Law, society and landscape in early Scandinavia

Let us start with the obvious question when analysing an early society and culture forour purpose: what is law? There are nearly as many definitions as there are legalhistorians and legal anthropologists out there. To make life easier I will pick one recentdefinition, by Francis Fukuyama (2012 pp. 245–46), who simplifies the predicament inthe following way: ‘The law is a body of abstract rules of justice that bind acommunity together. In premodern societies, the law was believed to be fixed by anauthority higher than any human legislator, either by a divine authority, by immemorialcustoms, or by nature.’ I suspect that someone like, for example, Bronislaw Malinowskiwould not wholeheartedly have embraced this definition with ‘rules of justice’. Instead,he might have stressed more complex reciprocal everyday obligations,1but many of theaspects I will discuss in this chapter are covered here: abstract (that is, implicit) ruleswhich bind a collective together; the link between a divine authority and law; and(immemorial) customs.