RB 61

171 with in between. In II.2.4.1 have made a detailed analysis of these words, aiming at bringing them into a relative chronology. The order koster - eghn - gops - imunir) — gops - {p^enninger, s. & pi.) - gops has been established as the most likely one for the superordinate terms and the order iorp - {eghn) - iorp as the most likely one for the terms for IMMOVABLE PROPERTY. The words in parentheses disappeared without ever succeeding in becoming the dominant terms. In Chapter III I try to reconstruct the elements and the structure of the premedieval terminology and to show that a structural shift has taken place. This is done by means of the results of the linguistic-geographical analysis combined with a morpho-semantic analysis of the medieval terminological structure and with a detailed semantic analysis of land and of the expression lauss eyrir/lös örir. The point of departure in my description and analysis of the medieval subcategory terminology has been the conventional juridical distinction between movable and immovable property, or what has been called res mobiles et immobiles in European juridical doctrine ever since the days of the Roman Empire. The terminological state of affairs in Grågås, however, does not support such categories. The reason is that the few extant instances of explicitly antithetical pairs of terms in Grågås are found exclusively in the youngest parts of that law. They are completely missing in the huge bulk of this exceptionally voluminous codex. The remaining, completely dominating terminology consists merely of the following two words,/e for PROPERTY INGENERAL and land for a specialized category of some kind, IMMOVABLE PROPERTY? or ARABLE LANDor GRAZINGLAND? Since the older parts of the lawcompletely lack a termfor property which is antithetical to land, it becomes necessary to reconsider both the original Scandinavian terminological structure and the conceptual structure that must have been behind it. In IIL2. the original denotation of land in Scandinavian legal language is argued to have been ARABLE LANDand GRAZINGLAND. In III.3. it is argued that, in pre-medieval time, the adjective lauss/lös in phrases like lausir aurar, lösir örar, did not qualify its noun to be physically movable. Instead it qualified it to be lacking close attachment to the homestead {bu/bo). In this usage lausir aurar was opposed to bufé/bofdS as termfor property with such close attachment. Alook at the legal structure behind the language shows that the categories of property which were marked by language as closely attached to the homestead {bu/bo, bol), namely allodium, patrimony {odal as opposite to kaupland ‘purchased land’) and livestock, cattle and horses {biifé), were categories of property particularly protected by lawfrom falling into the wrong hands when transferred. In a number of laws the attached category was referred to as hemaföt ‘what was raised at home’ or hemagiort ‘what was made at home’. In 111.4. the total pre-medieval structure is reconstructed in the following way:

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=