Walking conversations

In many of the Icelandic sagas, a person with a legal case goes to see the local goði, and the most clever of them will say, 'let us go for a walk.' The device in the saga is probably meant to build up suspense, since the household will not hear all that is being said and thus neither will the readers. But there is also a sense in which a walk in nature lessens the difference in status between the two, it is an offer on the part of the goði to treat the visitor as an equal, because within the household, the goði naturally engenders certain formal signs of respect.

After reading two such passages lately, I was also thinking about the walking conversations I have had, like the times I walked beside my professors after class. And I was thinking about certain philosophers who have a definite preference for thinking while walking. Within the context of the saga society, this may not be terribly important, but I think the saga author also expects the reader to understand that conversations done while walking are in fact more important than other conversations. While the body is preoccupied with the simple rudimentaries of not stumbling, focus is taken off of body language and eye contact, and the words themselves take on a weight almost equivalent to the disembodied, written word.

A walking conversation is the kind of conversation one has therefore when a serious matter is in need of discrete, non-performative, and careful consideration.

The Icelandic Althingi probably served the nation better when it was at Thingvellir, is the point.