Jyske lov (Jutlandic Law)

After the book sale today I went to a presentation at the The Arnamagnæan Institute, which holds the collections of medieval manuscripts collected by Árni Magnússon. These originally included many Icelandic sagas and histories which have been now sent back to Rekjavík, but what we looked at today was quintessentially Danish: Jyske lov, the 13th-century Jutlandic lawbook. There are about 45 copies preserved at the University of Copenhagen; ironically, the oldest in the world is in Sweden.

The law is most famous for its opening phrase,

(the spelling is obviously variant through most of the known examples), a phrase which is carved into the mantle of the Danish parliment (folketing) and which means "land shall be built with law." The opening continues (in modern Danish)

which means roughly "...but if everyone were to be satisfied with their own and let others enjoy the same right, then one would need no law. But no law is as good to follow as the truth, but where one is in doubt about the truth, then law shall show the truth."

Surprisingly they let us touch the parchment of the above example, for which I don't know the date. It felt smooth and slightly soft, sort of like you would expect half-millenium-old cow skin to feel.