Frostating Law
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Frostating law () is one of
Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...
's oldest
laws Law is a set of rules that are created and are law enforcement, enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a Socia ...
. It concerned the
Frostating Frostating () was one of the four ancient popular assemblies or things () of medieval Norway. Historically, it was the site of court and assembly for Trøndelag, Nordmøre, and Hålogaland. The assembly had its seat at Tinghaugen in what is n ...
, which covered large parts of Norway, and derives its name from the ancient court at Frostating. The most famous quote from this law is "''at lögum skal land várt byggja en eigi at ulögum øyða''" (with law shall our land be built, and not desolated by lawlessness) which also appears in a number of Norse laws, and is inscribed on the illustrated memorial.


History

It was not the oldest law, which are the Eidsivating law and the ''
Gulating Gulating () was one of the four ancient popular assemblies or things (') of medieval Norway. Historically, it was the site of court and assembly for most of Western Norway, and assembled at Gulen. It functioned as a judicial and legislative bo ...
'' law. Later came the ''Borgathinglaw'' of Olaf II (1015–1028) but the Frostathing law has been much better preserved, the earlier laws only preserving that which pertained to
church law Canon law (from , , a 'straight measuring rod, ruler') is a set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority (church leadership) for the government of a Christian organization or church and its members. Canon law includes the ...
.Laurence Marcellus Larson (trans.) The Earliest Norwegian Laws: Being the Gulathing Law and the Frostathing Law. The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2011
Together with the Bjarkøy law, these are collectively referred to as the provincial laws.Hans Jacob Orning. Unpredictability and Presence: Norwegian Kingship in the High Middle Ages. BRILL, 2008.
The version that has come down to us dates from around 1260 in the time of
Håkon Håkonsson Haakon IV Haakonsson ( – 16 December 1263; ; ), sometimes called Haakon the Old in contrast to his namesake son, was King of Norway from 1217 to 1263. His reign lasted for 46 years, longer than any Norwegian king since Harald Fairhair. Haako ...
(1217–1263), who inscribed the first chapter with introductory amendments, although portions of the law are likely to be several hundred years older than that. Originally they existed only in oral form at meetings of the
Thing Thing or The Thing may refer to: Philosophy * An object * Broadly, an entity * Thing-in-itself (or ''noumenon''), the reality that underlies perceptions, a term coined by Immanuel Kant * Thing theory, a branch of critical theory that focuses ...
. It is first mentioned in the collection of old
Norse Saga Sagas are prose stories and histories, composed in Iceland and to a lesser extent elsewhere in Scandinavia. The most famous saga-genre is the (sagas concerning Icelanders), which feature Viking voyages, migration to Iceland, and feuds between ...
s by
Snorri Sturluson Snorri Sturluson ( ; ; 1179 – 22 September 1241) was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was elected twice as lawspeaker of the Icelandic parliament, the Althing. He is commonly thought to have authored or compiled portions of th ...
known as the
Heimskringla () is the best known of the Old Norse kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland. While authorship of ''Heimskringla'' is nowhere attributed, some scholars assume it is written by the Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson (117 ...
, specifically the Saga of Håkon Håkonsson. Snorri also refers to the later role of Olaf II. In 1280 the Thing more formally adopted the law and
Magnus the Good Magnus Olafsson (; Norwegian and Danish: ''Magnus Olavsson''; – 25 October 1047), better known as Magnus the Good (; Norwegian and Danish: ''Magnus den gode''), was King of Norway from 1035 and King of Denmark from 1042 until his death in ...
(1035–1047) asked that it be written down. It became known as "Grágás" (Gray Goose), but was quite distinct from the Icelandic
Gray Goose Laws The Gray Goose Laws ( {{IPA, is, ˈkrauːˌkauːs}) are a collection of laws from the Icelandic Commonwealth period. The term ''Grágás'' was originally used in a medieval source to refer to a collection of Norwegian laws and was probably mi ...
(''Grágás''). This law was progressively modified over time, one of the more important developments in the evolution of Norwegian law being the work of
Magnus the Lawmender Magnus the Lawmender (1 or 3 May 1238 – 9 May 1280), also known as Magnus Haakonsson, was King of Norway from 1263 to 1280. One of his greatest achievements was the modernisation and nationalisation of the Norwegian law-code. He was the first N ...
(1263–1280), for which he was nicknamed 'lawmender'. The Håkon Håkonsson version is also known as the ''Codex Resenianus'', after the historian
Peder Hansen Resen Peder Hansen Resen (17 June 1625 – 1 June 1688) was a Danish historian, legal scholar and president of Copenhagen. He lived in what was then Denmark–Norway. Early life and education Peder Hansen Resen was born 17 June 1625 in Copenhagen. ...
who gave the only surviving version to the
University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...
(unfortunately later destroyed in the 1728 fire at the Copenhagen Library). In Norwegian it is found in the Norges gamle Love (I, 121–258) as ''Den ældre Frostathings-Lov''. A modern
Nynorsk Nynorsk (; ) is one of the two official written standards of the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. From 12 May 1885, it became the state-sanctioned version of Ivar Aasen's standard Norwegian language (''Landsmål''), parallel to the Da ...
edition was published in 1994.


