This book presents a comprehensive history of law and religion in the Nordic context. The entwinement of law and religion in Scandinavia encompasses an unusual history, not widely known yet important for its impact on contemporary political and international relations in the region. The volume provides a holistic picture from the first written legal sources of the twelfth century to the law of the present secular welfare states. It recounts this history through biographical case studies. Taking the point of view of major influential figures in church, politics, university, and law, it thus presents the principal actors who served as catalysts in ecclesiastical and secular law through the centuries. This refreshing approach to legal history contributes to a new trend in historiography, particularly articulated by a younger generation of experienced Nordic scholars whose work is featured prominently in this volume. The collection will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers working in the areas of Legal History and Law and Religion.

This book presents a comprehensive history of law and religion in the Nordic context. The entwinement of law and religion in Scandinavia encompasses an unusual history, not widely known yet important for its impact on contemporary political and international relations in the region. The volume provides a holistic picture from the first written legal sources of the twelfth century to the law of the present secular welfare states. It recounts this history through biographical case studies. Taking the point of view of major influential figures in church, politics, university, and law, it thus presents the principal actors who served as catalysts in ecclesiastical and secular law through the centuries. This refreshing approach to legal history contributes to a new trend in historiography, particularly articulated by a younger generation of experienced Nordic scholars whose work is featured prominently in this volume. The collection will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers working in the areas of Legal History and Law and Religion.

This book explores the concept of religious Enlightenment in the Nordic countries during the long eighteenth century. It argues that Lutheran confessional culture became intertwined with Enlightenment ideas and practices in this European region. In the book’s three parts, specialist historians explore themes central to students of the early modern era – historical writing, material culture, ecclesiastical and legal reform, censorship, cameralism and innovative medical practices. It offers a timely reconsideration of a complex period in European history from a northern perspective.

This cutting-edge book facilitates debate amongst scholars in law, humanities and social sciences, where comparative methodology is far less well anchored in most areas compared to other research methods. It posits that these are disciplines in which comparative research is not simply a bonus, but is of the essence.

Since Anu Bradford's groundbreaking book on the Brussels Effect there is a vastly evolving literature on the EU as a global regulatory actor as well as the global reach of EU law. This edited collection connects to this debate. Yet, it shifts the focus from the currently predominant public law focus to investigating European and EU private law and to connecting to literature and research on transnational law. To that end, it proceeds first conceptually by introducing and giving shape to the notion of a “European Transnational Private Law” through four conceptual contributions by the editors. Secondly, it focuses on several sectors (finance, taxation, investment, consumer law, labour law) and topics (climate litigation, global value chains, non-discrimination) to trace sector-specifically the role of EU private law in relation to transnational legal ordering.

Following from themes explored during the 2005 International Medieval Congress on ‘Youth and Age’, this interdisciplinary volume focuses upon social, cultural and biological aspects of being young and old in the medieval north. The contributors progress definitions of young and old in the north, taking into account changing mentalities as a result of political and cultural transformations such as the Christianisation of the north. This book invites discourse on youth and age amongst medieval archaeologists, historians, and philologists, while introducing particularities of medieval research to sociologists and gerontologists working within other periods and areas. The contributors, representing both established and up-and-coming scholars in the field, showcase the diverse issues that surround interdisciplinary studies of youth and age. Contributors are Christina Lee, Lotta Mejsholm, Berit J. Sellevold, Anna Hansen, Bernadine McCreesh, Joanna A. Skórzewska, Nic Percivall, Carolyne Larrington, Philadelphia Ricketts, Jordi Sánchez-Martí, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Shannon Lewis-Simpson, Ármann Jakobsson, and Yelena Sesselja Helgadóttir Yershova

