rummet och r ä t te n 613 dence, which thus constituted the district court’s office and archive. During the long intermissions between court sessions, the inhabitants of the different judicial districts chose to use their courthouse in various ways.Often, the district made an agreement with the inn keeper, who was allowed to make use of the building when his premises did not suffice. During sessions, spatial disarray seems to have often characterized the room where justice was administered. Spectators came and went as cases were handled and closed, the air in the courtroom was so thick that doors as well as windows had to stay open, the smell of cooking and baking mixed with the smell of people crowding, and sessions lasted so late into the night that the room went dark, except for the two candles on the judge’s table. Yet nothing implies that the intimacy caused by spatial conditions disturbed the social order or the authority of the court. Regarding the relation between function and form, the courthouses were used according to the original plan.Nevertheless, the design did not correspond to a set of functions, but rather to the idea of the court’s status as official institute in local, contemporary society. The architectural convention constituted the chosen and un-questioned point of departure to which all participants willingly adapted. By the next turn of century, the number and character of participants involved in the planning of new courthouses had changed.Due to mergers of rural judicial districts into larger units, the number of inhabitants had grown and created a more solid financial basis for the building of courthouses.This change also resulted in a smaller share of inhabitants engaged in the process, which was handled by an elected committee.The Superintendent’s Office was no longer involved in the matter and most judicial districts chose to employ an architect in private practice. The local judge was still influential in the planning process, but there were also other representatives of the law who raised their voices to plead for improved spatial conditions in the rural district courthouses and in particular in their jails. Most local building committees and architects of the time expressed the same conception of the courthouse layout and in many aspects, this coincided with an ideal established in the 18th century. The large courtroom at the centre of the configuration formed its principle feature Between tradition and modernity. Courthouses by the turn of 1900
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