Well, it's more complex than that because at the end of the day, legal settlements would have to be made, and these were usually arranged between one godhi and

Well, it's more complex than that because at the end of the day, legal settlements would have to be made, and these were usually arranged between one godhi and another or alternatively with a trial by two juries (needing a "double majority" to reach a verdict of guilt). But Iceland was a country of laws and they solved a lot of problems based on such a distributed executive in ways we might find funny today. For example consider search and seizure law. The law didn't focus on who you couldn't search but rather who you had to search. My recollection of the Gragas was that the rules were that you had limits on the size of the search team and you had to search consecutive estates (i.e. no picking on who you thought was guilty, but you had to search every estate between the two you thought were likely perpetrators). This meant, effectively that you had better narrow it down before starting. Now there were other interesting crimes. Failing to baptize a baby within the time mentioned by law was nearly the equivalent of murder and certainly the equivalent of infanticide..... (As was, if I remember right, eating horse meat.)