english summary 463 sembly in the Scandinavian countries. Several scholars, however, using different types of source material, have shown how Norway differed from Denmark and Sweden in that no opposition from magnates against the expanding royal power emerged there at the end of the thirteenth century. The predominant explanation for this has been that the Norwegian magnates were more dependent on the king for their wealth and social status. The assessment of the law material shows similar tendencies in the overall development in the Scandinavian countries as regards the relative power of the king and the regional legal assembly. The law texts in all the three Scandinavian countries reflect a contractual relationship between the king and the population that changed from a horizontal to a vertical character. The tendency in all three countries, but least of all in Sweden, was that kingship was believed to issue from God instead of from the people. Legal instruments of power were centralized in the person of the king and his officials; the right to take the law into one’s own hands through vengeance and feuding was increasingly restricted. At the same time, a plaintiff ’s right to compensation took priority over the king’s right to fines in all three Scandinavian countries. In the Norwegian and Swedish laws a subsidiary royal right of prosecution developed, whereas the Danish laws continued to gave the plaintiff sole right to prosecute. The expansion of royal power was accompanied by an increase in the number of royal privileges, inspired by Roman and Canon law. The idea of lèse-majesté, also taken from Roman and Canon law, appears in Scandinavia in the thirteenth century, first in Denmark and Norway, somewhat later in Sweden. The meaning of lèse-majesté became extensive through time and more crimes were classed as such, which must have strengthened the king’s power and his potential to eliminate political opposition. The premise regarding this question in this study has been to regard the increase in the number of crimes of lèse-majesté and the number of royal privileges as a reflection of a deliberate endeavour by the king to strengthen his position. The study has to some extent confirmed this by showing that it is in the laws which the king was able to influence that we find most expressions of a hierarchical power order, most crimes of lèse-majesté, and most royal privileges. The relationship between the king and the people remains contractual in the laws throughout the period of study in all three Scandinavian countries, especially manifested through the exchange of oaths between the king and the people at the election of a king. The first detailed constitutional rules in
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