Lawspeakers and Nordic Customary Law gathers the lawspeakers and legal officials of the medieval Nordic and Norse world, the office holders who memorized, recited and interpreted a community's customary law before its systematic writing down, presiding over assemblies such as Iceland's Althing and Sweden's provincial things. Their tradition represents an oral and customary mode of law distinct from the written civil, common, canon and religious codes grouped elsewhere in this subcategory, and several members of this group also served as royal justiciars or councilors once Nordic law began to be written and centralized.
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Defining CharacteristicLawspeakers of Nordic customary law, an office rooted in a common Germanic oral tradition where wise people recited the law at popular assemblies. 1 All Lawspeakers and Nordic Customary Law
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1. Lawspeaker concept (Wikipedia)
WikipediaLawspeaker, lead sectionQuote, Lawspeaker, lead section
It has its basis in a common Germanic oral tradition, where wise people were asked to recite the law, but it was only in Scandinavia that the function evolved into an office.
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