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There's a formulaic phrase in early Scandinavian legal texts - one rendering of it is 'með lögum skal land byggja en með ólögum eyða' or 'with laws will the land be built, but with injustices, be laid to waste'. This thread on current events hits the nail on the head 
. 1/14 https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1264803898499489793
. 1/14 https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1264803898499489793
The Old Norse quotation here is presented as a proverb in Njáls saga, but versions of it occur in other places like king Valdemar's law for Jutland and the Norwegian law of the Frostathing. So what did medieval Scandinavians think about people flouting the rules? A thread... 2
First, we have snippets of legal text in the runic corpus dating back to the #Viking Age. These include discussions of murder, peace breaking, outlawry, and even some short legal provisions and associated fines for transgression. There's a long history of legal thinking here. 3
We have a lot more surviving material in the medieval period, including whole law books written in the vernacular and texts like the Icelandic sagas, some of which contain narrative reflections on those laws and issues of justice. 4
One of the biggest problems in the sagas is the ójafnaðarmaðr or 'inequitable person': usually from the upper social strata & uses their position and privilege to flout the law, bully neighbours, and aggressively pursue their goals at the expense of others and social stability. 5
Sound like anyone you know? One of the fundamental problems with the ójafnaðarmaðr is that they do what they want, disregarding the rights and protections of others, but expect their rights and protections under the law to be respected. Their aggressive myopia is destabilising. 6
People like killer Styrr & Thorolf twist-leg from Eyrbyggja saga, Killer Hrapp from Laxdæla saga, & Grettir Ásmundarson from Grettis saga are good examples of this character type and saga authors use them in different ways to explore unjust, inequitable action & iniquity. 7
In these sagas, the ójafnaðarmaðr is a social obstacle to be overcome by more equitable (but no less political, or even necessarily 'good') members of the wider society. They are dangerous because they undermine the agreed regulations in the locality through their actions. 8
Some medieval Scandinavian provincial laws state that one is responsible for all their actions, be they equitable or inequitable. There's no such thing as an accident and even if intent was otherwise, the law must be answered to in cases of transgression. 9
In such cases, the details were to be heard at the 'þing', the assembly, where the matter would be assessed before judgement, compensation, and punishment would be agreed. This isn't to say that people couldn't game the system, but let's pause to reflect here for a moment. 10
It's been revealed that a high-ranking public official has openly ignored the regulations of his own government, risking many lives. This society has the infrastructure to hear and test these cases, but instead, the matter has been dismissed as a nonissue by @BorisJohnson. 11
The key problem is that the Prime Minister is a legislator, his job is to help make law, not enforce it. He is using his power and his position to get preferential treatment for his friend and aide. It seems we have not one, but at least two ójafnaðarmenn in this saga. 12
I will never make the argument that we should look to the medieval period for what we should do in the future, but I think in cases like these, we can look to the past to reflect on our present. If we're still grappling with the same problems, maybe we can do better. 13
There are injustices in every society. People are messy, selfish & imperfect, but such reckless abuses of power for personal and political gain seem to be precisely the ólögum warned about in the proverb from Njáls saga. I think it's worth listening to the warning. 14
