Sheep letter

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P. 132 in Lundarbók: beginning of the sheep letter

The sheep letter ( Faroese Seyðabrævið ) is the oldest surviving and most important medieval document of the Faroe Islands .

The sheep letter was dated June 24, 1298 and was a supplement to the Norwegian "Basic Law" of that time. It laid down agricultural regulations for the Faroe Islands, the "Sheep Islands". Two copies from that period still exist today : one in the Faroese National Archives in Tórshavn and the other in the library at Lund University ( Sweden ).

In addition to a mirror of that Faroese society of sheep letter is an important source of finance of the Faroe Islands in the Middle Ages . Many of the regulations in the sheep letter turned out to be very appropriate and therefore permanent. They remained in force for centuries until modern times .

The sheep letter on a stamp from 1981: The introductory words in the precious Lundarbók

Another document from that time is the Faroese saga , which was made in Iceland and is a prose work that looks back at the heroes of the Viking Age in the Faroe Islands . The sheep letter, on the other hand, was very likely written in the Faroe Islands and is dedicated to everyday life at the time.

prehistory

Forn Landslóg

Coat of arms of the Faroe Islands: The ram

According to the reports of the Faroese saga, the Forn Landslóg collection of laws provided the political framework . A certain similarity between this ancient constitution and the Norwegian Gulatingslóg can be assumed, even if the ties to the motherland Norway were quite loose at that time.

It is not known exactly how the Faroe Islands were ruled in the first centuries after the conquest . Since the Faroese reported that on the Tórshavn Peninsula Tinganes the seat of the Althing was, it can be considered by a republican system. Today's Løgting is also on Tinganes and is one of the oldest parliaments in the world.

Legal reform: introduction of the Landslóg

The so-called Rættarbót (law reform) was enacted for the Faroe Islands in 1271 by the Norwegian king Magnus Hákunnarson (also called Magnus Lógbøti the law reformer ). It is said there that the gulating laws should also apply in the Faroe Islands, except in agriculture, which had its own laws. However, it is not clear which “own” laws the king was referring to. It could be that the "older Gulatingslóg", which was in force until 1267, or the "younger Gulatingslóg" (1267–1274) is meant. The Faroe Islands may have had their own agricultural laws at the same time that the Gulating Laws were in force.

King Magnus issued the new constitution, the Landslóg , which came into force in 1274 as part of the gulation and was in force in Norway and the Faroe Islands until 1604, when the Danish King Christian IV revised it, translated it into Danish and then Norske Lov ( Norwegian law). This was in effect until 1688, when Christian V issued a new Norske Lov that was relevant for the Faroe Islands.

Seyðabrævið (The Sheep Letter)

Statue of Erlendur in the west facade of the Nidaros Cathedral. He is mentioned in the introduction to the sheep letter as an important advisor.
Seyða ull er Føroya gull ("The wool of the sheep is the gold of the Faroe Islands"):
This proverb was literally true back then, because wool products were the main source of income. Today it's fishing, but sheep still dominate the country's image.

Not all parts of the Landslóg fit the Faroese conditions, especially the part about agriculture . The Landslóg was tailored to Norway, and the conditions there were different from the Faroe Islands. The Faroese turned to Duke Hákun Magnusson and asked him to take care of the special circumstances in the Faroe Islands. Hákun Magnusson was the son of Magnus the law reformer and ruled since 1284 in the duchy which included the East Country , Agder , Rogaland , the Shetland Islands and the Faroe Islands.

For his part, Duke Hákun turned to Sjúrður , the Løgmaður of Shetland, and Bishop Erlendur (he was Faroese bishop from 1268 and died in 1308). These two prepared a statement "in the interests of the common peasants", on the basis of which the duke wrote his extension text. Essentially, Bishop Erlend and Løgmaður Sjúrður were involved in the preparation of the sheep letter and relied on older, local legal traditions. Erlend is said to have written it in the Loftstovan of the still preserved Viking Court of Kirkjubøur ( Kirkjubøargarður ), which was also the seat of the Diocese of Faroe Islands . Today there is a small library in this room.

The sheep letter, which "came into force" in 1298, is the Faroese extension of the Landslóg, which specifically contained Faroese agricultural issues such as regulating the handling of the heathland , provisions on sheep husbandry and arbitration rules for disputes among shepherds . In addition, the sheep letter also regulated the capture of pilot whales , dealing with runaway farm workers, and so on.

Contents overview

According to the (more detailed) Lundarbók, the sheep letter has 16 articles.

