292 Summary code in an utterly authoritative fashion should not be forgotten. Its legitimacy was nc')t merely based on customary notions, but was closely connected with the strong ideological role of the legal code in early modern Swedish society. Chapter 8. A shift from harmless mistake to crime The Swedish concept of åverkan today means damage caused to somebody else’s property. In the medieval legal codes, this was not the case. Provisions on åverkan are to be found in Byggningabalken^ which deals with the rights and duties of peasants living m hamlets. Here, åverkan has a more neutral sense, meaning work or the result of work. It is also used to denote work that has been performed in the wrong place, but without violence or malicious intent. For instance, if a member of the hamlet had by mistake mown a meadow or ploughed a field belonging to someone else, it would be labelled åverkan. No heavy penalties were prescribed for such actions. The first three times it occurred, the perpetrator only had to return the produce to the owner. It seems as if the mistake was seen as fully understandable, given the unenclosed character of hamlets before the eighteenth century, and essentially harmless. Gradually, however, the unfavourable meaning of damage, mjury or usurpation began to gain ground. It is argued that this shift should be viewed in the light of the problems entailed by ancient usage. Because of the marked respect courts showed for such rights, the party who stood to lose was forced to question the legitimacy of the alleged ancient usage. In this situation, the use of (possibly abandoned) land within a hamlet was accurately described as åverkan, but it was implied that the action had been furtive or violent. In this way, the word started to lose its old meaning, although in the seventeenth century the process had not been completed and both meanings can be observed side by side. Chapter 9. Heading towards a newview? In 1686, a law commission was set up in Sweden, charged with making a complete overhaul of the old legal code. Its terms of reference stated that obsolete provisions were to be excluded and new provisions based on actual practice to be included, so that everything would be set ‘mgood order’. The first chairman of the com-
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=