Creating a Danish legal language: legal terminology in the medieval Law of Scania

TY - JOUR

T1 - Creating a Danish legal language: legal terminology in the medieval Law of Scania

AU - Tamm, Ditlev

AU - Vogt, Helle

PY - 2013/8

Y1 - 2013/8

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0950-3471

VL - 86

SP - 505

EP - 514

JO - Historical Research

JF - Historical Research

IS - 233

ER -