Gripla - 2023, Síða 119

117S L Í M U S E T U R IN EARLY ICELANDIC LAW
of centralized bureaucracy and state apparatuses, the kingdom of Sicily
was at that time probably the most advanced of all Western states.11 King
Magnús’s Landslǫg of 1274 put Norway among those at the forefront of
progressive, state-wide legislation inspired by Roman law.12 The inspira-
tion came not least from Castile, where major reforms were made on the
basis of Roman law principles in the mid-thirteenth century (resulting in
Les Siete Partidas, ‘Code in Seven Parts’, finished around 1265).13 In 1258,
Princess Kristín, daughter of King Hákon, was married to Prince Philip of
Castile, the half-brother of King Alfonso X (r. 1254‒84). A large entourage
of Norwegian courtiers visited the Castilian court on this occasion and
must have learned firsthand about the legal reforms then in full progress.
The legal reforms in Norway followed immediately thereafter.14
The novelty of legislating against slímusetur can be understood up to a
point within the local context of these reforms. The emergence of a central
legislative authority, through which the king appeared as a human legisla-
tor, brought with it a new understanding of the nature and origins of law.
Nonetheless, law codes continued to focus primarily on criminal law and
only secondarily on constitutional law. One way that the king sought to
increase his power was by taking control of areas of society where his au-
thority was previously either absent or limited and dispensing justice there.
Peace increasingly became the king’s peace, a ‘public’ peace. This became
evident in, for example, what Max Weber famously called the ‘monopoly
of violence’ by state authority, when the king sought to eliminate feuds and
‘private justice’ of any kind among his subjects. Aside from regional and
chronological variations, it remains open to debate how successful premod-
ern state authorities were in their quest for such a monopoly.15 Identifying
11 For chief characteristics, see Hiroshi Takayama, “Law and Monarchy in the South,” in
David Abulafia, ed., Italy in the Central Middle Ages, 1000‒1300, The Short Oxford History
of Italy (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004), and David Abulafia, Frederick II: A
Medieval Emperor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 202‒25.
12 When exactly the Landslǫg were introduced, in 1274 or even as early as 1267, is open to
debate, cf. Anna Catharina Horn’s survey of early scholarship on the legal reforms of the
1260s and 1270s: “Lovrevisjonene til Magnus Håkonsson Lagabøte – en historiografisk
gjennomgang,” Maal og Minne (2018, no. 2).
13 Thoroughly treated in Joseph F. O’Callaghan, Alfonso X, the Justinian of His Age: Law and
Justice in Thirteenth-Century Castile (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019).
14 Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar, ed. Þorleifur Hauksson, Sverrir Jakobsson, and Tor Ulset, 2 vols.,
Íslenzk fornrit, vols. 31‒32 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2013), 2: 197‒200, 202‒03.
15 The continued practice of feuding by the nobility in late medieval and early modern so-