Talk:Weregild

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I guess every culture had similar custom: Slavs had "glowczyzna" (glowa == head) which was much the same. Should that be reflected in article? szopen

I've mentioned and linked it. Now all it needs is an article on glowczyzna :-). sjc

I don't think German Wehr is related. I'd guess that this is related to Eng. war, cognate to Romance guerra, etc.--Fitzaubrey 04:30, 28 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree - the "were" more closely corresponds with "wer", or 'who' in modern German, and geld orginally meant "worth", not "money". In modern German you have the phrase "er gilt" which means "he is worth" or "he counts for" that I think is more closely related. Elle121 02:34, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

You might want to actually go in to detail as to what "weregild" is exactly, not just cultures who used the system, and it's etymology. Some might not understand by what is written.


 * While I understand that women had a weregild it seems to me like the etymology meant "male person." Were didn't mean man as in person, because they had the word "man." It meant male. Weremen were male persons and wyfmen were female persons, if I remember rightly.75.73.32.46 (talk) 16:22, 22 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Similar payments are required under Sharia law. Pustelnik (talk) 01:00, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

it appears this article was entirely written based on guessing how it probably would have been. I have tried to clean up the most blatant falsehoods, but there remain some highly dubious items. It is plainly wrong that no allowance was made for self-defense, as will be clear to anyone looking at the Anglo-Saxon law codes. The claim that no distinction was made between murder and mere manslaughter may be roughly correct, but I suspect that there are exceptions even there. The claim that women  commanded higher amounts, was true for some codes and not for others. The fanciful "explanation" that women were more precious because the Northern Europeans "were nomads" was just pulled out of thin air (aka WP:OR). --dab (𒁳) 21:00, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

How come this article has the "Anglo-Saxon paganism and mythology" template at the bottom? The concept of weregild is by no means paganism or mythology, it's legal history. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.167.61.134 (talk) 11:17, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Removed recent format-breaking changes with value-laden and misplaced editorial comments from 75.52.186.148. Some other forum is probably better suited to signal disapproval of ancient legal practices. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.65.140.210 (talk) 05:37, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Removed some phrases and words from the description following the link to the article on "social hierarchy" because they contained moral stances. More in general, I feel that the "see also" section could be pruned, it contains a lot of links. Gerard RvE (talk) 12:30, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Is there a reason why Atonement under See Also links specifically to Day of Atonement (Nation of Islam)?? PICURMN (talk) 04:33, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Rename
According to modern German, money is "Geld" and not "Gild". Shouldn't this article be renamed as Weregeld? Gauravjuvekar (talk) 14:05, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

What was the value of wergild in practical terms?
If a solidus is 4.5g of gold, then a wergild of 200S works out as £28800 today, which is a little over the current average UK wage. Was the contemporary value comparable? (I.e. was the wergild for a common man roughly equivalent to the average annual earnings of the same)? I think this would be a useful statistic to include, if its known Iapetus (talk) 10:18, 7 October 2016 (UTC)