Of course, it is an important field for further research to analyse what influence the Danish development had for the making of modern Swedish labour law.344 Of special interest is Lars Björne’s remark that the Danish and Norwegian realistic legal writing from the early part of the 20th century was characterised by a teleological method based on references to “the nature of things” and the “purpose” of legal rules.345 For this study of the background of the Swedish Labour Court’s decisions around 1930, however, it is enough to note the complex character of the legal solutions which could be picked up from abroad. A pure, private law contractual approach does not seem to have been a common feature of the leading European legal systems. On the contrary, it is inevitable that the ambivalence between status and contract was a complex political and legal issue during the first three decades of the 20th century.The Danish example illustrates that the legal concept of an individual contract of employment, separated from other contracts and characterised by the workers’ subordination, emerged in close chronological and legal political relationship to a system of collective self-regulation which let the legal rules to a great extent be made by autonomous organisations. In Britain, Ireland, Denmark as well as on the European continent, big organisations on the labour market came to play an important role for the regulation of working conditions. Antoine Jacobs has made a comparative legal historical analysis of this emergence of collectivism within modern labour law and concludes that most European countries have passed through the same phases of change, although at different times. Consequently, four different “ideal-types” can be distinguished which epitomise changing attitudes from the legislatures and other lawmakers: repression, toleration, recognition and integration. p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 6 168 344 See Östen Undén’s explicite references to Danish law in Undén 1919, pp. 295-296. 345 Björne 2002, pp. 49-50, 86, 221, 240, 258, 281, 286, 296, 305.
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