Unpredictability and Presence

The strength of this book lies in the way that it locates Norwegian kingship in the context of broader European developments across the whole early and high middle ages, and of theoretical discussions about state formation and the nature of royal power. Its starting-point is the distinction between ‘absolute loyalty’ to the king and ‘contextual loyalty’ to him. By the former, Orning understands an absolute principle of loyalty founded on the king's role as the administrator of law and justice, a principle universally applied to, and accepted by, all his subjects—regardless of whether or not he himself were present among them. By the latter, Orning understands a principle of loyalty which was dependent on the context in which it was invoked, which was a matter of subjects calculating the advantages or disadvantages of espousing it in particular situations, and which therefore depended on the king being present and on the unpredictability and fearfulness of what his actions might be when he was. Orning relates this distinction to the transition from an oral to a literary culture, drawing on studies of modern non-literate societies to suggest that such societies were incapable of absorbing an abstract principle such as that of ‘absolute loyalty’, but their members behaved in ways dependent on the contexts of that behaviour. Abstract principles were only possible with the introduction of literacy, which permitted ideas to assume an existence independent of actions. Orning relates the distinction he has drawn between ‘absolute’ and ‘contextual’ loyalty to what he calls ‘legal anthropological history’, the proponents of which (including Stephen D. White, Gerd Althoff, and Paul Hyams) have engaged in a new ‘discourse about violence’, starting from the anthropologically-inspired view of law as embedded in society rather than an absolute principle, and of conflicts and feuds as means of conflict resolution rather than symptoms of disorder

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