This book examines the role of legislation in the transformation of the early medieval Nordic realms into monarchic states in the High Middle Ages. The principal focus is on the development of a common law for Norway, the Norse lands overseas, and the northern and eastern peripheries of the king's mainland realm. While state formation was, in many respects, a parallel process in the Scandinavian kingdoms, there were interesting differences among them with regard to their chronology and character. In the mid-1100s, several decades earlier than their counterparts in Denmark, the kings of Norway were already active in the codification of provincial laws. Sweden was comparatively late in codifying provincial laws, a delay which mirrors the slow state formation process in eastern Scandinavia. On the other hand, Norway and Sweden were the only realms to develop comprehensive law codes for the whole of their respective realms: Magnus Hakonsson's Norwegian Landslov (1274) and Magnus Eriksson's Swedish Landslag (1350). In 1300, the realm of the King of Norway, including the mainland as well as overseas tributary lands, was a united community of law.
Author(s): Steinar Imsen (ed.)
Series: Rostra Books - Trondheim Studies in History. "Norgesveldet", Occasional Papers, 4
Publisher: Akademika Publishing
Year: 2013
Language: English
Pages: 290
City: Trondheim
Part 1 From provincial law books to nation-wide codes and statutory law
Chapter 1: Law and justice in the realm of the king of Norway / Steinar Imsen 15
Chapter 2: The introduction of a law of the realm in northern Norway / Miriam Tveit 41
Chapter 3: Västergötland as a community and the making of a provincial law / Thomas Lindkvist 55
Chapter 4: The freeholder and positive legislation in late medieval Sweden / Gabriela Bjarne Larsson 67
Chapter 5: "With law the land shall be built". Danish legislation for the realm in the thirteenth century / Helle Vogt 85
Chapter 6: Danish Law and Government in Medieval Estonia / By Jens E. Olesen 101
Part 2 A troublesome tradition
Chapter 7: Dull as ditch water or crazily romantic: Scottish historians on Norwegian law in Shetland and Orkney / Brian Smith 117
Chapter 8: Notions of "udal law" in Orkney and Shetland: From medieval Norse law to contested vestiges of customary rights within Scots law / Michael Jones 133
Part 3 Law and legislation in Iceland from Free state to Monarchy
Chapter 9: Ideas of Law in Medieval Icelandic Legal Texts / Patricia Pires Boulhosa 169
Chapter 10: Repositioning Jónsbók. Rearrangements of the law in fourteenth-century Iceland / Lena Rohrbach 183
Chapter 11: The court and assembly organisation in Iceland c. 1250–1450 / Jón Viðar Sigurðsson 211
Chapter 12: Feuds in fact and fiction in late medieval Iceland / Hans Jacob Orning 229
Chapter 13: Who governed Iceland in the first half of the fifteenth century? King, council and the Old Covenant / Helgi Þorláksson 263
Contributors 287
