sören koch customary law – were still the legislative texts from the Middle Ages, in particular the Code of the Realm. These texts had, however, become manifestly difficult to access for the judges, especially on the local level. The reason for this was that they were written in Old Norse (norrønt) – a written language that was replaced by Danish from the fifteenth century on. Even though a remarkable number of unauthorized translations circulated,51 the situation became even more pressing when noblemen of Danish origin were more frequently appointed as judges or to hold public offices in Norway after the Reformation. Norway had now become a province of Denmark and the central administration in Copenhagen began for the first time seriously to intervene in the organization of the judiciary. This is particularly important for the history of appeal courts in Norway, because the unwillingness of the Norwegian-born lawman to obey the king’s command to prepare a revised version of the Code of the Realm, written in Danish, gave the King the not unwelcome opportunity to replace between 1600 and 1601 seven out of the eleven lawman operating in Norway.52 The majority of the new appellate judges were now recruited from the Danish nobility, and as a rule their professional background lay in public service.53 These men had received a relatively high degree of general education compared to their Norwegian predecessors. Nevertheless, a specific legal education was still not required. 51 Today, there are all together known 119 such handwritten translations, the first one is dated from 1543. 115 manuscripts are dated from before 1604. (Personal communication with Prof. emm.Magnus Rindal who is currently working on a text-critical edition on the Code of the Realm. The project is located at the Faculty of Law in Bergen in cooperation with the National Library). 52 Among legal historians it is still controversial whether the deliberate delay in the completion of the Norwegian Lawbook was the actual reason or if this had had external reasons. The truth is most likely to be found in a combination of external and internal factors. It is, however, a historical fact that Christian IV’s Norwegian Code was enacted just two years after the replacement of the Norwegian lawmen and that this obviously had an impact on the work of the legislative commission consisting of these lawmen. As mentioned above, the delay with this work was seemingly an additional incentive for the crown to act. On the different points of view on this issue, see Falkanger, Aage Thor 2007 p. 112; Seip, Jens Arup 1934 p. 110; Næss, Hans Eyvind 2014 p. 24 ff. 53 This can be demonstrated in the registers on the lawmen that exist for several courts of appeal, cf. e.g. Skadsen, Marius 1950, Falkanger, Aage Thor 2007 p. 211 ff. (contains the names for all appeal court judges in Hålogaland). 293
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=