European influences

Before the Laws of the Land, there were only two kingdom-wide pieces of legislation in Europe: the Sicilian Liber Augustalis from 1231 and the Castilian Libro de las Leyes (also known as Siete Partidas) from 1256–1265. What motivated the Norwegian monarchy to embark on a similar project? The work of producing an overview over and improving the Norwegian provincial law codes had already started at the end of King Håkon Håkonsson’s reign. King Håkon had a wide international network of contacts. In 1258, King Håkon married Magnus’s sister Kristina Håkonsdatter to Don Felipe, the brother of Alfonso X of Castile (in today’s northern Spain). According to the saga of Håkon Håkonsson, Kristina had an entourage of 100 people on her journey south, including many important and influential noblemen. At that time, work on King Alfonso’s collection of laws Libro de las Leyes was well under way – something that the guests from the north were sure to hear about. Someone from Kristina’s entourage might have taken an interest in the legislative work and brought this inspiration back to Norway. In the time around the creation of the Laws of the Land, there were also several Norwegians studying at leading law schools and centres of learning of Roman and canon law, particularly the universities of Paris and Bologna. Many of them gained central positions in King Håkon’s and King Magnus’s circles. They contributed to developing the royal estate and the ecclesiastical centre on Holmen in Bergen into a centre of gravity for legislation, administration, and learning that could take on such a grandiose challenge as the creation of legislation for the entire kingdom.