Corrected and Improved: The Motivation behind the Printing of the Norwegian Lawbook of 1604

Abstract

This article aims to contribute toward book history in Early Modern Norway by considering the circumstances of how and why the Norwegian national law was revised and brought to print for the first time in 1604 in Copenhagen, titled Den Norske Low-Bog, offuerseet, corrigerit oc forbedrit Anno M.DC.IIII (1604; The Norwegian Law-Book, Looked Through, Corrected and Revised The Year 1604).1 This was the first time Norwegian law had been printed, and indeed the printing of the law took place 40 years before the printing press came to Norway itself. Prior to it being revised and printed, copies of the law circulated in manuscript form, both in the Old Norwegian language the law was originally written in and later in Danish translations. As could be expected with a text in manuscript circulation, this meant there were many slightly different, although broadly similar, versions of the law.2 Despite many orders from Denmark throughout the sixteenth century, no final copy of a state-sponsored, Danish lawbook was published before 1604. This article considers the open letters and orders sent to Norway in the latter half of the sixteenth century and the early seventeenth century from the Danish Royal Court and reflects on the various motivations behind the preparation and printing of the law in Copenhagen, using the orders from Denmark as the primary source of evidence.3 The law printed in Copenhagen in 1604 was a translated and somewhat revised version of the Landslǫg, a national law code valid for the whole country, which was introduced in Norway in 1274 in the reign of King Magnus Håkonsson Lagabøte (whose byname means “law-mender”).4For much of the period in which the Landslǫg was in force in Norway, the country was in a union with Denmark, and it is for this reason that the Danish court and the Danish language were able to exert influence over the form of the Landslǫg.5 When the Landslǫg was introduced in the thirteenth century, Norway was an independent kingdom, and the language of the law code was Old Norwegian. The introduction of a national law code was an important stage in the process of Norwegian state formation and the consolidation of the power of the monarchy in the thirteenth century.6 However, in 1380, the Danish King Olaf II Håkonsson inherited the Kingdom of Norway as Olav IV Håkonsson. After his death, Norway was ruled by his mother, Margrete I, from 1387 to 1412. In 1397, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway formed the Kalmar Union, which was dissolved in 1523 when Sweden withdrew. Denmark-Norway remained together, with the administrative center of power located in Copenhagen. Even though the idea was that each state should be governed according to its own laws, and the law in Norway should not therefore have undergone any great changes, Danish men were gradually introduced into the most important posts in the country's administration (Bagge and Mykland 1987, 66, 74, 77; Falkanger 2007, 134). From 1536/1537, Denmark and Norway were in a personal union, and when, in 1536, the Norwegian Council of the Realm (Riksrådet) was abolished, Norway in effect became a province ruled from Denmark, with the capital in Copenhagen and Danish as the language of the administration.7 In 1660, the countries in union became the integrated state of Denmark-Norway and an absolute monarchy. The Landslǫg was superseded by the Norwegian Law of Christian V (Kong Christian den Femtes Norske Lov) in 1687.8 This means that the Landslǫg was in force for around 400 years, through the reigns of nineteen monarchs, until well into the early modern period.The lawbook printed in 1604 was a result of about 50 years of urging by the Royal Court in Denmark, which had given numerous orders that a state-sponsored revision and translation should be made. Little scholarly attention has been paid to these orders, but examining them brings a range of motivations to light for the printing of the lawbook of 1604. Previous scholarship on the printing of the Landslǫg as the lawbook of 1604 has deemed the central motivation behind the printing as a linguistic one; the Danish administrators in Norway could not read the Old Norwegian the law code was written in, and thus it had to be translated.9 This article seeks to nuance this view by examining the orders coming from the Danish court concerning the circumstances of the state-sponsored translation that was eventually printed, and argues that other concerns come to light through an examination of the sources: the fear of the fracturing of the Norwegian legal system, the quality of the Danish in the translations, and the politics of the distribution of the translation: in the end, the state-sponsored translation was to be printed and distributed from Copenhagen rather than circulated in manuscript form domestically in Norway. Together, these factors formed the circumstances of the production of a state-sponsored