The Frostating was an early Norwegian court. It was one of the four major

Thing Thing or The Thing may refer to: Philosophy * An object * Broadly, an entity * Thing-in-itself (or ''noumenon''), the reality that underlies perceptions, a term coined by Immanuel Kant * Thing theory, a branch of critical theory that focuse ...

s in medieval Norway. The Frostating had its seat at Tinghaugen in what is now the municipality 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 ...

Trøndelag Trøndelag (; sma, Trööndelage) is a county in the central part of Norway. It was created in 1687, then named Trondhjem County ( no, Trondhjems Amt); in 1804 the county was split into Nord-Trøndelag and Sør-Trøndelag by the King of Denma ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

. The name lives on in the present day

Frostating Court of Appeal The Frostating Court of Appeal ( no, Frostating lagmannsrett) is one of six courts of appeal in the Kingdom of Norway. The Court is located in the city of Trondheim. The court has jurisdiction over the counties of Trøndelag and Møre og Romsdal. ...

in Norway.

Tinghaugen

Tinghaugen, from the

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

words meaning 'assembly' and meaning 'hill', is close to the medieval church at Logtun. The site is represented by the Frostatinget

bautasten A menhir (from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large human-made upright stone, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. They can be found ...

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

including (

Nordmøre Nordmøre (English: North- Møre) is a traditional district in the Norwegian county of Møre og Romsdal. The area comprises the northern third of the county including the municipalities of Kristiansund, Averøy, Tingvoll, Surnadal, Aure, Halsa ...

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 ar ...

) and (

Namdalen Namdalen ( sma, Nååmesjevuemie) is a traditional district in the central part of Norway, consisting of the municipalities Namsos, Grong, Overhalla, Røyrvik, Nærøysund, Høylandet, Flatanger, Lierne, Leka, and Namsskogan, all in Tr ...

) and at a later time, it also included Hålogaland. When

was united as a kingdom, the existing lagtings (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 Gulating ( non, Gulaþing) was one of the first Norwegian legislative assemblies, or '' things,'' and also the name of a present-day law court of western Norway. The practice of periodic regional assemblies predates recorded history, and was ...

Eidsivating Eidsivating was the name of one of the original Norwegian popular assemblies or '' Things''. Historically, it was the site of court and assembly for the eastern parts of Norway. Summary Traditionally, Eidsivating was the court for the populatio ...

, and

Borgarting The Borgarting was one of the major popular assemblies or things (''lagting'') of medieval Norway. Historically, it was the site of the court and assembly for the southern coastal region of Norway from the south-eastern border with Sweden, westw ...

– were eventually joined into a single jurisdiction, and King

Magnus Lagabøte Magnus Haakonsson ( non, Magnús Hákonarson, no, Magnus Håkonsson, label=Modern Norwegian; 1 (or 3) May 1238 – 9 May 1280) was King of Norway (as Magnus VI) from 1263 to 1280 (junior king from 1257). One of his greatest achievements was the m ...

had the existing body of law put into writing (1263–1280) as ''

Magnus Lagabøtes landslov ''Magnus Lagabötes landslov'' ("Magnus Lagabøte's State Law") was a law covering the whole of Norway, issued by King Magnus VI of Norway between 1274 and 1276. The law was the first to apply to Norway as a whole and is one of the first examples ...

''. 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 Absolute monarchy (or Absolutism as a doctrine) is a form of monarchy in which the monarch rules in their own right or power. In an absolute monarchy, the king or queen is by no means limited and has absolute power, though a limited constituti ...

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 , ...

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 The Faroe Islands ( ), or simply the Faroes ( fo, Føroyar ; da, Færøerne ), are a North Atlantic island group and an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. They are located north-northwest of Scotland, and about halfway bet ...

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 n ...

. 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 The Kingdom of Sicily ( la, Regnum Siciliae; it, Regno di Sicilia; scn, Regnu di Sicilia) was a state that existed in the south of the Italian Peninsula and for a time the region of Ifriqiya from its founding by Roger II of Sicily in 1130 unt ...

in the ''Liber Augustalis'' promulgated in 1231 by

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (German: ''Friedrich''; 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 Emperor from 1220 and King of Jer ...

and the compiled during the reign of

Alfonso X of Castile Alfonso X (also known as the Wise, es, el Sabio; 23 November 1221 – 4 April 1284) was King of Castile, León and Galicia from 30 May 1252 until his death in 1284. During the election of 1257, a dissident faction chose him to be king of Ger ...

Frostating seal

The Frostating seal () shows king

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.

References

Footnotes

Literature

* * *

External links

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