ABSTRACT
Medieval Iceland, with its vast saga literature and extensive lawbooks, has long supplied researchers with examples of conflict and feud. The cultural and ecological setting in Viking Age Iceland gave individuals an incentive to keep the peace. Peer pressure, demanding moderation and consensus, emerged as a potent force in Icelandic politics because Icelanders lived in what might be called a "great village society. The conscious sense of community that underlay the great village nature of early Icelandic society has been rather overlooked by scholars, yet the pieces are all there for assembling the deepened understanding of early Iceland that this concept offers. Early Icelanders were, of course contentious, but to what extent were they prepared to accept the disruption of blood-feuding? Viewing Iceland as a great village practicing vendetta helps to solve one of the major problems in the study of Iceland and its feuding culture, namely how to understand Iceland's chieftains.