translation and resulted in the Landslǫg being printed for the first time.In this article, each of these circumstances is introduced before the evolution of the orders from Denmark are examined in detail: Firstly, I will briefly consider the comments surrounding Old Norwegian in sixteenth-century Norwegian-Danish official documents, before turning to an overview of the fracturing of the Norwegian legal system. I will touch upon the idea of good Danish, and then discuss the political aspects of translation. Motivated by the need for a thorough examination of the orders from Copenhagen themselves, I will then trace the evolution of the orders coming from Denmark in the 1590s and early 1600s. Finally, I will discuss the reasons given for its production, expressed in the prologue to the printed lawbook of 1604 itself.One obvious reason that the Landslǫg was translated into Danish in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was that the Old Norwegian in which the Landslǫg was originally written would have been difficult to read, especially for the numerous Danish administrators working in Norway. Vinje points out that while the Norwegian lawmen in the 1500s could probably still manage to read the Old Norwegian texts, the language was archaic, and they possibly needed a translation of the law code themselves (1973, 31). We might find evidence of this from the mid-sixteenth century in the writing of the Norwegian Laurents Hanssøn, who in the prologue of his saga translations, makes an interesting comment about the Norwegians’ ability to read and understand the old books: “Ere nu all ffaa bøgher i norige (sidenn adelenn minckede here) anthen aff konge bøger eller andre norske bøger ffaa ere och dee som dem lese kunne æn ferre ere de som forstaa dem” (Storm 1899, 3–4) [Now there are so few books in Norway (since the nobility was reduced here)10 whether books of kings or other Norwegian books. Also, those who are able to read them are few, yet fewer are they who understand them]. A letter from Axel Gyldenstjerne, the Stattholder of Norway,11 to the Danish government in 1590 confirms the impression that we get from Hanssøn. In his letter about sundry matters, following comments about something ill-advised that the fogder or lensmenn had done,12 Gyldenstjerne writes the following at the end of the paragraph: “For Lagbogen er opslidt her i Landet i gammel Tid, saa her er nu faa til af dennem, saa kunde” (Norske Samlinger udgivne af et historisk Samfund i Christiania1850, 1:540) [for the lawbook was worn out in this country a long time ago, so that here there are now few left who understand (it)], perhaps pointing to a general difficulty in Norway in understanding the Norwegian of the older books.In the mid-sixteenth century, it seems to have been the case that many legal documents in older Norwegian had not yet been translated to Danish, and there may have been resistance to doing so. We find evidence of this from the mid-sixteenth century in a comment from Hans Gaas (a Dane who was at that time Bishop of Trondheim), who, in a prologue to a translation he made,13 complains of problems understanding the “gammel Norske Maal” [the old Norwegian language] of a “Christen Ret” [Christian Law] and difficulties in finding someone who was willing to translate it into Danish: Da vaar hand udskrevet paa gammel Norske Maal, saa ieg kunde paa dend Tid icke læse med ret Forstand 2. Linier aff hende. Derfor begieret ieg aff atskillige lærde Mænd indfødde her udi Norges Rige, at de ville udsette samme Christen Ret paa Danske eller paa det Maal som nu forstandeligt er og her i Riget meenlig bruges, da ville det ingen giøre af dem, og ej jeg kunde spørje, samme Christen Ret nogensted at være udsat paa Danske. (Gaas 1752, 313)(At that time, it [the Norwegian law] was written out in the old Norwegian language, so that I could not at that time read or understand two lines of it correctly. So I began to ask various learned men born here in the kingdom of Norway if they would translate the same Christian Law into Danish or into that language that is currently understandable and generally used in this kingdom, but none of them wanted to do it, and I was not able to ask for the same Christian law to be translated into Danish anywhere.)Axel Gyldenstjerne's letter of 1590 further points to the difficulties that Danish and German officials faced when trying to administer Norwegian law: “De Danske og Tydske Lensmænd Fogeder og Præster ikke vel læse eller forstaa dette Norske, besynderlig hvad dennem er imod” (Norske Samlinger udgivne Af et historisk Samfund i Christiania 1850, 1:540) [The Danish and German lensmenn (fief holders), fogder (bailiffs), and priests cannot read or understand this Norwegian, especially what it prohibits them (from doing)]. This comment makes it clear that, from his perspective, there are few who can understand copies of the Norwegian lawbook in Old Norwegian, and that for this reason, the foreign officials in Norway (Danes and