Page:A Lexicon of Medieval Nordic Law (OBP.0188, 2020).pdf/8



A Lexicon of Medieval Nordic Law (LMNL) is a multilingual reference work designed to make terminology from several medieval legal texts more accessible to English-speaking audiences. It contains over 6000 Nordic headwords, more than 9000 English equivalents and approximately 13,200 cross-references. It is intended to function as a general lexicon of medieval Nordic legal terminology in use before the national laws. Where possible the editors have combined related terms in multiple languages under the same headword in order to highlight similarities throughout the Nordic region during the Middle Ages. The LMNL differs from other reference works, and in particular other lexica, by its presentation of related terms from multiple languages within a single entry in a manner similar to the Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid (KLNM). Around a quarter of the entries feature a brief text articulating how the term fits into the legal landscape. Creation of the LMNL has been made possible in large part due to a generous project grant from the Swedish Research Council (2014–2017) and the gracious cooperation of members of the ongoing Medieval Nordic Laws (MNL) project begun at the University of Aberdeen in 2009. Draft English translations supplied by them, along with a small number of published translations (see table below), form the basis of this lexicon. Additional support was provided by the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, which supplied funding for translations and revisions of some MNL laws and for the LMNL colloquium held in Stockholm in November 2015.

LMNL is built upon 25 legal texts, mainly provincial laws, written in Old Swedish, Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, Old Gutnish and Old Faroese. Material for the lexicon was taken from editions used in the latest English translations of the oldest medieval Nordic laws, many of which were produced as part of the Medieval Nordic Laws project. With such a large textual corpus and a relatively short timeframe in which to work, it was deemed most feasible to collect Nordic legal terms and phrases and present them with the English equivalents selected by the translators of the texts in which those terms appear. Modern English equivalents throughout the LMNL are therefore largely taken directly from draft and published translations with minimal interpretation by the editors. Editorial interventions generally consist of minor adjustments in cases where idiomatic translations would be confusing when removed from their contexts. Equivalents in subsequent published translations will possibly vary somewhat from those presented here. Medieval terms have been drawn from editions utilized by the translators. The following table is a list of texts cited, their common abbreviations and bibliographic information on the editions and translations used for the LMNL. BorgL

© 2020 Jeffrey Love, Inger Larsson, Ulrika Djärv, Christine Peel, and Erik Simensen, CC BY 4.0