Re: Orlanthi Property

From: Ian Cooper <ian_hammond_cooper_at_...>
Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2000 13:29:23 -0000


John's posting on who owns what in Orlanthi society, is a good summary and I would agree with him. But as it has been raised I would like to make a point about something I have mentioned on the GD a few times:

ODAL PROPERTY Now AFAIK the Norse concept of Odal referred to your the right of your heirs to inherit your property. The migrations to Iceland were partially caused when Scandanavian kings removed odal rights and changed to a feudal system of all land being held as a gift from the king.

It has always seemed to me the with the emphasis on Freedom in Hoertling culture (and its very Icelandic routes) their culture would be one in which inheritance was protected. So the odal model seems like a good one (Heortling culture does seem to be Icelandic with some Celtic infulence throw in).

But the term odal in KoS seems to have been used to refer to communal property. Now I am not just complaining that the meaning of a word has been altered ()I'll accept its Gloranthan meaning) but that it feels to me that it is changing Herotling farmers from landowners to tenants, and thus undermining the 'free' peasant notion for a medievel peasant. (Perhaps this is cultural and I have too strong a bias to property-ownership = freedom, but this also seems to have been the model for the analagous germanic/celtic cultures).

John's model does recognise that the KoS proposition that cattle and steads are also communal would undermine the Orlanthi legal system
(how do you settle disputes between bloodlines in a clan if no one
owns anything of value) and restores these to the bloodline.

In England the modern model of property ownership (which I think dates back to magna carta) you can have the freehold (heirs can inherit you can sell or dispose)to land, but while it is rarely enforced the crown ultimately owns all land and can in theory take it away (though usually with compensation). Perhaps this is a 'Heortling' model (though the problems with a legal system based on fines still remain for other Orlanthi groups so we at least need personal ownership of cattle) and other Orlanthi groups vary depending on their emphasis on personal freedom.

We are probably a bit stuck with the 'odal' model, but I would be cautious about over-emphasising the communal nature of land. I would go for a model equivalent to modern english law. Generally a bloodline has the freehold which it can dispose of as it likes
(within blodline to another bloodline within clan) but the land
ultimately belongs to the clan which in theory could remove it. I would have said that taking land from one bloodline and assigning it to another would be a measure that would only rarely be undertaken and might lead to kinstrife, and be the stuff of sagas.

Emphasis the communal nature of property within a bloodline, not the clan (I think that John's model does seem to handle this).

Ian Cooper

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