Germans) practice Norwegian law wrongly, since they are unable to “læse eller forstaa” [read or understand] the Norwegian found in the lawbooks, especially, he says, what the law prohibits them from doing (“besynderlig hvad dennem er imod”). Eleven years after Gyldenstjerne's comment in 1601, we find a further indication that the Danish government does not want to read Old Norwegian: in a letter discussing a Privilegium14 in “en gammel norsk Bog” [in an old Norwegian book], there is a request that the recipients were to look amongst “eders afgangne Faders Bøger og andre Steder om forne Bog” [your departed fathers’ books and other places for old books] and to “udsætte paa Danske” (Lundh and Sars 1865, 3:643) [to translate (them) into Danish]. By the early 1600s then, the expectation was that administrative documents should be in Danish.The above documents make a careful distinction between Norwegian and Danish, most often drawing a contrast between the “gamell Norske maall” (Storm 1899, 2) [the old Norwegian language] and contemporary Danish.15 There is also a distinction drawn, however, between contemporary Danish and contemporary Norwegian; for example, the Norwegian Laurents Hanssøn, translating into Danish, claims to have forgotten much of his Danish: he “megit haffue glemtt dansk maall” (Storm 1899, 3) [has largely forgotten the Danish language], and the Dane Hans Gaas writes that he wanted to get a translation made into “Danske eller paa det Maal som nu forstandeligt er og her I Riget meenlig bruges” (Gaas 1752, 313) [Danish or into that language that is currently understandable and generally used in this kingdom]. So although the focus is largely on Danish as the language of the administration in Norway, there is acknowledgment that Norwegian is a separate language.The fracturing of the Norwegian legal system seems to have been a very real concern in the latter half of the sixteenth century. If we examine the differences between the thirteenth-century Old Norwegian, some Danish translations from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the lawbook of 1604, it can be seen that disparity arose in the translations of the Landslǫg, both in comparison with the Old Norwegian versions of the law texts (the source texts) and between the translations themselves. Across the corpus, there are omissions, additions, amendments, and so forth, which means that by the end of the sixteenth century, there was indeed a certain amount of variation in the law valid for the whole country (Leslie-Jacobsen 2020–2021).The development of an institution that posterity has called the overlagting16 (high law-thing) seems to have been a measure designed to deal with the discrepancies in Norwegian law. This was a special institution at which a college of aristocrats and lawmen (which could include previous lawmen, presumably to draw on their experience) would come together to judge cases that involved prominent people, and cases that were especially complicated or cases where the law was especially unclear (Falkanger 2007, 95–7; Seip 1934, 120–4). Although the source material for the overlagting is poorly preserved, two overlagting developed in Oslo and Bergen from the end of the fifteenth century.17 They have been described as “kollegiale domstolene” (Falkanger 2007, 95) [the collegial courts] and “lagmannskonferanser” (Seip 1934, 124) [conferences of lawmen]. Jens Arup Seip points to the lack of an official lawbook in a language that officials could understand as the primary reason behind the growth of the overlagting in the sixteenth century, since this was a meeting that could function to harmonize to the law, and points out that the institution became less necessary when the lawbook of 1604 was printed (1934, 124); indeed, the institution seems to have disappeared with the introduction of the lawbook of 1604 (Falkanger 2007, 96, 157; Seip 1934, 124).18 The existence of the overlagting thus points to an effort to counteract, or at least deal with, the fracturing of the Norwegian legal system prior to the publication of the lawbook of 1604.The first order from the King in 1557 to put the Norwegian lawbook in order points to a variation in the way the law was practiced, as the primary problem he was trying to avoid in the mid-sixteenth century: “Kongen er kommen in Forfaring, at endog der er en Lov udgaaet over alt Norges Rige, bruges og udtydes dog denne Nordenfjelds anderledes end Sondenfjelds, saa at mangfoldige Klagemaal derover har været for Kongen” (Lange, Heiberg, and Petersen 1861, 1:207) [The King is of the experience that even though there is one law issued for the whole kingdom of Norway, this is however used and interpreted differently Nordenfjells than Sønnenfjells, so that manifold complaints have come before the King for this reason].19 This variation in practice, according to the letter, was due to “Tvist og Uenighed” (Lange, Heiberg, and Petersen 1861, 1:207) [disputes and disagreement] amongst the various lawbooks used by the lawmen, although