INTRODUCTION

This chapter is dedicated to three rituals. The first two are closely related: ritual deposition and deliberate fragmentation. The first will be discussed in paragraph 4.2. Rituals involving the deliberate fragmentation of figurines is the subject of paragraph 4.3. Paragraph 4.4 is dedicated to so-called magical practices.

Until the end of the last millennium, the ritual deposition of metal objects, bones and other artefacts was regarded with scepticism by archaeologists and seen as ‘illogical’ or ‘non-functional’. In his book on ritual deposits between the first millennium BCE and the late Medieval period, Richard Bradley sketches in A Chapter of Accidents, how scholars stick to practical interpretations of metal hoards in rivers and other watery places, by explaining them as ‘accidents’: cargos of sunken vessels or inundations. In 1999, the British archaeologist Simon Clarke pointed out that in antiquity ritual behaviour was perceived as perfectly logical and rational. He concluded his lecture on the re-interpretation of deposits in pits at Newstead, Scotland, with the following statement:

‘Perhaps for the benefit of some Romanists it is still necessary to labour the point that what we call ritual activity was widespread in the ancient world, invading areas of life which in our own experience appear wholly secular. Deposition on Iron Age and Roman period sites was controlled in large part by behaviour patterns that to our mind were illogical responses to superstition or religious belief. But it only really stands out as outlandishly ritualistic from the standpoint of the outsider. To members of that society it was perfectly rational behaviour, which supported a sense of social identity, was integrated with the economic system and meshed perfectly with technological understanding. We need to move beyond the mere identification of ritual.

Central to this research are Roman period bronze and terracotta figurines of deities, human figures and animals, the majority coming from established find-spots in the Netherlands. From the 1960s onward, bronze statuettes have generated numerous catalogues and studies focusing mainly on typologies and production centres. Terracotta statuettes received less attention and the first comprehensive study in the Netherlands on this subject saw the light in 1987. Bronze and terracotta statuettes have not been studied together and seldom in relation to their find-spots.

Roman period statuettes have been found throughout Europe, in Asia Minor and North-Africa. In northwestern Europe, the statuettes were introduced by Roman troops at the end of the 1st century BCE. They were used in different ways. Besides offerings in sanctuaries they were set up in household shrines and niches in houses, deposited in graves as funerary gifts and deposited in dry and wet places in and around settlements as part of a ritual. The anthropologist Kopytoff has advanced that we can draw up cultural biographies of objects. Prior to their deposition in a sanctuary, grave or other place, statuettes could have had other functions, which usually remain invisible to us. They could have been a diplomatic gift, a means of payment, a toy, a curiosum or souvenir. In some cases, a previous function can be deduced from specific characteristics of a statuette. An example is the terracotta bird from Schagen, which originally was a toy, but ended up as a ritual deposit under the entrance of a building.

This study is dedicated to the use of statuettes in people’s everyday life, the daily praxis of religion, a concept known as lived religion. In this study it will be explored which statuette representations people preferred in different areas and what they did with them. The daily praxis of religion must be seen as an indispensable complement in the study of religion. It focuses on the individual as a religious agent and the rituals he or she performed in the context of his/her house or settlement.

INTRODUCTION

The subject of this book are bronze and terracotta statuettes that represent deities, human figures and animals. They were introduced in the northwestern provinces by Roman troops from the end of the 1st century BCE onwards. The statuettes have been recovered from military and non-military settlements, the surrounding landscape and, to a lesser extent, from sanctuaries and graves. The first chapter deals with the objective and approach of this study, followed by a description of the dataset and the research area, the definitions of terms and the structure of the complete text. This introduction comprises a summary of how the study area became politically divided in the 1st century.

The first Roman troops arrived between 19 and 16 BCE in the easternmost part of the region nowadays known as the Netherlands. They built the first military base on the Hunerberg at Nijmegen. Later, other military camps would follow. When Drusus led his army through Frisian territory in 12 BCE, he did not meet with any resistance and placed a moderate tax on the Frisii in the form of cow-hides. In 28, the first documented fight in the area took place when the Frisii revolted against the Roman prefect Olennius. According to Tacitus, Olennius demanded larger hides, the size of the much larger aurochs or their equivalent in domestic cow-hides. The Frisii could not meet his demands and handed in their herds and their land, and sent their wives and children into slavery. Since the Romans remained deaf to their complaints, the Frisii sought remedy in war. They hanged the soldiers who came to collect the taxes and Olennius fled to a nearby fort, which Tacitus calls Flevum. When the provincial governor, Lucius Apronius, arrived at the fort with his troops, the Frisian insurgents who had besieged it had already left to protect their own possessions. Apronius ordered his men to go after the enemy and a battle followed. The Romans were defeated and suffered great losses, but for some reason did not seek revenge.

