«The less prepared the body of good men within the land are to act as mediators the longer
more violent and less reconcilable will be the conflicts through which the land is plagued.»
The prefatory sagas of the Sturlunga compilation develop this principle by incremental
repetition of themes of disintegration of mediation and its collapse of flawed
reconciliation the central work of the compilation Sturla Thordarson's «Islendinga saga»
provides the proof. The compilation as an entity is an «exemplum» calling on the leaders of
14th-Century Iceland to settle their differences amicably and avoid a return to Sturlung Age
chaos.
