Magnus Erikssons landslag : Handskrifterna i Sankt Petersburg och Moskva

The medieval legislation for Sweden (Landslag), adopted in the XIVth century in the reign of king Magnus Eriksson, is an important document for studies of medieval Swedish history and of the Old Swedish language. Among the texts which deserve attention are the manuscripts in the Russian National library (Saint Petersburg) and in State archives for old acts (Moscow). In the XIXth century these manuscripts were investigated by Carl Johan Schlyter, the leading specialist on Swedish law codes at that time, but after that the texts remained forgotten. This article presents the results of the author’s study of the manuscripts. A comparison with the text published by Schlyter (called “Manuscript A”) has demonstrated that the language in the manuscripts of law codes varies. In particular, the Saint Petersburg manuscript uses a more modern word order and lacks alliteration and the characeristic rhythm which can be traced in many other manuscripts. The present study has also helped to discover some text details which Schlyter had not paid attention to. At the same time, the study has confirmed the correctness of Schlyter’s conclusion that the manuscripts in Saint Petersburg and Moscow have much in common with certain other manucripts – in particular, with the so-called manuscripts “R” and “G”. In modern research, results of old scholarship are often rejected or questioned; here we can observe that such results at least sometimes prove to be well justified. The appendix contains transcription of parts of the manuscripts carried out in accordance with modern editorial principles