The Older Gulathing Law

271 Pages·2021·16.666 MB·English

by  Erik Simensen (editor)

The Older Gulathing Law
The Gulathing Law regulates relations between the social classes, the king and
his officers, the clergy, and the peasantry. Parts of the law appear to be a social
contract between two parties: on the one hand the people, on the other hand the
church and the king.
This new edition, in modern English, contains many references to research
that has been carried out since the appearance of previous editions in 1935 and
1981. In the Gulathing Law, differing interests are being balanced, and procedures
described for solving conflicts. Personal rights are defined, and scales of fines and
compensation are set up, graded according to the gravity of the insult, offence,
and the social status of the persons involved. Large parts of the law text mirror
the internal conditions in the farming community of Western Norway in the High
Middle Ages: economic transactions, disputes, damage to life and property, and
theft.
Accompanied by a translator’s introduction and a commentary essay which
place the Gulathing Law in a theological and church history perspective, this
volume will be useful for both students and specialists of medieval Norwegian
legal history and medieval Scandinavian law.
Erik Simensen has been Associate Professor of Scandinavian Studies (especially
Norwegian) at the University of Oslo. He has worked on Old Norse dictionaries
and has written articles on topics of Norwegian language history. He has translated
charters from 1301−1310 (2002) and translated four Old Icelandic texts, including
Egils saga Skallagrímssonar (2014).
Torstein Jørgensen is Professor emeritus from ViD Specialized University,
Stavanger. He was co-founder and project leader of the national CoE, Centre for
Medieval Studies, at the University of Bergen, and of the Nordic CoE, Nordic
Centre of Medieval Studies. He has especially been working on relations between
the papacy and the Norwegian church and society.
Medieval Nordic Laws
Series editors: Stefan Brink and Ditlev Tamm
Medieval Nordic Laws, edited by Stefan Brink and Ditlev Tamm, is part of
the Routledge Medieval Translations series. These translations are the first
translations into English of the earliest laws of Scandinavia, and are some of the
earliest written sources for Scandinavia. These translated laws emanate from an
international project of the same name and have never before been introduced to
an international audience.
Guta LAG and Guta Saga
The law and history of the Gotlanders
Christine Peel
The Danish Medieval Laws
The laws of Scania, Zealand and Jutland
Ditlev Tamm and Helle Vogt
The Liber legis Scaniae
The Latin Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentaries
Ditlev Tamm
The Borgarthing Law and the Eidsivathing Law
The Laws of Eastern Norway
Lisa Collinson, Torgeir Landro, and Bertil Nilsson
The Older Gulathing Law
Translated and edited by Erik Simensen with commentary essay by Torstein Jørgensen
The Older Gulathing Law
Translated and edited by Erik Simensen
with commentary essay by
Torstein Jørgensen
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Erik Simensen and Torstein Jørgensen
The right of Erik Simensen to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Simensen, Erik, translator, editor. | Jørgensen, Torstein,
1951– writer of added commentary.
Title: The older Gulathing law / translated and edited Erik Simensen ; with
commentary essay by Torstein Jørgensen.
Other titles: Gulaþingslög hin eldri. English.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,
2021. | Series: Medieval Nordic laws | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020048083 | ISBN 9780367681500 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781003134459 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Law—Norway—History—Sources. | Law, Medieval—
Sources. | Manuscripts, Old Norse. | Norway—History—13th century.
Classification: LCC KKN125 .G85 2021 | DDC 349.481—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048083
ISBN: 978-0-367-68150-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-68147-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-13445-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of figures vii
List of maps viii
A general introduction to the Medieval Nordic Laws translations ix
Foreword xi
Acknowledgements xii
Abbreviations and symbols xiii
Maps xiv
PART ONE
Translator’s introduction 1
Translator’s introduction 3
1 Norway in the 13th century 3
1.1 Population, livelihood, geography 3
1.2 Social structure 4
1.3 Economic structure 4
1.4 The church 5
1.5 Political structure 6
2 The Gulaþing 7
2.1 The assembly 7
2.2 The Gulaþing law 8
2.2.1 The nature and content of the law 8
2.2.2 Origins and composition 8
2.2.3 The manuscripts 11
2.2.4 Editions 13
2.2.5 Translations 14
vi Contents
PART TWO
The older Gulaþing law according to DonVar 137 4to 15
I The book on Christian law (Chapters 1–33) 17
The Gulathing law in a theological and church history
perspective. A commentary essay by Torstein
Jørgensen 42
II The book on contracts (Chapters 34–50) 78
III The marriage of women (Chapters 51–6) 88
IV Freedman’s law (Chapters 57–71) 93
V The book on tenancy (Chapters 72–102) 104
VI The book on inheritance (Chapters 103–30) 121
VII Summons to an assembly (Chapters 131–47) 133
VIII Amendments (Chapter 148) 139
IX Rules for whaling (Chapters 149–50) 140
X Concerning personal rights (Chapters 151–252) 142
XI The book on theft (Chapters 253–64) 177
XII The redemption of odal-land (Chapters 265–94) 182
XIII The book on the naval levy (Chapters 295–315) 198
XIV A later system of wergild (Chapters 316–19) 211
XV Peace pledge (Chapter 320) 220
Bibliography 221
Glossary 229
Index of names, places and titles 240
Index 243
Figures
0.1 Stemma 12
Maps
0.1 Law provinces of Norway xiv
0.2 The law province of Gulaþing xv
A general introduction to the Medieval
Nordic Laws translations
The oldest laws of the Nordic countries are written in the vernacular. The earli-
est manuscripts stem from the 13th centuries and are younger than the texts of
the laws which for some of the laws date back into the 12th century. They are,
of course, important in Nordic law and legal history, but they are equally signifi-
cant for different branches of history, being the oldest written sources we have in
the Nordic countries of the society at that time, dealing with the household and
social, sometimes administrative and ecclesiastical and agrarian matters, and also
for philology, being some of oldest written documents we have in the vernacular.
These laws for a long time were intensely studied by legal historians as the
foundation of national law. During the last decade there has been a revival in the
interest in these early laws in the Nordic countries, manifested in for example an
influential conference series in early law at the Carlsberg Academy in Denmark,
and an initiative of an interdisciplinary network project, called Medieval Nordic
Laws (MNL), funded by The Leverhulme Trust and based at the University of
Aberdeen, and also some other local initiatives. In order to open up the flood-
gates for also an international interest and research on these laws and to facilitate
comparison, it was decided in the MNL project to translate the laws into English.
Besides the obvious scoop of an international interest in the laws based on new
translations, another gain with this initiative was the rethinking of the position of
the laws in connection with the redaction of new introductions to the laws. The
Nordic medieval laws were earlier subjected to thorough analysis from both legal
and historical points of view and they have been translated into modern Nordic
languages. This happened mainly in the 1930s and 40s but the laws have long
played a central role in Nordic legal history. In the second part of the 19th century
the Nordic laws were seen in German scholarship as important expressions of
the so-called Germanenrechte, and intense learning was used in developing and
describing a specific Nordic variant of such law. This approach was never fully
accepted in the Nordic countries and a more critical study of the laws based on the
idea that they reflected both older and newer layers of law started already in the
1920s, and has continued up to the 1980s in Scandinavia. Today’s legal historians
in the Nordic countries tend to see the laws in a European context and generally
as new law written down as such. Most of the Nordic scholarship however was
only published in Nordic languages. Research into the medieval legal world has