  1. Obligation to prove ownership of a sheep intended for slaughter
  2. About entering a strange pasture
  3. When sheep run into a strange pasture
  4. About taming wild sheep
  5. About marking sheep. Clarification that a subsequent second marking is theft
  6. About vicious sheepdogs, liability and number of sheep in a pasture
  7. About deadlines in the dunning procedure. The deadlines are Lent , Ólavsøka (July 29th) and St. Andrew's Night (November 30th)
  8. About the obligation to register entry into foreign land
  9. About taming wild sheep - part 2
  10. About leasing land
  11. About uninvited guests and poor law
  12. Convince
  13. About entertainment expenses
  14. Right of establishment
  15. About the distribution of whale meat
  16. About flotsam

A revised version of the sheep letter was issued on February 24, 1637 by Christian IV in a Danish translation. The introduction was taken over by Duke Hákun and thus confirmed the old law. However, all articles that had nothing to do with sheep farming were deleted from the text. This version therefore only had nine articles, which are largely identical to those of the original version:

  1. About marking sheep
  2. About entering a strange pasture
  3. When sheep run into a strange pasture
  4. About taming wild sheep
  5. About the obligation to register entry into foreign land
  6. About vicious sheepdogs, liability and number of sheep in a pasture
  7. About deadlines in the dunning procedure. The deadlines are Lent, Ólavsøka (July 29th) and St. Andrew's Night (November 30th)
  8. About the obligation to register entry into a foreign country - Part 2
  9. About taming wild sheep - part 2

This version of the sheep letter was first published in German in 1757 when Lucas Debes ' book The Natural and Political History of the Faroe Islands was published. In the new edition from 2005 it is documented unchanged and provided with comments.

In 1698 a further modified version was adopted. It was valid until 1866, when the new Hagalóg ( Heath Law ) came into force, which in turn was replaced in 1937 by the Law on the Management of Pastures , which was last amended in 1990.

Mirror of medieval society

The sheep letter offers an insight into medieval society in the Faroe Islands. At the head of society were the landdrottar , the landowners (large farmers). They could give parts of their land to the leigulendingar , the tenants. The tenants then had to cede a certain share of their income, landskyld , to the landowners. If a tenant could not raise the landskyld, the landowner could confiscate his entire harvest.

There was also a class of dispossessed . Among them were farm workers, maids, and beggars . It was forbidden to build a house unless you had at least enough land to keep three cows on. It was also forbidden to give someone less land if they had to live on that land. According to the sheep letter, only those men were allowed to build a house who could take care of themselves and their families.

The sheep letter reflects a society that was characterized by great social inequality and problems. The need to create laws that control the lower classes and protect the rights of the rich is an indicator that by 1300 the population had grown beyond what an agrarian society could sustain. There are signs of uprisings and unrest during this period, especially against the Church, which held great power, including worldly. This unrest seems to have been the reason for Bishop Erlend's withdrawal from the Faroese diocese.

Appendix to the sheep letter: Hundabrævið (The Dog Letter)

Another appendix is ​​the so-called Hundabrævið, a law of løgting written between 1350 and 1400, which laid down the rules for how many dogs were allowed in the villages.

Not every resident was allowed to have a dog. Dogs were only allowed to be kept for herding sheep and cattle. The dog letter gave people the right to avsiga a dog . This means that the owner should kill his dog if it was seen as a danger to people and livestock. This particular law still applies today.

The lines of the dog letter were written in Kongsbókin below the actual legal texts and are difficult to read. The dog letter is historically significant, among other things, because of the total of 40 villages that are named, many appear for the first time in a written source.

The manuscripts

The Seyðabrævið is preserved in two manuscripts from the Middle Ages and in three manuscripts that were made after the Reformation . These three newer versions of the sheep letter are available in Danish at the Arnamagnæanske Institute in Copenhagen . The following two unique items are of particularly high value for ancient Faroese linguistics:

Kongsbókin (The Book of Kings)

The first (surviving) medieval manuscript in the Faroe Islands is the so-called Kongsbók , a collection of laws with the Gulatingslóg (Landslóg), the sheep letter and some other provisions, such as the dog letter, regulations on the payment of the Løgrættumenn ( Løgtingsmänner ) etc.

The Kongsbókin is a parchment book made by a priest named Teitur in 1298 and was the Faroe Islands' code of law for about 300 years. The last known owner was a farmer from Kirkjubøur named Pætur Jákupsson , who was Løgmaður from 1588 to 1601. After Løgmaður's death, the book came to Bergen in Norway and from there to Stockholm around 1680 , where it ended up in the collection of the Royal Library and was therefore also referred to as the Stockholm manuscript.

In 1989 the Swedish Parliament decided to return the book to the Faroe Islands as a gift from the Swedish people. The Faroese National Archives in Tórshavn keeps the document under the signature Sth. perg. 33, 4 ° .

Lundarbókin (The Book of Lund)

The second medieval book containing the sheep letter also came to Sweden. It was written a little later, probably in 1310. An ex-libris shows that it was once in the possession of the Franciscan monastery in Stockholm . In the late 18th century it was owned by a historian in the city of Lund and was subsequently kept in the Lund University Library (Perg. Hist. Lit. 12, fol.) .

