Viking Law and Order: English Edition

Historians and archaeologists who study the vikings are constantly grappling with the question of the amount and level of influence they had on the various parts of the world they ventured into. In this episode we add legal customs to the mix with Dr. Jake Stattel, a legal historian and postdoc research fellow at Cambridge University's Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, who is looking into this very thing — pun intended :)

We talked about how legal institutions in England were changing dramatically from AD 900 to 1200 due in part to internal political developments but also to the incursion of the vikings who not only raided and traded but eventually settled there, creating a new hybrid culture based on traditional Scandinavian legal systems, in an area that came to be known as the Danelaw.

Want to know the difference between customary and common law, how a person would know which laws they needed to obey when living in a hybrid world, and what happened to 13-year old thieves? Jake’s got you covered.

His article Legal culture in the Danelaw: a study of III Æthelred has won several awards for its novel approach to this subject, so if you’re interested in a deeper dive, do check it out.

Thanks Jake for a really interesting chat that got our wheels turning!

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