Church law

The sections dealing with Church law appear to be derived from an older compilation known as the ''Gullfjǫðr'' (Goldfeather) by Archbishop Eystein, who sought to bring Norwegian church law in line with the canon law of
Gratian Gratian (; ; 18 April 359 – 25 August 383) was emperor of the Western Roman Empire from 367 to 383. The eldest son of Valentinian I, Gratian was raised to the rank of ''Augustus'' as a child and inherited the West after his father's death in ...
.


See also

*
Gulating Gulating () was one of the four ancient popular assemblies or things (') of medieval Norway. Historically, it was the site of court and assembly for most of Western Norway, and assembled at Gulen. It functioned as a judicial and legislative bo ...


References


Bibliography

* ''Frostatingslova''. Translated by Jan Ragnar Hagland and
Jørn Sandnes Jørn Sandnes (3 May 1926 – 12 April 2007) was a Norwegian historian. He was born in Snåsa Municipality in Nord-Trøndelag. He was appointed Professor in Trondheim from 1975 to 1992, From 1984 he served as the first rector (academia), recto ...
. Samlaget, 1994. ( Norrøne bokverk). * Jørn Sandnes. "Slaget på Stiklestad i lys av Frostatingslovens motstandsbestemmelser" ( The Battle of Stiklestad), in ''Årbok for Nord-Trøndelag historielag'' 1992 *
Sverre Bagge Sverre Håkon Bagge (born 7 August 1942 in Bergen) is a Norwegian historian. He took his doctorate with the thesis ''Den politiske ideologi i Kongespeilet'', published in 1979. From 1974 to 1991 he worked as an associate professor (''førsteamanue ...
. "Kirken, bøndene og motstandsretten i Norge i middelalderen". (The Church, the farmers and opposition rights in Norway in the Middle Ages) '' Historisk tidsskrift'' No 3, 2005 * Jørn Sandnes. «Engi maðr skal atfor at oðrum gera, noen merknader til motstandsbestemmelsene i Frostatingsloven». I '' Historisk tidsskrift'' No 2, 2006 * Adam von Bremen: ''Bischofsgeschichte der Hamburger Kirche'' (History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen). In: ''Quellen des 9. und 11. Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der Hamburger Kirche und des Reichs.'' pp. 138–495. Freiherr vom Stein -Gedächtnisausgabe XI.
Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the ...
1978. English translation by F.J. Tschan,
Columbia University Press Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's la ...
, 2002, . * Jón F. Hjálmarsson: ''Die Geschichte Islands''. Reykjavík 1994. *
Rudolf Keyser Jakob Rudolf Keyser (1 January 1803 – 9 October 1864) was a Norwegian historian, archaeologist and educator. Biography Jakob Rudolf Keyser was born in Oslo, Christiania, now Oslo, Norway. He was the son of Bishop Johan Michael Keyser (1749 ...
, P.A. Munch (Hrg.): ''Norges gamle love indtil 1387.'' Förste Bind. Christiania 1846. * Rudolf Meißner (Übs.): ''Norwegisches Recht. Das Rechtsbuch des Frostothings.'' In: Germanenrechte Bd. 4. Weimar 1939.
Sini Kangas, Mia Korpiola, Tuija Ainonen (eds.) Authorities in the Middle Ages: Influence, Legitimacy, and Power in Medieval Society. Walter de Gruyter, 2013
{{ISBN, 9783110294569


External links


Wikisource: Norges gamle Love/Den ældre Frostathings-Lov

Frostathing Law in Norges Gamele Love 1: 119-300


in the
National Archives of Norway The National Archives of Norway (''Riksarkivet'') is the institution responsible for preserving archive material from Norway, Norwegian state institutions, as well as contributing to the preservation of private archives. It does this work in cooper ...

Frostatingslova
by
Idar Lind Idar Lind (born 23 September 1954) is a Norwegian novelist, crime fiction writer, songwriter, and playwright. Biography Lind was born on the island of Otterøya (now part of Namsos Municipality) in Nord-Trøndelag county, Norway. He made his lit ...

Regesta Novegica
Law of Norway Legal history of Norway Thing (assembly)