A: 1266 AND ALL THAT?

1266 is not as famous a year as 1066 in the history of the British Isles. Nonetheless, it is one useful point of departure for any attempt to compare the legal and political histories of Scotland and Norway. In that year, a long-running conflict between Scotland and Norway came to an end. This culminated in the Treaty of Perth, which was agreed between the representatives of the respective kings of the two countries – Magnus VI of Norway (r. 1263–1280) and Alexander III of Scotland (r. 1249–1286). Both kings shared certain assumptions about what it meant to exercise kingship. Both wanted to articulate the territorial boundaries of their realms – something that the Treaty of Perth helped to achieve. Within their territorial boundaries, they sought to articulate their kingship in similar ways. For example, they both reformed the coinage, in Alexander III's case by establishing a remarkable number of mints across the kingdom during the 1250s, and in Magnus VI's case during the two succeeding decades. In addition, they both cultivated the idea that their realms possessed unitary laws. In the Treaty of Perth, it was provided that the people living in islands ceded by Norway to Scotland would thereafter be governed by the “laws and customs of the kingdom of Scotland and be dealt with and judged according to them from now into the future”. This indicates that Alexander III and his advisers could at least appeal to a unitary law of the realm as an ideal. In Norway, Magnus VI's political efforts after the Treaty of Perth were directed towards unifying the law of the realm, including the law in the Northern Isles and the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland. This reinforced the older idea that the king might issue law for the whole of the realm, and simultaneously created a standard of unified law for the whole kingdom.

Considering these points about Alexander III and Magnus VI together is a helpful way to introduce the present volume, which is concerned with comparative legal history, and specifically comparing the legal histories of Norway and Scotland. The stories of their reigns illustrate that some of the elements essential for any effective comparison are present. Ostensibly, there are similarities in the historical developments of both kingdoms as their rulers sought to forge political and legal identities within their territorial realms.

A: INTRODUCTION

In 1317, a court of the burgh of Aberdeen had regard to what it called the leges burgorum Scocie – the laws of the burghs of Scotland – in determining the outcome of a particular legal process. The leges were used in part to identify the procedures that had to be followed when transferring claims to lands within the burgh from one person to another. Yet what did the court mean when it referred to the leges burgorum Scocie? In essence, that is the central question that will be considered throughout this chapter.

Those familiar with the history of the laws of the medieval Scottish kingdom might quite reasonably assume that when the court considered the leges burgorum Scocie, it was in fact referring to a text that survives in several manuscript witnesses dateable to the late-thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The earliest manuscript witness bar one to the surviving text – the Ayr MS, dateable to 1323–1346 – refers to it as the “captiula legis burgorum Scocie” (i.e. the chapters of the law of the burghs of Scotland), whilst what may be the next earliest witness – the Bute MS, dateable to the final years of the fourteenth century – labels a Scots translation of it the “leges burgorum Scocie facte apud nouvm castrum super Tynam per Dauid regem Scotorum illustrisimum” (i.e. the laws of the burghs of Scotland made at Newcastle upon Tyne by David, most illustrious king of the Scots). This text may itself have owed something – or nothing, or a great deal, it is impossible to know for certain – to lost texts of burgh laws once contained in two rolls in the Scottish royal treasury in Edinburgh Castle in 1292. The rolls were labelled “de legibus assisis regni Scocie et de legibus et consuetudinibus Burgorum Scocie et de quibusdam statutis editis per reges Scocie” (i.e. concerning the laws and assizes of the kingdom of Scotland and concerning the laws and customs of the burghs of Scotland and concerning certain statutes brought forth by the kings of Scotland). Of course, anyone assuming that the court of the burgh of Aberdeen must have had the text attested in the Ayr MS and the Bute MS in mind when it referred to the leges burgorum Scocie might pause to reflect on the fact that the earliest witness to that text is labelled rather differently.

A: REGULARISATION AND LEGAL PLURALITY

The history of law and administrative change in Norway during the central middle ages is, as in Scotland, a history of growing regularisation of royal justice and of legal plurality, both in terms of legal institutions and legal rules. Regularisation and legal plurality do, at first glance, appear to be opposing forces on the battlefield for legal unification. However, that hostility only really emerged in the seventeenth century, and crystallised in the eighteenth century. In the central middle ages, their relationship was far more complex. In short, the level of state formation made it possible for regularisation to happen alongside toleration of a certain degree of legal plurality. This pluralistic, tolerant regulation was at the core of medieval politics in Norway in the second half of the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth century.

