Bjarkey laws

The Bjarkey laws were medieval Scandinavian regulations governing merchant towns known as birks, in force in both Norway and Sweden during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In Norway an early version survives only as a fragment for Nidaros, while a later version composed chiefly for Bergen was accepted at a ting there in 1276 and incorporated into King Magnus VI's revised city laws, and it applied to merchant towns, fishing villages, and market sites throughout the kingdom. In Sweden, where no town could use the law without the king's formal permission, the Stockholm version is regarded as the oldest law put to paper for a Swedish town, likely written in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century with its oldest surviving manuscript dated to around 1345, though some scholars have proposed a much earlier origin under a King Bjorn around 832. The Norwegian text was organized into nine sections, the last of which, the Farmannalög, functioned as maritime law governing the customs and operation of these commercial centers.