legal compilation in early modern denmark and norway reason mediaevalists and legal historians are reluctant to use the terms ‘compiling’ or ‘compilation’ to describe the technique or the result. Legal historians and medievalists in the anglophone world, on the other hand, frequently use the term for similar ways of producing legislation, for example in Scotland.92 However, in the aftermath of the Reformation the nature and function of legislative compilation changed. Early modern governments authorized or instructed legislative committees to bring together key pieces of mediaeval legislation. Such legislation was often only accessible only through disparate manuscripts, and the text of the legislation might vary depending according to the manuscript copy or translation consulted.93 An authorized compilation therefore made legal rules more easily accessible and stabilized the text by identifying a particular version of the text or its translation as authoritative.94 An example of this is King ChristianIV’s Norwegian Code. In 1604 it replaced the late mediaeval Code of the Realm issued by Magnus the Law-mender in 1274. Its main purpose was to unify the law in Norway by identifying an authoritative version of the applicable law. Today we know of at least 119 manuscripts of the Code of the Realm, often with unofficial and highly diverting content, used in Norway before 1604.95 Most were poor Danish translations of the mediaeval Code, which had beenwritten inOld Norse (norrønt), which had fallen out of use in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The new code consisted of a compilation of almost unaltered provisions resembling the norms in the Code of the Realm, translated to contemporary Danish and given a slightly different structure.96 This act of legislation derives its legitimacy from the authority both of the 7 original legislator and the officially re-enactment by Christian IV. Despite the most experienced judges (lagmen) having 93 See, for example, Magnus Rindal & Bjørg Dale Spørck, Kong Magnus Håkonsson Lagabøtes Landslov, 2 vols (Oslo: Arkivverket, 2018). 94 Sören Koch, ‘Consequences of Changing Expectations to Law and its Institutions’, Legal History Review83 (2015), 461–486 as 474 ff. 95 Rindal & Spørck 2018, 18 ff. 96 See FrederikHallager &Fredrik Brandt, ‘Forerindring’, in eid. (eds.), Kong Christian den Fierdes Norske Lovbog af 1604 (Oslo: Feilberg & Landmark, 1855), 1 ff. 221
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