The Things, councils, and courts may have provided ordinary Icelanders with the opportunity to challenge others for status and power, but they also reinforced the idea that they were governed by a single law. Vár lög, ‘our law’, meant all of Iceland, and the islanders considered that their laws were as old as their community.25 Some even claimed that the law had roots in an earlier civilization, even if it had not always been written. It confirmed that the Icelanders were a single people who resisted the domination of any king.
