Perhaps the weirdest system of government that ever existed.

Notice- I am the original author of this content. Much of this post was originally written by me on Quora at the following link.

https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-weirdest-type-of-government-that-actually-existed/answer/Alfred-Montestruc?share=985453c7&srid=ua3hK

Possibly the “weirdest” system of government that was ever set up and seemed to be stable enough to last for close to 300 years was what the first colonists of Iceland set up around 900 AD. The colonists mostly came from Norway, and were disenchanted with the king of Norway at the time. Please understand that I am not at all talking about modern Iceland, or any period in Iceland after ~ 1200 AD.

David Friedman (son of Milton & Rose Friedman the famous economists) wrote a paper on this. He called it: PRIVATE CREATION AND ENFORCEMENT OF LAW: A HISTORICAL CASE

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html

Quoting “Second, medieval Icelandic institutions have several peculiar and interesting characteristics; they might almost have been invented by a mad economist to test the lengths to which market systems could supplant government in its most fundamental functions. Killing was a civil offense resulting in a fine paid to the survivors of the victim. Laws were made by a "parliament," seats in which were a marketable commodity. Enforcement of law was entirely a private affair. And yet these extraordinary institutions survived for over three hundred years, and the society in which they survived appears to have been in many ways an attractive one . Its citizens were, by medieval standards, free; differences in status based on rank or sex were relatively small;[5] and its literary, output in relation to its size has been compared, with some justice, to that of Athens.[6]”

This society had a legislature, and a court system, and no executive branch. The seats in the legislature were not elected, they were literally, and legally bought and sold.

As in, if you wanted to become a legislator you had to buy the position of legislator from the current holder of the seat.

EDIT: David Friedman the author of the paper wrote me and said:

“Not entirely accurate. Judge wasn’t a bought position. Godi was a transferable position, so could be bought or inherited, and for a single case at a reasonably high level each godi got to choose one judge. The judges there are more nearly what we think of as jurymen, since there are a bunch of them.”

“For a more up to date version of my account of Iceland, a draft chapter for a book I’m writing, see the Icelandic chapter at:”

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/legal_systems_very_different_12/LegalSystemsDraft.html

I recommend this.

Likewise a legislative seat could be inherited. I had wrongly stated that the position of judge was sellable, they had something more like juries.

This society had little that would correspond to modern criminal law, other than perjury or variations of perjury where a person is unlawful withholding truth from the court and/or trying to persuade the court to believe something that the perjurer knew was not true. The penalty was to be “outlawed” meaning that this person would be ruled to be (with some right of appeal) no longer protected by law, it was impossible to legally wrong an outlaw, as he has no rights at all. One can take his property, and abuse him and not be considered to have committed any sort of offense.

At the same time, this society was considered fairly attractive to live in set next to contemporary societies of that era. People were relatively free, differences in status small, and the literally output was large set next to contemporary societies.