Friendship in the Middle Ages carried a meaning far removed from the modern concept of a development of personal sympathies between individuals. It was cultivated formally and implied obligations and bonds of mutual support. In a society where, for example, party politics did not exist, friendship had a clear role in the formation of social networks and political organization.

This book contributes to the study of the history of emotions and cultural histories of the Middle Ages, while also adding another crucial piece to the broader historiographical debate currently challenging the most traditional view of the Iberian Peninsula’s ‘exceptionalism’. This interdisciplinary study considers whether Iberia should be rather considered as a peripheral, but still vital, ring in a chain which linked it to the rest of Europe, while occupying a central role in the historical and cultural developments of the Western Mediterranean.

In this book, Lars Hermanson discusses how religious beliefs and norms steered attitudes to friendship and love, and how these ways of thinking affected social identity and political behaviour. With examples taken from eleventh- and twelfth-century northern Europe, the author investigates why friendship was praised both by brotherhoods of aristocratic warriors and by brethren within monastery walls. Social and political functions rested on personal connections rather than a strong central state in the High Middle Ages. This meant that friendship was an important pragmatic instrument for establishing social order and achieving success in the game of politics.

Political life in the middle ages was influenced heavily by the bonds people had to one another. Among these, the bonds of kinship, friendship and lordship were by far the most important. Ritual was also often used to create and strengthen these bonds, and conduct and behaviour within social groups was shaped by unwritten rules. People bound in these ways had a right to expect help and support from one another. Such bonds were both a fact and a necessity of life in the middle ages. Over time, however, these bonds and relationships changed, as did the rules and norms which governed them. The aim of this book is to document and describe the history of these crucial bonds, and the ways in which they shaped political life in Europe in the early and high middle ages.

"To a faithful friend, straight are the roads and short."—Odin, from the Hávamál (c. 1000) Friendship was the most important social bond in Iceland and Norway during the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages. Far more significantly than kinship ties, it defined relations between chieftains, and between chieftains and householders. In Viking Friendship, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson explores the various ways in which friendship tied Icelandic and Norwegian societies together, its role in power struggles and ending conflicts, and how it shaped religious beliefs and practices both before and after the introduction of Christianity. Drawing on a wide range of Icelandic sagas and other sources, Sigurðsson details how loyalties between friends were established and maintained. The key elements of Viking friendship, he shows, were protection and generosity, which was most often expressed through gift giving and feasting. In a society without institutions that could guarantee support and security, these were crucial means of structuring mutual assistance. As a political force, friendship was essential in the decentralized Free State period in Iceland’s history (from its settlement about 800 until it came under Norwegian control in the years 1262–1264) as local chieftains vied for power and peace. In Norway, where authority was more centralized, kings attempted to use friendship to secure the loyalty of their subjects. The strong reciprocal demands of Viking friendship also informed the relationship that individuals had both with the Old Norse gods and, after 1000, with Christianity’s God and saints. Addressing such other aspects as the possibility of friendship between women and the relationship between friendship and kinship, Sigurðsson concludes by tracing the decline of friendship as the fundamental social bond in Iceland as a consequence of Norwegian rule.

This ground-breaking volume explores the terrain of friendship against the historical backdrop of early modern Europe. In these thought-provoking essays the terms of friendship are explored - from the most intimate and erotically charged to the reciprocities of village life. This is a rich offering in social and cultural history that is attuned to the pervasive language of religion. A hidden history is revealed - of friendships that we have lost, and of friendships starkly, and movingly, familiar.

Today, friendship, love and sexuality are mostly viewed as private, personal and informal relations. In the mediaeval and early modern period, just like in ancient times, this was different. The classical philosophy of friendship (Aristotle) included both friendship and love in the concept of philia. It was also linked to an argument about the virtues needed to become an excellent member of the city state. Thus, close relations were not only thought to be a matter of pleasant gatherings in privacy, but just as much a matter of ethics and politics.What, then, happened to the classical ideas of close relations when they were transmitted to philosophers, clerical and monastic thinkers, state officials or other people in the medieval and early modern period? To what extent did friendship transcend the distinctions between private and public that then existed? How were close relations shaped in practice? Did dialogues with close friends help to contribute to the process of subject-formation in the Renaissance and Enlightenment? To what degree did institutions of power or individual thinkers find it necessary to caution against friendship or love and sexuality?