Gripla - 2023, Page 117

115S L Í M U S E T U R IN EARLY ICELANDIC LAW
ting intruder is the legal thought that a criminal against the king does not
forfeit all his legal rights while in the act of committing the crime.
Was this an issue? Were strong-armed men imposing themselves
on others as unwelcome guests? Why had this become the king’s con-
cern? The commonwealth law Grágás provides nothing on the issue. In
Norwegian provincial law, the concept slímusetur is known but in a dif-
ferent context. The older Gulaþingslǫg (Older Law of Gulaþing) stipulates
that if a wife feeds her convicted husband in their home for more than five
days, she becomes guilty of aiding a criminal, unless the man’s continued
stay is against her will, in other words he is ‘slimesitting’.6 This is a differ-
ent subject, however, from the slímusetur of Járnsíða and Jónsbók and that
of Landslǫg. The above questions remain.
To understand the king’s newly acquired interest in legislating against
slímusetur, it is necessary to appreciate both the local context of legal re-
form and the European context of political language. Many things that
had not been the concern of the king now became so. My present argu-
ment is that law forbidding people from imposing themselves on others
by enforced hospitality must be understood in its European context and in
comparison with similar legal provisions made elsewhere during the high
Middle Ages. The two contexts, local and European, are but different
viewpoints; however, they are useful in separating the specific and con-
textual from that which is general. The local context of legal reform in the
Norwegian realm in the second half of the thirteenth century is principally
a variant on a European theme that rang loud in the central Middle Ages.
Essentially, it was a part of a larger, European process of state building.
After nearly a century of civil war, King Hákon gamli (r. 1217‒63) and
his son King Magnús lagabætir (r. 1263‒80) set out to consolidate the king-
dom of Norway and transform it from a realm into a state.7 At the center
of their program was legal reform that entailed continued codifying of the
22 (Copenhagen: Det Nordiske Literatur-Samfund, 1852), Ia: 135, 190; Grágás efter det
Arnamagnæanske Haandskrift Nr. 334 fol., Staðarhólsbók [II], edited by Vilhjálmur Finsen
(Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1879), 395‒96.
6 NGL, 1: 72.
7 Two syntheses are Knut Helle, Norge blir en stat 1130−1319, Handbok i Norges historie,
vol. 1, no. 3 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1964) and Sverre Bagge, From Viking Stronghold
to Christian Kingdom: State Formation in Norway, c. 900−1350 (Copenhagen: Museum
Tusculanum Press, 2010).