at this earlier point in the history of the orders sent to Norway from Denmark, no mention is made of translations of the law into Danish. The facet of differing Danish translations being a problem does not arise until the letter of 1572, when a letter from the King to the lawmen laments “at vi forefare, hvorledes den norske Lov af mange og adskillige paa Danske skal være udsat og transfereret og udi mange Artikler findes forfalsket, saa den ikke skal komme overeens med den rette Mening, eftersom den paa Norske finds beskrevet” (Petersen 1862, 2.1:11–2) [that we experience how the Norwegian law has been translated and transposed by many and different people into Danish and is defective in many of the articles so that it is not in concordance with the correct meaning that is described in the Norwegian], and continues to be a theme until the publication of the lawbook of 1604, in which it is stated in the prologue that prior to the printed translation, every lawman has a different lawbook, and this multitude of versions “ere saare mange, og icke alle stemmer met hin anden offuer eens, men somme steder findis at vere tuert imod huer andre: saa at huad den ene rettebod tillader oc befaler, det forbiudes offte vdi en anden” (Hallager and Brandt 1855, 4) [are so many, and not all are in agreement with the others, but in some places are wholly opposite of each other: so that what the one amendment permits and orders, is often forbidden in another]. Although this is likely to be an exaggeration, frustration on the part of the Danish administration at the multitude of differing lawbooks in circulation in Norway is evident.The quality of the Danish in the translations of the Landslǫg was of concern and was also most likely a motivation for a new, official translation to be developed. In many of the contemporary documents concerning the translation of the Landslǫg into Danish, we find comments surfacing repeatedly on the necessity of the Danish being correct and proper. This kind of comment on good Danish was not restricted to legal texts; in many of the forewords to books in Danish in the sixteenth century, there are comments on the correctness of the Danish language used therein (Appel 2001, 1:384n41). Concerns about the quality of the Danish, in tandem with concerns about religious content that might be contrary to Danish practice, were also the reason behind a series of bans in the sixteenth century on imported books being sold in Denmark, and the reason that books printed in Danish had to be reviewed by the høilærde, the Theology Faculty at the University of Copenhagen,21 in order to secure their quality (Appel 2001, 1:383–4; Lockhart 2007, 70). The first ban was issued on January 1, 1562 (Secher 1887, 1:175–6). In this order, Danish books printed in Germany are pointed to as a particular problem, since those involved in the printing do not know Danish well enough and “blifver det rette danske maal forvandlit oc forfalsket af den orsage, at der icke findis gode correctores, som udi dansk tungemaal øfvit ere oc maalit kunde” (Secher 1887, 1:175) [The correct Danish language is altered and corrupted due to the reason that good editors who are skillful in the Danish tongue and know the language are not to be found]. At the time, many Danish books were indeed printed in Germany, and many of the printers working in Denmark were German (Nielsen 2016, 374). In 1576, a second order states that no book is to be printed or published in Denmark unless it has been “examinerit och ofverset” by “de hoglederde udi Kiøpnehafns universitet” [examined and looked through by the høilærde at the University of Copenhagen] and states again that “mange bøgger af tysk paa danske blifver udsat och trøkt uden lands” (Secher 1889, 2:15) [many books in German are translated into Danish and printed abroad]. As Appel points out, the order in 1576 does not ban the import of foreign books (2001, 1:385), but rather grants total power to the Faculty of Theology at the university for the purposes of quality control. The ban on imported books to Denmark and Norway was however reinstated in 1596 (Secher 1891, 3:9–10), and the missive points back to the ban of 1576 and concerns “danske bøger, som erre udsat af tyske eller latinne paa dansk och erre trøgt uden lands” [Danish books that are translated from German or Latin into Danish and are printed abroad] and describes the anxiety that such books can introduce and spread “vilfarelse och irringe” [delusion and disagreement] amongst the general population (Secher 1891, 3:9). The language in the books is described as the Danish being “formørket, saa at den neppeligen kand forstais” (Secher 1891, 3:9) [obscured, so that it hardly can be understood]. The word “formørckit” [obscured] is also used in relation to the Danish language in the prologue to both the law of Jutland printed in 1590 (Den rette Judske Lowbog, Nu Nylige offuerseet, Corrigerit oc Dansken Forbedrit Aar M.D.LXXXX1590, sig.)