professorspolitik och samhällsförändring problems. On the other hand, Sweden as a kingdom and political entity only started to slowly consolidate from the latter half of 13th century. The King’s exercise of power centrally interacted with the local and regional communities’ handling of commonmatters of concern. Subordinates had the right from very early on to ‘petition the King’ to bring their matter before the supreme instance in Sweden. Central royal power was consolidated during the 16th century and, in alliance with local support from the Swedish ‘National Church’, became an instrument for collecting taxes and military recruitment. Virtually all academic activities at the University of Uppsala, which had been founded in 1477, came to a halt during the same period. The 17th century brought radical change when the Swedish administration was reorganised into three levels of government life: central, regional and local. This resulted in strong, central power combined with the autonomous authorities’ unclear boundary between the administration of justice and public administration and significant scope for local autonomy under the leadership of the vicar. Activities at the universities in Uppsala, Dorpat (founded in 1632), Åbo (1640) and Lund (1666/68) slowly got going with the support of royal donations and privileges. There were only two professorships for a long time, one in Swedish law and one in Roman law, and there was no ‘legal science’ of any great scope worth mentioning. It might be questioned whether the concept existed at all in the conceptual world of that era. While political central power in the 18th century alternated between absolute power and parliamentary government, the administrative and judicial system established during the preceding century was not adversely affected. It is also worth noting that the governance of administrative issues (public policy and order, finance, trade, social welfare, education, vagrancy, etc.) was expressly put to one side in the most widely known codification of Swedish law, the ‘Code’ of 1734. This does not mean that there was no interest in the problematical area in question. One indication of the involvement of the government was that the two law professorships in Uppsala and similarly in Lund were amalgamated into one post in 1741 to create space for a new professorship injurispru266
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