The Lundarbók is an elaborate manuscript with 282 pages in calligraphic script with richly decorated initials. The motif of the above stamp is the initial letter S with two rams' heads in the arches, which both indicates the content of the document and represents the Faroe Islands, because the heraldic animal of the Faroe Islands is the ram.

In addition to the six-page sheep letter, the Lundarbók also contains the Gulatings Act with its appendices.

The sheep letter in Lundarbók appears more complete than the Kongabók version, as sections have been shifted, the entire text is more finely structured and it is said to have greater similarities to the Faroese language compared to the Kongsbók, so that linguists believe that it was written by a Faroese been.

It is also the only manuscript in Old Norse in the Lund University Library and bears the name Codex Reenhielmianus .

The language

The sheep is called seyður in the Faroe Islands and runs around everywhere. The sheep letter regulated: If a sheep runs into the pasture of another shepherd, he can keep it.

seyður [-in] means "sheep", seyða is the indefinite genitive plural. bræv [-ið] means, according to the Latin origin ( breve 'letter', 'certificate'), 'letter', but also 'document'.

The language of the sheep letter is Old Norse . This language was spoken in Norway and Iceland at the time , but there are certain Faroese peculiarities, which indicates a further development of Old Faroese. At the beginning of the 15th century, further peculiarities are already recognizable, which indicates a development of Faroese into an independent West Norse language.

Two text samples

The introduction in the red letters of the Lundarbók (see stamp pictured above) reads in the Old Norse / Old Faroese original:

her hefr rettar bætur hakonar konungs sonar magnusar konungs

German:

"Here are the changes in the law from King Håkon, son of King Magnus"

The rule for runaway sheep is as follows (in the Kongabóks version):

Nu liggia haglendi saman utan garðs oc æigv .ij. menn huarr sinn haga oc gengr saudr or annars haga oc i hins þa taci sa sauð sinn allan ac beri i sin haga

Literally:

"Now heathland is common outside the garden, and two men each have their own heather, and sheep from other heath go into that one, then that sheep shall take all of his and carry them into his heath."

In other words: If two pastures belonging to two different men lie next to each other outside the (fenced) Inmark (in uncultivated pastureland) and sheep run from one pasture to the other (and graze there permanently), then the owner should raise the sheep bring back his pasture.

The term hagi (heather, outer market) stands for “pasture land”, which is why today's successor to the sheep letter is called Hagalóg (see above).

See also

literature

  • Mikjel Sørlie: En færøysk-norsk lovbok fra omkring 1310: en study in færøysk språkhistorie. Tórshavn; Bergen: Universitetsforlaget: Mentunargrunnur Føroya Løgtings, 1965. (76 p., In Norwegian, deals with the history of the Faroese language using the Lundarbók)
  • Seyðabrævið , ed. by JHW Poulsen u. a., 1971 ( scientific edition , with English translation, drawings by Janus Kamban )
  • GVC Young: From the Vikings to the Reformation. a Chronicle of the Faroe Islands up to 1538. Shearwater Press, Douglas, Isle of Man 1979.
  • Höskuldur Thráinsson et al .: Faroese. An Overview and Reference Grammar . Føroya Fróðskaparfelag, Tórshavn 2004 (text samples for Old Faroese in sheep letters).
  • Norbert B. Vogt: Seyðabrævið - a central document of Faroese history. In: Membership sheet of the German-Faroese Circle of Friends , No. 2, 1989, pp. 14–33 (Introduction pp. 14–16, “Lund Version” pp. 17–22, “Stockholm Version” pp. 23–28, revised Version from 1637 pp. 29-33).
  • Lucas Jacobson Debes : Natural and Political History of the Faroe Islands. Translated from Danish by CG Mengel, Copenhagen / Leipzig 1757. New edition, commented and with an afterword by Norbert B. Vogt. Mülheim a. d. Ruhr 2005 (the Schafsbrief in the version of 1637 in German: p. 156 ff.)

Web links

Wiktionary: Seyðabrævið  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Schafsbrief  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Law on the Management of Pastures ( Memento of September 1, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Álit um stýrisskipanarviðurskifti Føroya - chap. 3: Stýrisskipanarviðurskifti Føroya fram til 1940 , lms.fo, page 23
  3. ↑ At the bottom of page 69 in Kongsbókin, for example, the following three place names ( í Saurvagi & í Midvagi & í Sandavagi ) can still be clearly recognized in the first line : 70 Landslóg , history.fo. On the previous page 68, however, the lines at the bottom can hardly be deciphered: 69 Landslóg , history.fo
  4. ↑ Hvussu gomul er bygdin , heimabeiti.fo
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 15, 2005 .