nordic legal science: diversity and unity comparable to the Napoleonic Code or Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch. From the early nineteenth century new draft legislation always resulted in laws that governed only some limited branch of jurisdiction, for example the Marriage Act. Plans for a codification of all civil law went unrealized in both Sweden and Norway. Thus far the history of legislation can be seen as a manifestation of Nordic unity.Whenwe examine the contents of the legislation that unity evaporates and diversity is the rule. The mediaeval provincial and national codes display an astonishing diversity, which was natural enough given they were compiled over the course of centuries, first in Norway, then in Denmark, and finally in Sweden. The Danish–Norwegian codifications of the early modern period were mainly compilations of older statutes with little influence from Roman lawor legal doctrine. The Swedish Code of 1734 was based on the legal practice of the Courts of Appeal with their learned judges, and thus showed a strong influence from Roman law, albeit the Code’s language was intentionally archaic. Nordic unity in the field of legislation started with the first general Nordic lawyers’ meeting in Copenhagen in 1872 with some four hundred participants, of whom three were Finns. The meetings were convoked primarily to discuss cooperation over legislation, but were to have a significant impact on legal science, too. The Nordic legislative collaboration in the late nineteenth century resulted in some important common statutes, especially in private law – for example the Commerce and Contract Acts in the early twentieth century. On the other hand cooperation has not always succeeded, especially in legal procedure, so one can still speak of two different traditions and systems: the Western Nordic (Denmark, Norway, Iceland) and the Eastern Nordic (Sweden, Finland). This difference also explains Ebbe Hertzfeld’s ignorance and mine. The inter-Nordic border still exists in some ways today. The history of Nordic legal science is a history of both diversity and unity. The Nordic legal literature was born relatively late; in Sweden it originates from the seventeenth century, in Denmark from the eighteenth. One Nordic characteristic is that the literature was mainly in the vernacular. In Sweden judges and civil servants wrote treatises for their 193
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=