Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 118

116 GRIPLA
customary law of the four legal provinces of the kingdom, which were
reformed and standardized.8 By so doing, the king became more directly
involved in local law than previously. The codification of customary law
and its subsequent reform by royal initiative meant that the framework
of the law changed fundamentally. It transported the locus of the law
from orality and living memory to the media of literacy and the written
word. Law was becoming increasingly bookish and more securely situated
within the sphere of king and clerics. Reformed codes were introduced
for Gulaþing in 1267 and for Eiðsifaþing and Borgarþing the following
year. Frostaþing accepted a reformed code in 1269 without Christian Law
owing to opposition from church authorities, who believed the king was
overriding its legislative independence by reforming Christian Law. King
and archbishop were still working towards a settlement on ecclesiastical
jurisdiction and administrative freedom of the church when the former
introduced a new and unified code of secular law for the entire kingdom
in 1274, the Landslǫg.9
The introduction of unified law for the entire kingdom, legislated
by royal authority from above by God’s grace, was made under strong
influence from contemporary European measures. The reintroduction of
Roman law in the high Middle Ages allowed kings to better consolidate
and centralize their power through legislative reforms, through which
customary law increasingly gave way to centralized legislative authority
from above.10 In 1231, the Wonder of the World, King Frederick II of
Sicily (r. 1198‒1250) and Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1220‒50), became the
first monarch of the age to introduce unified law for his kingdom. In terms
8 Most likely, regional law was originally codified in the late eleventh or the early twelfth
century. What may survive of it, however, became part of younger and reformed redactions.
See Bagge, From Viking Stronghold, 179‒82 and Knut Helle, Gulatinget og gulatingslova
(Leikanger: Skald, 2001), 20‒23.
9 Bagge, From Viking Stronghold, 179‒227; Arnved Nedkvitne, The Social Consequences of
Literacy in Medieval Scandinavia, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, vol. 11 (Brepols:
Turnhout, 2004), 67‒105.
10 See, e.g., Antony Black, Political Thought in Europe 1250‒1450, Cambridge Medieval
Textbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), esp. 14‒41, 136‒69, 186‒91;
K. Pennington, “Law, Legislative Authority and Theories of Government, 1150‒1300,”
J. P. Canning, “Law, Sovereignty and Corporation theory, 1300‒1450,” Jean Dunbabin,
“Government,” and Jeannine Quillet, “Community, Council and Representation,” all
in J. H. Burns, ed., The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c. 350‒c. 1450
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).