An Office That Could Be Bought, Inherited or Split

The godord was not a piece of land or a fixed territorial jurisdiction in the way a medieval European bishopric or parish was. It was a bundle of authority and following, religious leadership of local sacrifice at a hof, and standing to bring and represent legal cases at regional assemblies and the national Althing, attached to whoever held the title of godi or gydja over a group of farmers who had formally declared their allegiance. Sources describing Iceland's early legal and social structure make clear that a godord could be inherited within a family across generations, but it could equally be bought and sold outright, held jointly by more than one person, or divided, arrangements that would be unusual for a purely religious or purely political office in most other traditions but made sense given how thoroughly the two functions were fused in this one.

Because a follower's attachment to a particular godi was in principle a matter of personal choice rather than fixed residence, a farmer dissatisfied with his godi's conduct of sacrifices or representation in legal disputes could, at least formally, transfer his allegiance to a different godord holder, giving the system a competitive element among religious-political leaders that more centralized priesthoods elsewhere in the ancient world generally lacked.