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HISTORY OF SWEDISH LAW.
305
rative. Retaining its position in the Swedish legal system throughout the
centuries, the "Nämnd", in the Era of the Aristocratic Predominance, proved a
veritable bulwark, set up in the hoary past, of the Swedish yeoman class.
Such foreign influence as is traceable in the Landskapslagar comes from the
Canon Law, principally noticeable in prescriptions relating to matrimony,
testamentary dispositions and the administration of justice.
Towards the close of the thirteenth century there became more and more
evident the determined desire on the part of the Ryoal House and the two
leading estates of the Realm, the nobility and the clergy, to diminish the
livergences in the respective provisions of the various Shire Laws.
Consequently, about 1350, Magnus Eriksson’s Country Law, "Landslag",
was promulgated, to apply to and have force in all the country districts,
and Magnus Eriksson’s Borough Law, "Stadslag", applicable to all the
towns of the Kingdom and superseding the various borough ordinances,
"Bjärköarätter", that had been issued at earlier dates. This Borough
Law embodied prescriptions differing in many respects from those of the
Country Law, with a view to meeting the special requirements of the
more highly developed economic life of the towns. Subsequently a new
and in some sections revised version of the Country Law was issued under
the name of Kristoffers Landslag, which in course of time took the place
of the earlier one. The date of its appearance, as testified in the deed
of enactment, was May 2, 1442. The coming into existence of the Landslag
is one of the most important events in the history of Swedish culture.
In the Landslag the several provisions of the various existing Shire Laws
were recast, being brought into harmony one with another and up to the legal
standard of the day. In order to show the continuity that is a marked feature
of the history of Swedish law, it may be pointed out that, although the
Lands-lag was regarded as the law to be followed first and foremost, yet where it
failed to yield guidance, resort was had to the ancient Shire Laws, which
continued throughout the period during which the Landslag remained in force to
influence very materially both doctrine and practice. Even in our times
individual stipulations in the Shire Laws may be in exceptional cases of practical
juridical import. Fortified by the uniformity gained in this national legislative
work, Swedish law survived the critical period which saw German law succumb
to foreign legal systems. Canon Law, German Borough Law, and above all
Germano-Roman Law left, it is true, deep traces of their influence on Swedish
law, but in no case did it amount to any actual adoption of their system.
The principal changes took place in the law of procedure: the judicature
was rendered more stable by the creation, as permanent additions to the
edifice, of courts of intermediary instance, Hovrätter, Courts of Appeal, and
judicial proceedings were still further set free from the trammels of earlier
formalism.
By the middle of the seventeenth century the Borough and Country Laws,
excellent bodies of law as they had been at the time of their conception, were
quite obsolescent. By a series of special ordinances and prescriptions alterations
and additions had indeed been made in them, but that meant that old and new
principles of law now stood side by side, and the just criticism was passed that
the law wore "the appearance of a disrupted marble wall patched up with common
stones". It seemed for a time as though, owing to the defective state of the
20—133179. Sweden. 1.
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