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.

Caspar David Friedrich's painting on the cover of this book is a metaphor: Scholarly relations between law & religion seemed to be destroyed through modernity. The book however argues for new life in the ruins. --

In Iceland’s Relationship with Norway c.870 – c.1100: Memory, History and Identity, Ann-Marie Long reassesses the development of Icelandic society from the earliest settlements to the twelfth century. Through a series of thematic studies, the book discusses the place of Norway in Icelandic cultural memory and how Icelandic authors envisioned and reconstructed their past. It examines in particular how these authors instrumentalized Norway to explain the changing parameters of Icelandic autonomy. Over time this strategy evolved to meet the needs of thirteenth-century Icelandic politics as well as the demands posed by the transition from autonomous island to Norwegian dependency.

In a postsecular cultural situation the conditions for understanding and communicating a Christian tradition have changed. None of the established religions can any longer claim monopoly in the "marketplace of religions." A claim of this study is that a postsecular situation characterized, among other things, by dwindling memberships in established churches as well as a new visibility of alternative religious expressions, opens up a need to reflect on alternative ways of understanding Christianity in its context. This study focuses on the question, how can a Christian tradition be communicated understandably in a postsecular context? In traditional terms: how can Christian witness be understood in our situation? It is to this need, according to this study, that the ecclesiology of Stanley Hauerwas provides a meaningful perspective. This perspective becomes relevant because in a postsecular context a Christian church, even a folk church, cannot assume to be in a position of majority or power. There is, therefore, a need to ask how to understand Christianity as a community of witness that is neither in power nor a majority. The study suggests that embodiment of Christian convictions becomes a central factor in a meaningful postsecular notion of witness.

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.

The overarching goal of the book is to examine the relations between Lutheran majority traditions and the development of secular law in the Nordic region in the early modern period, from the 16th to the 18th century. The early modern Nordic region included the kingdoms of Denmark/Norway and Sweden - with the Finnish diocese Abo as part of the Swedish realm. Both kingdoms were consolidated as Lutheran countries after the reformation. While this change occurred in a determined and radical way in Denmark, in Sweden the transformation was more hesitant. Due to its mixed Protestant (Lutheran/Calvinist) and RomanCatholic heritage, case studies dealing with Germany off er interesting comparative perspectives. The authors are experts in church history and legal history from Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway.

Shaped by five hundred years of Lutheran impact and with a strong influence of big majority churches, Scandinavian secularity is a very interesting and fruitful material for the historical and contemporary theoretical debate on the secular. It can be discussed, for example, whether the strong position of Human Rights and of the Scandinavian welfare state might be interpreted in continuity with the historical influence of Protestant traditions. Is there something like a hidden sacrality implicit in the Scandinavian secular?

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.