Old Norse laws in a new era

Antiquarian interest in Old Norse laws grew in the 18th century and continues to this day. Hans Paus published A Collection of Old Norse Laws (1751–1752), in which, among other things, he translated the Laws of the Land into Danish. Shortly after the 1814 constitution was adopted, another translation of the Laws of the Land appeared – this time, in Danish and Latin – followed by Professor Gregers Lundh’s Bergen’s Old City Law 15 years later. Lundh was also the initiator of several of the Old Norse publications that followed. Between 1846 and 1849, Rudolf Kaiser and Peter Andreas Munch published a groundbreaking Old Norse edition of Norwegian medieval laws in the series Norway’s Old Laws. In the meantime, Norwegian charters and other medieval documents were also published. In 1829, the first volume of Diplomatarium Norvegicum, a series that today consists of 23 volumes with more than 19,000 documents, was published. Absalon Taranger was behind the first modern Norwegian translation of the Laws of the Land in 1915, which was followed by a new text edition of Codex Hardenbergianus (which, among other texts, contains the Laws of the Land) in 1937. A facsimile edition of the same manuscript was published in 1983. Furthermore, a critical edition of the Old Norse text of the Laws of the Land was published in 2018. Last but not least, the 750th anniversary of the Laws of the Land has been celebrated in 2024 with new Nynorsk, Bokmål, and English translations and a beautiful luxurious edition in Nynorsk and Old Norse.