The End of the Commonwealth

Abstract

Sturlungaöld (The Age of the Sturlungs, ca. 1200/20–1264) is a post-medieval concept, appearing in written sources in the early eighteenth century. It may have entered the vocabulary just then or slightly earlier. The way in which it is understood and applied in modern scholarship is, however, principally the legacy of the so-called Icelandic school of the early twentieth century. This article explores the origins and development of this central concept in modern narratives of early Icelandic history, starting with humanistic ideas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries about the commonwealth era, through Enlightenment and romantic scholarship, and up to the Icelandic school in the twentieth.