RNH Academic Director, Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland, went to York in June 2023, following in the footsteps of Icelandic warrior-poet Egil Skallagrimsson (c. 904–995). Gissurarson regards a famous poem by Egil, Head’s Ransom, as being suspiciously modern. This poem Egil was supposed to have composed in 948 to save his life as Eric Bloodaxe, a deposed king of Norway, who was then governing York, was going to execute him. Gissurarson has suggested that perhaps Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241), the author of Egil’s Saga, composed the the poem. Gissurarson was in York to attend a Liberty Fund colloquium about the idea of commercial society in the works of Enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Benjamin Constant.
Montesquieu on the Nordic Countries
Many interesting ideas were discussed at the colloquium. In The Spirit of the Law, Montesquieu pointed out, for example, that the Phonicians had traded in the whole of the Mediterranean Sea without any urge to conquer foreign territories, unlike the Romans. History writing in the West has been unduly influenced by Roman chroniclers. Were the Romans any better than the Carthagians?
In the same book, Montesquieu wrote that it could be seen in the writings of Tacitus wherefrom the English had derived their political ideas. Their fine system had come into existence in the forests of Germany. Tacitus had described in Germania how the Germanic tribes had resolved issues in popular assemblies. Kings and chieftains had to obey the law just like everybody else. The Nordic nations could rightly be proud of their contribution to European liberty.
Montesquieu added that local circumstances in Europe had led to the continent’s division into many states where each of them had not become too big. A tolerable balance had been formed between them making it difficult for any one of them to conquer the others. They had therefore followed the law and used the advantages of free trade. After Montesquieu had written his book, three despots came however close to conquer the whole European continent, first Napoleon in early nineteenth century, then Hitler and Stalin jointly with their Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939. In both cases the despots were stopped by the British, or as Montesquieu could have said, by the Nordic spirit.
Hume on Free Trade
David Hume taught that progress was brought about by many independent states which were connected by trade, competing with one another. Hume would therefore have understood those critics of the European Union who preferred an open market to a closed state. He was one of the first to state what later has been called monetarism: that inflation was caused by the excessive supply of money.
Hume said that the ‘author of the world’ had intended, by giving people soils, climates, and geniuses, so different from one another, that they would trade with one another. At the colloquium Gissurarson pointed out that this was an intriguing argument coming from an atheist.
