The Frostating was an early Norwegian court. It was one of the four major Things in medieval Norway. The Frostating had its seat at Tinghaugen in what is now the municipality of Frosta in Trøndelag county, Norway. The name lives on in the present day Frostating Court of Appeal in Norway.

Tinghaugen

Tinghaugen, from the Old Norse words meaning 'assembly' and meaning 'hill', is close to the medieval church at Logtun. The site is represented by the Frostatinget bautasten at Tinghaugen. Frostating was arguably Norway's oldest court, pre-dating the

Viking period The Viking Age () was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. It followed the Migration Period and the Germ ...

. The Frostating had authority over the eight districts in Trøndelag including ( Nordmøre and

Fosen Fosen is a traditional district in Trøndelag, consisting of the municipalities Osen, Roan Åfjord, Ørland, Indre Fosen, Orkland, Heim, Hitra and Frøya. The district is dominated by forested valleys, lakes, coastal cliffs but also shallow a ...

) and ( Namdalen) and at a later time, it also included Hålogaland. When Norway was united as a kingdom, the existing

lagting Lagting, literally "Law Ting", can refer to: *Lagting, the Parliament of Åland *Lagting (Norway), the quasi-upper house of the Parliament of Norway from 1814 to 2009 *Løgting The Løgting (pronounced ; da, Lagtinget) is the unicameral parl ...

s (law assemblies) were constituted as superior regional assemblies, Frostating being one of them. These were representative assemblies at which delegates from the various districts in each region met to award legal judgments and pass laws.

Magnus Lagabøtes landslov

The first seeds of democratic evolution appeared in matters of law. The ancient regional assemblies – Frostating, Gulating, Eidsivating, and Borgarting – were eventually joined into a single jurisdiction, and King Magnus Lagabøte had the existing body of law put into writing (1263–1280) as '' Magnus Lagabøtes landslov''. This compilation of codified law which applied throughout the realm was exceptional for its time, and remained in force until Frederik III, king of the Dano-Norwegian personal union, promulgated absolute monarchy in 1660. This was codified in the King Act of 1665 which functioned as the

Constitution of Norway nb, Kongeriket Norges Grunnlov nn, Kongeriket Noregs Grunnlov , jurisdiction =Kingdom of Norway , date_created =10 April - 16 May 1814 , date_ratified =16 May 1814 , system =Constitutional monarchy , b ...

of the Union of Denmark-Norway until 1814. King Magnus Lagabøte carried out a great effort to modernize the law-code, which gave him his epithet, Magnus the law-mender (). In 1274, Magnus promulgated the new national law (), a unified code of laws to apply for the Kingdom of Norway, including the Faroe islands and

Shetland Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the no ...

. This replaced the different regional laws which had existed before. A unified code of laws for a whole country had until then only been introduced in the Kingdom of Sicily in the ''Liber Augustalis'' promulgated in 1231 by

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (German language, German: ''Friedrich''; Italian language, Italian: ''Federico''; Latin: ''Federicus''; 26 December 1194 – 13 December 1250) was King of Sicily from 1198, King of Germany from 1212, King of Italy and Holy Roman Em ...

and the compiled during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile.

Frostating seal

The Frostating seal () shows king Magnus Lagabøte seated on his throne and giving the lawman the new Frostating law () at the Frostating. The seal commemorates Magnus's great effort to modernise the law-code. The representatives to the Thing—three deep—stand on the king's left side. The king sits in the middle on his throne with a crown on his head and a scepter in his hand, and with the Norwegian lion under his foot. Below in the seal are two bowmen; one aiming at a squirrel while the other aims at a bird. Both the squirrel and the bird sit in trees. The original of the Frostating seal is in the ''Diplomatarium Norvegicum'', a source collection of Norwegian letters and documents from earliest recorded history until 1570. The seal is found on a document dated 1 June 1453, in ''Dipl. Norv. VIII no. 349'' . A variation of this seal has lived on the

coat of arms of Frosta Frosta is the smallest municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. The administrative centre is the village of Frosta. The municipality is located along the Trondheimsfjord, on the Frosta peninsula, just north of the city of Trondheim. It also i ...

References

Footnotes

Literature

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External links

''Diplomatarium Norvegicum''
{{authority control Legal history of Norway Frosta Thing (assembly)