Abstract
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.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Historical Research |
Volume | 86 |
Issue number | 233 |
Pages (from-to) | 505-514 |
Number of pages | 10 |
ISSN | 0950-3471 |
Publication status | Published - 2013 |