Explore the ancient gods and goddesses of Ásatrú—and find your spiritual path Ásatrú is a spiritual belief system based around the pre-Christian folklore and mythology of Northern Europe. It gained popularity in the 1970s across Europe and North America and is still thriving today, sought out for its non-dogmatic structure and emphasis on individuality, hospitality, and community-based values. Ásatrú for Beginners is a newcomer's guide to this spirituality. It breaks down everything from the history and traditions to the gods and goddesses, ancient texts, sacred rituals, and the use of runes with simple language anyone can dive into. It's an inclusive and practical guide that makes it easy to apply Ásatrú in your modern-day life and find greater spiritual satisfaction. Ásatrú for Beginners offers: See yourself more clearly—Ásatrú centers around ideas like friendship, community, and sharing. Discover what's important to you and how to worship in a way that fits your life. What's old is new again—Explore the thousand-year-old roots of the original Ásatrú religion and what makes its recent rebirth so powerful. Gods and goddesses—Find wonder, purpose, and inspiration in the stories and poems about gods like Thor, Loki, and Frigg. Enter the world of Ásatrú with a simple guide that puts you on the path to spiritual health.

This book approaches law as a process embedded in transnational personal, religious, communicative and economic relationships that mediate between international, national and local practices, norms and values. It uses the concept "living law" to describe the multiplicity of norms manifest in transnational moral, social or economic practices that transgress the territorial and legal boundaries of the nation-state. Focusing on transnational legal encounters located in family life, diasporic religious institutions and media events in countries like Norway, Sweden, Britain and Scotland, it demonstrates the multiple challenges that accelerated mobility and increased cultural and normative diversity is posing for Northern European law. For in this part of the world, as elsewhere, national law is challenged by a mixture of expanding human rights obligations and unprecedented cultural and normative pluralism enhanced by expanding global communication and market relations. As a consequence, transnationalization of law appears to create homogeneity, fragmentation and ambiguity, expanding space for some actors while silencing others. Through the lens of a variety of important contemporary subjects, the authors thus engage with the nature of power and how it is accommodated, ignored or resisted by various actors when transnational practices encounter national and local law.

This book addresses the problems of identifying human actions behind finds of bones in settlement archaeology, exemplified with the identification of ritual deposits. In order to formulate a methodological framework for approaching the identification of ritual deposits, different methods are tested on four Early Medieval case studysites: Dongjum and Leeuwarden, two artificial dwelling mounds situated in the then undiked salt marches of the Northern Netherlands, Midlaren, an inland settlement in Drenthe, also in the Northern Netherlands, and finally Uppåkra, a central place in the South of Sweden. The bone fragments from the four materials are studied in a five step process of definition, description, identification, interpretation and explanation. The deposits are discussed with the help of various archaeological, ethnographic and historical sources. The results of the analysis lead to a methodological framework for understanding individual deposits based on a holistic perspective where all information is regarded as potentially valuable, various methods are taken into consideration, and simplification is avoided.

Stephen A. Mitchell here offers the fullest examination available of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those people believed to be able—and who in some instances thought themselves able—to manipulate the world around them through magical practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells. Mitchell's starting point is the year 1100, by which time Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs persisted in various forms. The book's endpoint coincides with the coming of the Reformation and the onset of the early modern Scandinavian witch hunts. The terrain covered is complex, home to the Germanic Scandinavians as well as their non-Indo-European neighbors, the Sámi and Finns, and it encompasses such diverse areas as the important trade cities of Copenhagen, Bergen, and Stockholm, with their large foreign populations; the rural hinterlands; and the insular outposts of Iceland and Greenland. By examining witches, wizards, and seeresses in literature, lore, and law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love, prophecy, health, and weather, Mitchell provides a portrait of both the practitioners of medieval Nordic magic and its performance. With an understanding of mythology as a living system of cultural signs (not just ancient sacred narratives), this study also focuses on such powerful evolving myths as those of "the milk-stealing witch," the diabolical pact, and the witches' journey to Blåkulla. Court cases involving witchcraft, charm magic, and apostasy demonstrate that witchcraft ideologies played a key role in conceptualizing gender and were themselves an important means of exercising social control.