The most important event in Norwegian medieval legal history is the making of the Code of the Norwegian Realm in 1274. However, the regulation of law started in the second half of the twelfth century and the emerging legal order would not finally take its full shape before the first half of the fourteenth century. We are hence talking of a process that took at least 200 years, with roots stretching further back and consequences reaching further ahead in time. The process is to some extent paralleled in Scotland and Norway, taking place over the same time period and also the same time span. This is, however, a process that is taking place all over Western Europe at this time. The uniqueness lies rather in how the relationship between regulation and pluralism was settled in different parts of Christendom. A comparison between Scotland and Norway is of great interest. On one hand, the two realms had a comparable population size and economy and parallels in terms of the history of political unification. On the other hand, the Scottish feudal aristocracy, and hence military and administrative organisation, the number and, to an extent, the size of towns, and not least the vastness of the Norwegian realm, are important differences between the Scottish and Norwegian realms. In short: the similarities make a comparison possible and the differences make it interesting.

B: THE REGULATION OF LAW THROUGH LEGISLATION

(1) The legal provinces

Present-day Norway was the core of the medieval Norwegian realm.

A: INTRODUCTION

Relations between Norway and Scotland in the early modern period enjoy a long-established historiography that very often centres on a few key specific themes, whether commerce, migration or war. This can revolve around particular incidents, such as the Scottish-Hanse fracas in Bergen in the 1520s (the “Scottish Incident”) or the infamous “Kringen Massacre” (Skottetoget) of 1612. Quite often, the focus lies on an incredibly influential individual in Norway, such as the Scottish lensmann of Finnmark, John Cunningham til Gjerdrup, or the ethnic Scot, priest and poet, Petter Dass (whose father came from Dundee). Moreover, scholarship commonly centres on the study of the Scottish-Norwegian timber trade, Skottehandelen, which certainly began in the sixteenth century and continued well into the eighteenth. This was, however, neither the starting period of Scottish interaction with Norway, nor its end. Indeed, dendrochronological evidence reveals the appetite for Norwegian timber for use in shipbuilding and Scottish buildings of all sizes from an earlier period. Thus a single chapter does not afford enough space to cover the wealth of material to consider. The focus of the present paper will therefore be to review key moments of Scotto-Norwegian interaction, particularly during periods of escalated tension. We can then test the impact of these events against commercial and migratory patterns to see how, or even if, they impacted in any meaningful way upon relations between the two kingdoms.

Of course, the fact that for the majority of the period under consideration, both Scotland and Norway were part of multiple monarchies cannot be ignored. As such, Denmark and England are mentioned where relevant to the argument. Omitting these nations would distort the context of Scottish-Norwegian interaction during this, sometimes tempestuous, period.

B: SCOTLAND AND NORWAY: THE LEGAL AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND

Roots to the early modern relations between Scotland and Norway can be traced right back to the Scottish-Norwegian “Treaty of Perth” (1266). This treaty was subsequently reratified twice, in 1312 and again in 1426, the latter occasion following the formation of the Scandinavian Kalmar Union in 1397. Scotto-Norwegian ties were reinforced when Margaret, daughter of Christian I of the Kalmar Union, became queen to James III of Scotland in July 1469. As well as improved trade relations, the marriage led to specific diplomatic and military opportunities for individual Scots in Scandinavia.

A: INTRODUCTION

The history of law and administrative change in Scotland during the central middle ages has, by and large, been understood as a narrative of state formation along what might well be called “the English model”. That is, a single authority (in this case, the king) assumes basic responsibility for and thus capacity to control the mechanisms for dispute settlement that otherwise would have occurred through other means, invoking other forms of power and authority to do so. Institutional development is a necessary corollary of this process: a more standardised system of courts develops in the process of realising and enforcing this responsibility. In central medieval Scotland, the royal judicial system – as opposed to the law upheld and developed within its courts – has (again by and large) traditionally been limited to considering the justice offered in local sheriffdom courts, the touring “ayre” of the justiciar, and the burgh courts, whose profits were collected by the chamberlain in his ayre. These courts and ayres were introduced and developed over the thirteenth century and, for civil pleas, offered litigants the opportunity to initiate their claims in courts by purchasing a “brieve” (Latin: breve, a short formulaic command) from the royal chapel that would then be sent to the official presiding over the court instructing them to open the case on the points and articles of the particular claim as set out in the brieve. Over twenty-five years ago, Hector MacQueen described this development as the “growing regularisation of royal justice”. In this short paper, I will briefly summarise what can be known about law and administration in the medieval kingdom of the Scots. This complicates – even if does not completely challenge – the narrative of the regularisation of justice over the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and raises some issues, particularly about the trajectory of fourteenth-century legal development, which require further discussion and consideration.

