Gilli

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Gilli (disambiguation) .

Gilli or Gille lived around the year 1000 to the Faroe Islands and in the Faroese first Løgmaður (then Thing Chairman ) mentions the Faroe Islands. The term used at that time was lögsögumaður " land judge ".

The following article is a retelling of those passages in the Faroese saga in which Gille is mentioned. The years are reconstructed estimates from GVC Young, 1982.

In 1024 he went to Norway with Leivur Øssursson and Tórálvur Sigmundsson at the behest of King Olav II. Haraldsson . Tróndur í Gøtu was supposed to be part of the party too , but fell ill before leaving. Olav wanted to establish loyal rule over the Faroe Islands. The three did what the king asked and swore an oath on him.

After a Norwegian ship, which was supposed to collect taxes for the Norwegian crown in the Faroe Islands, disappeared without a trace, and Olav asked his three followers to come to him in 1026, they sent Tórálvur with a crew, but they were followed by Tróndur's men. Tórálvur was killed in Norway - almost in front of the king's eyes. Only Karl von Møre was brave enough to lead an expedition to the Faroe Islands to solve the case.

Leivur Øssursson and Gille were supposed to work with Karl on the next thing in Tórshavn in 1028 . Tróndur also cooperated (extremely half-heartedly, as it turned out) with the Norwegian ambassador, and so they collected the outstanding taxes from all over the Faroe Islands. However, the following year at the Ting there was a bloodbath in Tróndur's tent of all places, where Karl was murdered. At the same time, Sigurd Torlaksson is said to have murdered one of Gille's men. Gille and Leivur refused the manpower that was customary at the time, but arranged for the perpetrators to be expelled from the Faroe Islands. At the same time, Olav's attempt to collect taxes from the Faroe Islands ended.

In the following year (1029) the three perpetrators, Sigurd Torlaksen, Tord the Little and Gaut the Red, came back to the Faroe Islands with an armed group of 30 men. Gille and Leivur had no choice but to place themselves under the protection of Tróndur í Gøtu in the face of this overwhelming power, who ordered that the men were allowed to resettle in the Faroe Islands. Tróndur divided the Faroe Islands into three parts: one for himself, one for Leivur Øssursson and one for Sigmundur Brestisson's sons.

Résumé

GVC Young assumes that Gille was already before the visit to King Olav the Løgmaður of the Faroe Islands, and that in this capacity he was not only the chief judge, but also a kind of president. The Faroese saga also shows that the Faroese thing was not just a court, but also a legislative assembly. Until about 1273 the Løg (søgu) maður was elected by the Thing.

While the names of the Løgmenn were not even known for a long time until 1524 (with the exception of Sjúrður ), Gille is mentioned in Lucas Debes' first book about the Faroe Islands, Færoæ & Færoa Reserata in 1673 - a good 150 years before the Faroese saga of Carl Christian Rafn was compiled from Icelandic mythology and published.

literature

• GVC Young: Færøerne. Fra vikingetiden til reformations. Rosenkilde & Bagger, Copenhagen 1982, ISBN 87-423-0371-0 , p. 30ff.
• Faroese saga (see there)