english summary 457 tems. They were influenced to different degrees by the shift from an oral to a written judicial culture. The dividing line in research consists today of differences in the view of the relative significance of older customary law and newer judicial thought, with more continental and ecclesiastical inspiration.5 The medieval Scandinavian laws were written in the vernacular, with the exception of certain ordinances and ecclesiastical statutes. A general feature is their narrative style. The older laws in particular contain numerous judicial examples rather than describing a comprehensive legal system. The later laws are more abstract and their content is more clearly systematized in different spheres of law. Both the growing degree of abstraction and the more systematic structure can presumably be understood as reflecting a more literate judicial culture. Most law codes seem to consist of two or more distinct chronological layers, although these are difficult to distinguish, and different parts of the laws appear to have been put down in writing on different occasions and with different editors. Before the Scandinavian countries acquired countrywide laws, each kingdom consisted of a number of legal provinces (Sw. lagsagor) of varying size, coinciding to a greater or lesser extent with the division of the kingdom into provinces (Sw. landskap). The legal provinces were independent judicial areas with the regional legal assembly (Sw. landsting/ No. lagting) as the judicial and political body. The Norwegian and Swedish provincial laws contained special sections on ecclesiastical law (calledkristindómsbálkr andkirkiu balker, respectively) regulating ecclesiastical matters on the basis of local adaptations of canon law. The towns constituted separate jurisdictions broken out of the legal provinces. The special town laws were intended as a complement to the provincial laws, containing regulations specifically concerning the towns and the activity there. Apart from the provincial laws and town laws, as well as the later laws of the realm and municipal laws, royal legislative ordinances are also studied. This can be regarded as supplementary legislation, which mostly regulated economic matters, and the ordinances served as judicial contracts between the crown and other actors. Another judicial source used here are the Danish coronation charters (Da. håndfæstning), which were attempts at a constitutional regulation of different political actors’ rights and obligations, with 5 Historians and legal historians such as Per Andersen, Michael H. Gelting, Elsa Sjöholm, andHelle Vogt place the emphasis on the former, while scholars such as Stefan Brink, Gísli Sigurðsson, and Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde place more emphasis on the latter.
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