlawry. If a convicted person flouted the verdict and turned up where he was not allowed to be, he might be killed by the family of his victim: such cases of vengeance are common in the Sagas of Icelanders.

After the Icelanders submitted to be ruled by the King of Norway in 1262, legal codes provided for punishments to be implemented by royal officials at Alþingi and regional assemblies.

Fines were often imposed in minor disputes

One of the penalties that could be imposed during the Old Commonwealth was outlawry.

"If a man cuts at a man or thrusts at him..."

From the Grágás lawcode

It is prescribed that if men meet as they travel and one man makes what the law deems an assault on another, the penalty is lesser outlawry. These are fiver assaults deemed such by law: if a man cuts at a man or thrusts at hime, or shoots or throws at him or strikes at him. And it counts as an assault if a man swings a weapon and a panel gives a verdict that he meant the stroke to land, and he was moreover at such close range that for that matter it could have landed if it had not been stopped on its way, or that he could have reached him.

English transl. A. Dennis, P.Foote & R. Perkins.

University of Manitoba Press, Winnipeg.

Ljósmynd/Photo

"A man who slays a man or a woman shall be liable to lifelong outlawry..."

The Great Edict

Penalties were made far more severe after the "Great Edict" of 1564, which was concerned with punishment of such immoral acts as incest and fornication. Jurisdiction in such cases was transferred from the church to the secular authorities and during the 16th and 17th centuries, the authorities were zealous in their punishments. It was commonly believed that God would exact retribution from whole societies where sin and evil flourished, and so governments were keen to avert such divine wrath by exacting stringent penalities. Executions were intended to discourage other offenders, and they were a popular public spectacle.

For minor offences fines were paid, while corporal punishments such as flogging were also inflicted. For the worst forms of incest, the Great Edict prescribed that men should be beheaded, and women drowned. For the first few years after the verdict, the authorities were reluctant to impose such drastic penalties, but resistance declined around 1600, largely due to a campaign of zero tolerance by Bishop Guðbrandur Þorláksson.

In the 17th and 18th centuries the most usual reason for the death penalty was incest, followed by the offence of infanticide in order to conceal the birth of a child. In the last decades of the 17th century, executions at regional assemblites were abolished; all were to be carried out at Alflingi, after a trial in the Lögrétta court. By the middle of the 18th century, all death penalties were being referred to the king, who commuted sentences to life imprisonment, and subsequently to shorter sentences. The provisions of the Great Edict were not entirely abolished until 1838, when far less stringent penalties had become the rule.

In the latter part of the 17th century men wre burned for witchcraft at Þingvellir, Birch wood was used for the pyre.

Punishment and placenames

In olden times drowning was widely used as a method of execution. People were drowned in marshes, in fresh water and in the sea. In Iceland, provision was made in law for execution by drowning from 1281, but wirtten sources make no reference to such executions until after the Reformation in the 16th century.

At Þingvellir, women were drowned in Drekkingarhylur, but one case is recorded of woman being drowned in the Öxará river below the meeting-place of the Law Council. No reliable accounts exits of drownings at Þingvellir, but women area said to have been tied up in a sack, pushed out into the pool, and held under.

Many other placenames at Þingvellir derive from savage penalties imposed at Alþingi. In the Stekkjargjá gorge are Gálgaklettar (Scaffold Cliff) and Gálgi (Scaffold). Thieves were regarded at the lowest of criminals, and were sentenced to hang. Others were beheaded on Hoggstokkseyri (Execution Block Spit), which may have been on an islet in the Öxará river. Brennugjá (Stake Gorge), west of Flosagjá, derives it name from the witch hunts of the late 17th century, when sorcerers were burned at the stake. Convicts were probably whipped and branded on Kagahólmi (Whipping Islet).

Seventy-two people are known with certainty to have been executed at Þingvellir from 1602 to 1750: 30 males were beheaded, 15 hanged, and nine burned at the stake. Eighteen women were drowned here in Drekkingarhylur.

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