preface – mia korpiola 17 ship system (målsmanskap) to women. Elsa Trolle Önnerfors explores the types of case nobles litigated about in the Svea Court. Property disputes featured prominently here. She also points out the importance of the noble estate in using legal instruments, such as the will, for inheritance and property strategies. Wills were first disputed in the courtroom before the new norms regulating their use were enacted. The 1686 Statute of Wills was largely based on Svea Court of Appeal precedents and thus, through its practice, the Svea Court of Appeal had a law-making role. Indeed, because the medieval laws15 were still in force until the 1734 Code replaced them, there was room for innovation through court practice, reception and statutory law. The role of the Svea Court of Appeal in developing Swedish law by its practice is also investigated in Jussi Sallila’s and Per Nilsén’s articles. In his chapter, Per Nilsén focuses on political crimes through a particular aspect of lese-majesty, slandering the king and the members of the Council of the Realm. He argues persuasively that the Svea Court of Appeal cooperated closely with the King in interpreting the section of King Christopher’s 1442 Law of the Countryside, and thus developed the law through its leading cases that were followed as precedents in the Court’s own practice. Nilsén also provides more evidence on how the courts of appeal mitigated the rigours of the law. In presenting his conclusion, he calls for further research that could compare the practice of the Svea Court of Appeal with its sister court in Jönköping, the Göta Court of Appeal. Jussi Sallila focuses on the development of Swedish bankruptcy law, another field in which several of the leading cases of the Svea Court had a law-making role in the later seventeenth century. However, in his article, Sallila revisits the research by Stig Jägerskiöld and reinterprets some of his evidence. As far as Swedish bankruptcy law was concerned, Sallila argues, Jägerskiöld overstressed the role of the reception of foreign law and its Europeanization. Instead, as in many other fields of law, the domestic elements intermingled with the foreign legal influences, resulting in a unique blend. Mia Korpiola also offers a fresh reading of the establishment of the Svea Court of Appeal from the perspective of its own records, especially for its first year. While the Svea Court could have been 15 The roughly mid-fourteenth-century Town Law promulgated by King Magnus II Eriksson of Sweden (r. 1319 –1363) and the 1442 Law of the Countryside promulgated by King Christopher III of Bavaria (1441 –1448).
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