per andersen towns which were exactly the courts, Bilde commented on. This was – at least at an intentional level –changed six years later when the demand for having a legal degree when acting as a local judge was issued by the king. But it was not before 1810 that this demand included the judges also acting at the provincial High Court (named as provincial courts until them) or the Supreme Court. Contrary to the legal systems in many other geographic areas of medieval Europe, Denmark never really developed a hierarchical legal system founded on learned law. In several southern European realms, the legal systems were clearly developed on a royal initiative, but in Denmark it appears to have been the result of an interaction between the royal central power and regional magnates or local communities in individual provinces. The development was especially focused on developing and refining the institutions of legal administration, from the king’s perspective with an increased emphasis on placing a reliable man as leader of the ting/court. Such a leader – not yet a judge – is seen at the provincial courts from around 1300 and a little later at the local courts, where they functioned as executive powers beside their tasks as the practical head of the business taking place at the ting. In the Danish medieval system, the judging power was found by the local or regional jury, but as from the fifteenth century, the leader of the ting still more often took part in the decisions passed, and thus the term “judge” was seen more and more frequently. But that did not mean that the person appointed to judge had a learned background: In the High as well as in the Late Middle Ages, Danish judges operating at the lower courts were unlettered, brought up in average social surroundings as free farmers, i.e. in a non-literary milieu. Although the judge gained increased influence on the decisions during the sixteenth century, he had not much knowledge of learned law, but referred to the medieval Danish laws and the (new) regulations issued after the Reformation. From the end of the sixteenth century the central administration appears to have tightened its supervision of the courts and therefore we see an increased administrative uniformity, which – following the introduction of absolutism in 1660 – was given legal foundation in the Danish Code in 1683. The 271
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