Creating a Danish legal language: legal terminology in the medieval Law of Scania. Issue 233 (1st July 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Tamm, Ditlev; Vogt, Helle
• Is Part Of: Historical research. Volume 86:Issue 233(2013:Aug.)
• Page Start: 505
• Page End: 514
• Publication Date: 2013-07-01
• Subjects: History -- Periodicals; History -- Methodology -- Periodicals; 907.2
• DOI: 10.1111/1468-2281.12007
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0950-3471

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>In the decades after 1200 the kingdom of Denmark developed a corpus of provincial laws written in Danish for the three major legal provinces. With the legislation for the eastern province of Scania as a starting point, this article shows how the writing down of the law led not only to the creation of a legal language but to a written vernacular language in general. It was not until the fifteenth century that written Danish was found outside of texts; charters and narrative until that point had been written in Latin.</p> </abstract>