(2v), and, furthermore, the law of Jutland explicitly says in the title that the Danish has been “forbedrit”: Den rette Judske Lowbog, Nu Nylige offuerseet, Corrigerit oc Dansken Forbedrit Aar M.D.LXXXX (1590; The True Law of Jutland, Now Newly Looked Through, Corrected and the Danish Improved in the Year 1590). These examples point to a contemporary interest in ensuring the good quality of the Danish language in print.The interest in correct Danish is also visible in the prologues of the books of the time, including in translations. For example, the prologue to a printed book of devotions translated from French to Danish by the Humanist Peder Parvus and published in 1543 mentions that he is translating into “ræt Danske” (Parvus 1543, sig. Aiv) [correct Danish] right at the beginning of the prologue. In the mid-sixteenth century, this is reflected in the Norwegian Laurents Hanssøn's translation of kings’ sagas when he laments in his introduction that he “megit haffue glemtt dansk maall” (Storm 1899, 3) [has largely forgotten the Danish language], which might be taken as an excuse for any defects in his Danish skills.22 The Danish Anders Sørensen Vedel's translation of Saxo Grammaticus into Danish from 1575 contains many complaints about the difficulty of Saxo's Latin in its prologue, describing it, for example, as “mørcke oc suare” (Saxo Grammaticus 1575, sig. C):(2r [obscure and difficult], and in the versified prologue to the work, Vedel writes: “Den er nu paa vort Maal udsæt / Oss Danske til Nytte oc Ære” (Saxo Grammaticus 1575, sig. C):(4r) [It is now translated into our language / Into Danish for the benefit and honor of us Danes], ascribing to the Danish translation the power to improve Danish men's behavior. Finally, in the Danish scholar Ole Worm's prologue to the Norwegian Peder Claussøn Friis's translation of the kings’ sagas in 1633, Worm describes how the Latin has been “paa den flittigist confererit” (Snorri Sturlusson 1633, sig. (b)3v) [the most diligently translated], but goes on to comment on the poor quality of the Danish in relation to the content: “Det siunis vel at hand hafuer mere beflitet sig at forklare os historien efter den gammel Original, end at hand skulde hafue lagt sig paa stor Veltalenhed udi voris Sprog” (Snorri Sturlusson 1633, sig. (c)2r) [It seems that he has been more diligent in explaining the tale to us according to the old original than he has been concerned with being well-spoken in in our language], which demonstrates that the quality of the language of the translation was a matter worth commenting on. This concern for correct Danish, both in language and content and both from officials and in published works, is reflected in the letters sent to Norway from Denmark about the necessity for a revision and edition that is both in good Danish and correct in content.In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, there was an increasing emphasis on legal texts being accessible and in modernized language. As well as the efforts to revise the content and modernize the language of Norwegian law to render it more easily readable, this tendency is also visible in other countries’ legal traditions, such as the 1590 revision and printing of the Jyske lov in modernized Danish. In sixteenth-century England, too, we see the decline of Law French (Kibbee 1991, 95), a professional dialect of French, usually written and used only by legal practitioners,23 in favor of English. Although law reporting continued in French until the seventeenth century, arguments were presented in English before this time (Baker 1990, 2), and by the end of the seventeenth century, Law French was dead.24 All this points to a growing expectation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that legal texts, or legal language, should be modernized and accessible. There are likely several reasons for this: Firstly, there was a move toward people needing to be literate in order to take care of their own legal interests (Kibbee 1991, 98). Secondly, the Reformation made Bible translation into the vernacular a priority. The impact of this in Norway-Denmark was a translation of the full Bible into Danish in 1550,25 which created a modernized, standardized, vernacular language that spread.26 Connected with this was the impact of printing, which facilitated the spread of the modernized and standardized language and sharply increased the number of printed books in Denmark in the sixteenth century (Nielsen 2016; Mørck 2019, 121). In summary, the concern that Danish should be correct, the notion that people ought to be able to understand texts in their own language, and the spread of a modernized language via Bible translations and printing promoted the notion that people should be able to understand legal texts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.The printing and distribution of the lawbook of 1604 can also be interpreted as a display of Danish power. It may be the case that the process of replacing Norwegians with Danes in the whole of the top layer