B: THE “ENGLISH MODEL”, THE SCOTTISH COMMON LAW AND NORWEGIAN COMPARISONS

Two things are meant by the rather provocative phrase “English model”. First is the long-standing preoccupation of Anglophone historians and historians of England to examine state formation as a process realised through institutional development and bureaucratisation.

A: INTRODUCTION

In a “final agreement” between King Magnus Håkonsson and Alexander III, concluded on 2 July 1266 at the Dominican house at Perth, the king of Norway ceded Man and the islands around Scotland's west coast to the king of Scots for a sum of money, while explicitly retaining Orkney and Shetland. In the Chronicle of Man a scribe not long afterwards noted tersely that “the kingdom of Man and the Isles was transferred to Alexander king of Scots”. The last king of Man and the Isles, King Magnus, son of Ólaf, had died eight months earlier. Alexander was not the new king of Man and the Isles, however; neither was he the kingdom's overlord, as the king of Norway had been. He was ruling the Isles as part of his own kingdom. This has been seen from a modern perspective as the moment when (to quote Keith Stringer), Alexander III “effectively secured Scotland's identity as a unitary state by bringing nearly all its inhabitants and territories under his sole and undisputed authority”. This paper will take a different approach and explore what the Treaty of Perth might have meant to the Scottish ruling elite at the time in terms of the kingdom's unity and identity. As such, the Treaty will be regarded first and foremost as a source; not for what actually happened in practice when Man and the Isles were incorporated into the Scottish kingdom, but for what was envisaged at the time. This complements Erik Opsahl's chapter not only by viewing the Treaty from the perspective of Scottish history, but by tackling the issue of the unity and identity of the realm according to what was imagined about the kingdom's past and its laws rather than its actual political and constitutional development. This is partly a reflection of the disparity of material at a Scottish historian's disposal compared to their Norwegian counterpart. It is also possible because our understanding of the development of the Scottish state in this period has recently been transformed by Alice Taylor's seminal book.

The discussion of the Treaty of Perth in this chapter will hinge on a particular passage relating to the observance of the laws and customs of the kingdom.

A: INTRODUCTION

An unprecedented endeavour of legal reform in the 1260s and 1270s resulted in the promulgation of a code of law for Norway in 1274: the Code of the Norwegian Realm, by King Magnus “the Lawmender” Hákonarson (1263–1280). Often regarded as an afterthought was the equally unique codification of urban law that was promulgated two years later, in 1276. This codex appears to have been initially constructed for Norway's largest town and most important export hub, Bergen. However, through processes that are obscure to us, versions of the urban codex were adapted for three other important towns within a few decades: the metropolitan Niðaros and the royal seats of Oslo and Tunsberg. Although the patterns of organisation in these towns do not contradict regulations of the new urban laws, the question remains whether they also implemented the codex into their legal procedures. This article analyses the urban legal procedure in the three towns in cases where the town citizens were involved to better understand how law worked after the promulgation of the Code of the Towns of 1276 (the urban code).

The structure of the article is formed of three sections. First, the concept of Norwegian urban law will be explained. Secondly, urban law will be located in terms of the question of “law in the books” versus “law in action”. The final part considers procedures in the towns of Niðaros, Oslo and Tunsberg from case studies that serve to illuminate this in terms of space of urban law, transaction, torts, urban women as litigants and finally trade related cases. The description of legal procedure that we can obtain from the surviving documents disclose that cases and their documentation were drawn up much in accordance with the Code of the Towns. More precisely, the procedure in practice rarely went against the procedure given by the urban code. Urban legal procedure was still performed in a rational way, a way that took into consideration the experiences of the towns in question, their institutional structures and the requirements of the urban legal subjects.

B: NORWEGIAN URBAN LAW

Urban settlements comprised a minor part of Norwegian society, compared to other regions of medieval Europe. At the beginning of the fourteenth century the kingdom is thought to have included fifteen, mostly small, towns within the mainland of the realm.