inescapable ambiguity. On the one hand, modern can mean the latest events and what was in fashion around the 1950s. On the other hand, there are certain qualities which can be considered as modern, regardless of whether they appear today or 200 years back in time. One of them is rationality, and in this meaning, modern can be connected to the Enlightenment, to scepticism, critical evaluation and the citizen’s protection against an arbitrary, unpredictable exercise of public power.15 Schmidt’s thesis about Winroth’s modernity can be tested from the perspective of fashion as well as rationality. The notion of a alleged movement towards modernism and rationalism is one underlying theme in the writings of Lars Björne who has made a comprehensive analysis of Nordic legal science until 1910. Of special interest are Björne’s conclusions concerning the period1815-1870 and the Swedish jurists’ relationship to the German historical school. The prevalent idea is that legal writing became more professional and “scientific” during the period in question. One important change was that jurists ceased making references to natural law. Björne, however, touches upon the controversial issue whether natural law survived all the same, though in the guise of the putative scientific and non-political smoke-screens of legal positivism.16 Moreover, Björne discusses how the Nordic legal scholars took an ambivalent attitude to custom as a source for finding the law on areas where legislation was lacking or was insufficient.This confusion about the legal dignity of patterns in real life had, and still has, a connection to the issue about natural law. Could custom be a legal source only if it had been approved by legislation? Was custom itself a legal source or was it the underlying general opinion of law that it reflected? Could trustworthy men articulate that general opinion, even it had not been manifested in concrete acts?What could be considered as “natural” - already c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 23 15 Liedman 1997, p. 7. 16 Björne 1995, pp. 261-267; Björne 1998, p. 233; Björne 2002, p. 294.
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