part vi • european legal integration • martin sunnqvist This scene was depicted by the artist Albert Edelfelt in a painting well known in Finland, Sweden, and beyond. It can be found on the walls of many a Finnish court building, and for example can be seen in a photo of Finnish courthouses of the 1970s published by Letto-Vanamo.20 19 Johan Ludvig Runeberg, The Tales of Ensign Stål, tr. Charles Wharton Stork (New York, 1938), 139–42. There is another useful translationA Selection from the Series of Poems entitled Ensign Stål’s Songs, tr. Isabel Donner (Helsingfors: Edlund, 1907), 86–9, and a less successful one in The Swedish Philosopher Axel Haegerstroem and His Relationship to Finland’s Struggle to Preserve Her Legal Order 1899–1917, tr. Jacob W. F. Sundberg (Littleton, CO: Rothman, 1983), ix. 20 Pia Letto-Vanamo, ‘Images of Finnish Justice’ in Kjell Å. Modéer & Martin Sunnqvist (eds.), Legal Stagings: The Visualization, Medialization & Ritualization of Law in Language, Literature, Media, Art &Architecture (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2012), 183–204; Pia Letto-Vanamo & Timo Honkanen, Lain nojalla ja kansan tuella/Moments of Finnish Justice in the 1970s (Helsinki: Edita, 2005). 296 Behind his desk Wibelius rose and stood; The Swedish law lay there. His hand lay on the book, his voice was tense, As he gazed downward with a kindling eye: ‘Here, general, you behold a firm defense For all that you defy. It is to this we unarmed men may look: Our law, our refuge, both in woe and weal; Your Czar has promised to respect this book, To him it makes appeal. Here it stands stated from earliest time, And firmly still the principle survives: No wives may suffer for their husbands’ crime, No husbands for their wives’. If fighting to defend one’s native land Be called a crime – and all true hearts say no – Then punish such as have a sword in hand, Let wives and children go. You are the masters, no one can deny. Do what you like with me; I’m not afraid. This law will outlive me by as much as I Live since the time ’twas made.19
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