Gothi

Common card · No. 388389

Gothi or goði (plural goðar, fem. gyðja; Old Norse: guþi) was a position of political and social prominence in the Icelandic Commonwealth. The term originally had a religious significance, referring to a pagan leader responsible for a religious structure and communal feasts, but the title is primarily known as an expression for the secular political power in medieval Iceland, yet on the other side representing the enhanced power of the lay community of the Church in the Icelandic Commonwealth, throughout the Civil Wars era of the extended North Sea realm (1130-1241). The implications of the Concordat of Worms "solving" the Investiture Controversy were immense as the distinction and braiding of the secular and the religious dimensions and spheres of interest had its more or less unique character, ideals and traditions, particularly guarded by the Icelanders whose establishment on Iceland and might in the North Atlantic was spurred by resistance to the new more autocratic form of royal power...

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