athingofvikings

The roots of the foundational Imperial welfare institutions that provide food, shelter, education and medical care to all Imperial citizens predate the beginnings of the Dragon Era by nearly eighty years, dating back to the the middle reign of Stoick's grandfather, Chief Hiccup II.  Despite a tumultuous early reign, Hiccup II's grip on power stabilized during the AD 960s, and with the aid of his friend and confidant, the scribe Dror ben Ezra, he began a period of systematic cultural change; the ad hoc literacy classes that Dror had been holding were formalized and made mandatory for all children, a yearly census was instituted that also functioned as a minor form of taxation, and the formerly orally transmitted laws were scribed and codified. As part of that codification, the Hooligans took the earlier basic necessities that they had provided to temporarily homeless or destitute members of the tribe and made them universal, with Dror drawing on his Judaic background and training for direction in how to implement them...

[…] These educational and welfare systems became one of the core pillars of the Imperial social contract between the State and its citizens; there is no question that, without the economic pump-priming and social cohesion that they created, the young North Sea Empire would have never survived its initial challenges…

—Origins of the Grand Thing, Edinburgh Press, 1631