Nature and Policy in Iceland 1400-1800: An Anthropological Analysis of History and Mentality

In this book Kirsten Hastrup offers an analysis of Icelandic society during a period of remarkable social disintegration and technological decline. She approaches the subject from a variety of angles, juxtaposing the economic social, and political orders with concepts of humanity, fate, and nature and providing the reader with a comprehensive picture of Icelandic society in the period. Her analysis shows how the dissolution of the ancient order must be attributed to internal factors of culture and mentality, as well as to the external ones of natural catastrophe and commercial exploitation. She ends the book with a valuable discussion of the nature of causation in history.