legal compilation in early modern denmark and norway The reluctance to label this process a compilation may stem from its negative connotations in modern Denmark and Norway, including among legal historians. To little distinction is made between compiling (the technique) and compilation (the product). Ditlev Tamm, never keen on the term – ‘The word compilation is contemptuous, a more primitive legislative work, in which older legal rules are unsystematically collected’ – argues that the DLwas considered a codification by contemporaries and a progressive work both domestically and internationally.101 Be that as it may, he also admits that many provisions in the DL were lifted, sometimes even unchanged, from older legislation.102 It thus seems important to distinguish between compiling per se and any assessment of the result: indeed, the assumption that existing legal texts could be refashioned in a new format without an intention of systematizing the material seems highly questionable. As David Ibbetson points out, it is the legal historians’ job to join the dots, not from our own understanding, but by attempting to reconstruct the logic of the historical actors.103 The legislative committee worked in the framework provided by the royal mandate and the intellectual and institutional context of their time and culture. Using compilation as a technique to produce legislation was an integral part of the contemporary toolbox legislators used, not just in Denmark or Norway, but throughout Europe. The work on the Norwegian Code (NL) showed much the same reasons for collecting existing law, systematizing it to harmonize with the 101 Tamm 2008, 214: ‘Ordet compilation [sic] et nedsættende for et mere primitivt lovarbejde, der mere usystematisk samler ældre retsregler. Den Danske Lov er faktisk et omend udfulkoment så dog systematisk arbejd’; id., The history of Danish Law(Copenhagen:DJØF, 2011), 71 ff. 102 Tamm 2011, 74, emphasizing that the Danish law was a different type of compilation, which he labels code. The difference between code and compilation was the degree of completeness rather than different methods of producing new legislation by reorganizing older legislation in a new format centred on the king’s authority. 103 David Ibbetson, ‘What is Legal History a History of?’, Law&History: Current Legal Issues 6 (2003), 1 ff.: ‘One aspect of legal ambiguity is especially important, ambiguity stemming from the indeterminacy of the conceptual frameworks referred to above. At any particular point in time, these frameworks essentially constituted the joins between the dots, joins that might have been there even if there were no dots to link them together in the first place.’ 223
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