people being carried into the European circle of cultural development
and made a communicant of Christianity. With the commencement of the
thirteenth century, Sweden comes out of this process as a medieval
state, in aspect entirely different to her past. The democratic
equality among free men has turned into an aristocracy, with
aristocratic institutions, the hereditary kingdom into an elective
kingdom, while the provincial particularism and independence have
given way to the constitution of a centralized, monopolistic state. No
changes could be more fundamental.

The old provincial laws of Sweden are a great and important
inheritance which this period has accumulated from heathen times. The
laws were written down in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but
they bear every evidence of high antiquity. Many strophes are found in
them of the same meter as those on the tombstones of the Viking Age
and those in which the songs of the Edda are chiefly written. In other
instances the texts consist of alliterative prose, which proves its
earlier metrical form. The expressions have, in places, remained
heathen, although used by Christians, who are ignorant of their true
meaning, as, for instance, in the following formula of an oath, in the
West Gothic law: _Sva se mer gud hull_ (So help me the gods). In lieu
of a missing literature of sagas and poetry, these provincial laws
give a good insight into the character, morals, customs, and culture
of the heathen and early Christian times of Sweden. From the point
of philology they are also of great value, besides forming the
solid basis of later Swedish law. How the laws could pass from one
generation to another, without any codification, depends upon the
fact that they were recited from memory by the justice (_lag-man_
or _domare_), and that this dignity generally was inherited for
centuries, being carried by the descendants of one and the same