of the Norwegian legal administration in 1600–1603 was a reaction by Copenhagen to nothing having been done in Norway about the mandated state-sponsored translation. This shows how important the work was to the Danish rulers of Norway. One other aspect of the assembly and printing of the law code that became important over time was to consolidate Danish control over the Norwegian legal system. In earlier orders relating to the state-sponsored translation, the product was destined to be created in Norway and then distributed domestically; the King merely wished to be sent a copy. In later orders, although the work was still to be done in Norway, the result was to be sent to the King in Denmark. The Danish King asserted his authority by printing the law and distributing it around Norway, a country that was still without its own printing press.27 This move from Copenhagen gave a clear signal of Danish power and wealth. Norwegians were now under the control of a law distributed directly from Denmark, as the King emphasized in his mandates, even if the content was still recognizably Norwegian. The language of the law was also now indisputably Danish rather than Norwegian. With all higher learning and printing located in Denmark, consolidating power over Norway for the central administration in Copenhagen was a strategic move (Dahl 2013, 188), one that weakened Norway and ultimately denied Norway its own legal system. This process of Danish consolidation of the Norwegian legal system concludes with a move toward absolutism; the absolutism established in Denmark in the 1660s was included in Norwegian law with the introduction of Christian V's Norwegian Law (Kong Christian den Femtes Norske Lov) in 1687, which replaced the lawbook of 1604.In the sixteenth century, Norwegian law was in need of revision since the various versions in circulation meant that the law was applied differently across the country, a situation that the meetings of lawmen in the “overlagting” sought to deal with.28 The variation in the law did not escape the notice of the Danish court, and in 1557, we find the very first royal letter sent to Norway about the matter. In a letter dated January 18 (printed in Lange, Heiberg, and Petersen 1861, 1:207–8) from King Christian III (reigned 1503–1559) to Peder Hvitfeldt, the Kansler (Chancellor) of Norway,29 the first lines point to the central problem that was experienced in Norway; that although the law was unified and valid over the whole of the kingdom of Norway, the law was applied and interpreted differently over the country (Lange, Heiberg, and Petersen 1861, 1:207). The letter also states that many complaints caused by this were ending up in front of the King for resolution. Of particular note in the letter is the indication that the King has previously ordered the lensmenn and lawmen in Norway to assemble and work to put the law in order, but that this has not happened. The letter is thus a second royal order that they should assemble and work on the law, without any further delay.30 The order in the letter of 1557 is clear: to deal thoroughly with all the disputes and discrepancies inherent in the law and to come to a point of agreement so that the same laws and rights apply over the whole country: “Grangivelig overveie, granske og forfare al den Tvist og Uenighed om Loven, og uden al Skudsmaal og videre Forhaling forenes om samme Lov og gjøre en Skik, saa at samme Lov og Ret drager overeet over det ganske Rige” (Lange, Heiberg, and Petersen 1861, 1:207) [Thoroughly consider, scrutinize, and examine all the disputes and disagreements about the law and without any postponement and further delay reach agreement upon the same law and put it into order, so that the same law and rights cover the whole kingdom]. In addition, they are to do this according to the letter of the law, “ikke andledes at tydes og forandres, end som Bogstaven udviser” (Lange, Heiberg, and Petersen 1861, 1:207–8) [not to be otherwise interpreted or changed from what is literally written]. The letter of 1557 does not mention anything about translating the law (also noted by Storm 1879, 31). Rather, the letter focuses on the fragmentation of the Norwegian legal system, and that this and the earlier order (of which we do not have a record) are attempts to correct this and ensure the unity of Norwegian law. Neither of these mandates was followed.Later in the century, although the official version demanded in 1557 (and earlier) had not been prepared, it seems that many different translations of the Norwegian law into Danish had been undertaken. The former Prince Frederick, mentioned in the letter of 1557, duly became King Frederick II (reigned 1559–1588), and in 1572, a letter was sent from King Frederick to the lawmen of Norway about the state of the Norwegian law and the problem of the proliferation of lawbooks that were now in existence (printed in Petersen 1862, 2.1:11–2). The emphasis of the letter of 1572 is rather different from that of the letter o