Medieval Nordic legal sources are to be found from Greenland, the Scandinavian countries to Russia. The acceptance of Christianity led to decisive changes in these legal sources, the polity, private law and everyday life. This volume considers the sources, explains how they came about and reviews their content and their further development until about AD 1500. It presents for the first time a consistent picture of these sources.
In Frontiers for Peace in the Medieval North. The Norwegian-Scottish Frontier c. 1260-1470, Ian Peter Grohse examines social and political interactions in Orkney, a Norwegian-held province with long and intimate ties to the Scottish mainland. Commonly portrayed as the epicentre of political tension between Norwegian and Scottish fronts, Orkney appears here as a medium for diplomacy between monarchies and as an avenue for interface and cooperation between neighbouring communities. Removed from the national heartlands of Scandinavia and Britain, Orcadians fostered a distinctly local identity that, although rooted in Norwegian law and civic organization, featured a unique cultural accent engendered through Scottish immigration. This study of Orcadian experiences encourages greater appreciation of the peaceful dimensions of pre-modern European frontiers.
Law | Book | Culture in the Middle Ages takes a detailed view on the role of manuscripts and the written word in legal cultures, spanning the medieval period across western and central Europe.
The Liber legis Scaniae: The Latin Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentaries forms the second volume of The Danish Medieval Laws and is dedicated to the Latin text based on the Danish medieval Law of Scania. Also known as the "Old laws of Scania", the Liber legis Scaniae is ascribed to Archbishop Anders Sunesen and traditionally belongs to the corpus of Danish medieval laws. It was translated from Old Danish in the thirteenth century and until now has often been considered a subsidiary text. In this book, the importance of the Liber legis Scaniae is reexamined and its role in the first redaction of the Danish medieval laws is revealed as far more central than previously thought. This is the first time the text has been translated into English, and both the original Latin and the new English translation are included together. Beginning with a detailed introduction providing key information about the text, its author and its place in Danish legal history, and including a chapter dedicated to the Latin language of the text, this book will be ideal for students and scholars of medieval Scandinavian legal history. It also concludes with an extensive Latin-to-English glossary.
This book brings together the cumulative results of a three-year project focused on the assemblies and administrative systems of Scandinavia, Britain, and the North Atlantic islands in the 1st and 2nd millennia AD. In this volume we integrate a wide range of historical, cartographic, archaeological, field-based, and onomastic data pertaining to early medieval and medieval administrative practices, geographies, and places of assembly in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Scotland, and eastern England. This transnational perspective has enabled a new understanding of the development of power structures in early medieval northern Europe and the maturation of these systems in later centuries under royal control. In a series of richly illustrated chapters, we explore the emergence and development of mechanisms for consensus. We begin with a historiographical exploration of assembly research that sets the intellectual agenda for the chapters that follow. We then examine the emergence and development of the thing in Scandinavia and its export to the lands colonised by the Norse. We consider more broadly how assembly practices may have developed at a local level, yet played a significant role in the consolidation, and at times regulation, of elite power structures. Presenting a fresh perspective on the agency and power of the thing and cognate types of local and regional assembly, this interdisciplinary volume provides an invaluable, in-depth insight into the people, places, laws, and consensual structures that shaped the early medieval and medieval kingdoms of northern Europe.
Law and Language in the Middle Ages investigates the relationship between law and legal practice from the linguistic perspective, exploring not only how legal language expresses and advances power relations but also how the language of law legitimates power.
This book presents a comprehensive history of law and religion in the Nordic context. The entwinement of law and religion in Scandinavia encompasses an unusual history, not widely known yet important for its impact on contemporary political and international relations in the region. The volume provides a holistic picture from the first written legal sources of the twelfth century to the law of the present secular welfare states. It recounts this history through biographical case studies. Taking the point of view of major influential figures in church, politics, university, and law, it thus presents the principal actors who served as catalysts in ecclesiastical and secular law through the centuries. This refreshing approach to legal history contributes to a new trend in historiography, particularly articulated by a younger generation of experienced Nordic scholars whose work is featured prominently in this volume. The collection will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers working in the areas of Legal History and Law and Religion.
Il volume esamina i rapporti di lavoro non contrattuali (schiavitù e servaggio) che a lungo contraddistinsero l'economia europea, sia pure con andamenti assai diversi nelle differenti aree. I saggi in esso contenuti esaminano la evoluzione del servaggio (visto come il lato economico del regime signorile) e delle diverse forme di sottomissione personale, fino alla vera e propria tratta degli schiavi, di cui i mercanti europei furono protagonisti, mettendo in luce una situazione assai più complessa e articolata di quanto gli schemi interpretativi tradizionali lasciassero intuire.
European law, including both civil law and common law, has gone through several major phases of expansion in the world. European legal history thus also is a history of legal transplants and cultural borrowings, which national legal histories as products of nineteenth-century historicism have until recently largely left unconsidered. The Handbook of European Legal History supplies its readers with an overview of the different phases of European legal history in the light of today's state-of-the-art research, by offering cutting-edge views on research questions currently emerging in international discussions. The Handbook takes a broad approach to its subject matter both nationally and systemically. Unlike traditional European legal histories, which tend to concentrate on "heartlands" of Europe (notably Italy and Germany), the Europe of the Handbook is more versatile and nuanced, taking into consideration the legal developments in Europe's geographical "fringes" such as Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. The Handbook covers all major time periods, from the ancient Greek law to the twenty-first century. Contributors include acknowledged leaders in the field as well as rising talents, representing a wide range of legal systems, methodologies, areas of expertise and research agendas.
