The Icelandic family sagas speak vividly of the disaffection among many of the Norwegians, who were unhappy with the new royal order that drew more and more power to itself—at the expense of the agricultural class. In the retrospective (and surely biased) history of the medieval saga-writers, these independent-minded landowners were some of the key movers behind the decision to settle a new colony in the North Atlantic, and establish the republic of free farmers that would become Iceland.
