nordic legal science: diversity and unity want to appear insane, and so in my first applications to the Academy of Finland I said I was planning one volume for which I would need at least four years – a diplomatic way of presenting one’s research plans also used by Michael Stolleis in Germany. I started my project in March 1991 and in December 1995 the first volumePatrioter och institutionalister (‘Patriots and Institutionalists: The time before 1815’)was published. In the1990s I heard rumours that many of my colleagues doubted it would be possible to complete such a huge task. The second volumeBrytningstiden(‘The Period of Transition, 1815– 1870’) was published in 1998, the thirdDen konstruktiva riktningen(‘Constructivism, 1870–1910’, though the German pejorative Begriffsjurisprudenzwould be just as apt) in 2002, and the last volumeRealism och skandinavisk realism(‘Realism and Scandinavian Realism, 1911–1950’) in 2007. Each volume was more extensive than the last and together they run to 1,800 pages. Despite its favourable reception, my history of Nordic legal science has unfortunately inspired little further comparative Nordic research. However, there is a remarkable example of research in inter-Nordic legal history currently underway the University of Oslo has started a project ‘The Public Sphere and Freedom of Expression in the Nordic Countries, 1815–1900’ with participants from its faculties of law, humanities, and theology and from all other Nordic countries. In this project I have written a comprehensive comparative study on freedom of speech, and especially freedom of the press, Frihetens gränser: Yttrandefriheten i Norden 1815–1914 (‘The Limits of Freedom: Freedom of Speech in the Nordic Countries 1815–1914’), published in 2018. After this review of my publications my next question may sound odd. Is there a specific Nordic legal science, and is there a group of legal systems that deserve the epithet ‘Nordic’? I must point out that my ignorance in Oslo 1980 was not exceptional. The Norwegian legal historian Ebbe Hertzberg (1847–1912), who became professor at the University of Oslo, admitted later that he did not know a single Swedish legal scholar by name when he arrived in Uppsala to study legal history in 1870, and he presumed that most other Norwegian lawyers were similarly at a loss. 191
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