Warfare
See also: Military history of IcelandThe followers of the goðar owed them military service. They were organized into platoons or companies based on their social status and equipment, and these formed expeditionary armies or leiðangrs. Icelandic military tradition of the time closely followed developments in Norway. No organized cavalry formations or formations of troops equipped with projectile weapons are recorded: instead the bulk of the forces were formed in units of light, medium and heavy infantry, with bowmen or slingers distributed among the infantry units operating as light support skirmishers. Before the end of the Commonwealth at least 21 fortresses and castles had been built in Iceland. During the Age of the Sturlungs the average battle involved fewer than 1000 men, with an average casualty rate of only 15%. This low casualty rate has been attributed to the blood-feud mentality that permeated Icelandic society, which meant that the defeated army could not be slaughtered honourably to a man. – Birgir Loftsson op.cit.
Read more about this topic: Icelandic Commonwealth
Famous quotes containing the word warfare:
“Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing—a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Insurrection—by means of guerrilla bands—is the true method of warfare for all nations desirous of emancipating themselves from a foreign yoke ... It is invincible, indestructible.”
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872)
“The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)