ancient law codes, Code of religion, King's code, Marriage code, Inheritance code, Land code, Criminal code, Commerce code, Community code, Wandering minstrels, Summary codes, peace-law and territorial claims, ritual leadership, province law

My foster-father had a bad habit for a while. When he was against the wall with my questions, he referred to the law. So what to do, I borrowed the law book from the library in our school. After that he left that bad habit. The size of it was maybe 150 pages ... nowadays the Swedish Law with the texts in small print is more than 1200 pages. A while ago I reread the first Swedish province law from 1225 AD in normal text and about 40 pages.

A civilisation is always law and order up to the local needs. For those who want to see our ancestors as isolated caricatures of human beings it might be a mountain to climb before they get that insight. And more difficult to see that there were many conventions of inter-national kind between people.

Since we can prove that they had cultural customs, rituals, and symbolic language in common we also prove these essentials of organised civilisation!

I heard a lecture by radio in the seventies. A linguist told seriously that our ancestors invaded Europe 4000 years ago. They came with swords, if they were invented, and they slaughtered local men and raped women in their way.

Besides this we heard from other scientist that everywhere they found mighty monuments and graves have been mighty kings keeping the people in slavery to get rich. I think they mirror our own world in the past? ... Still, today if they find a place with golden remains, they speak immediately about province kings, if not a king of Scandinavia or the world. Nevertheless, the best evidence of inter-national law is the claim for ownership.

The mightiest are the megalith establishments of different kind including slab cist graves of course. We have a few pure claims in carving, but all other carvings are by themselves claims of territory. If there were no convention among people to respect a simple carving, knocking figures in the rock would have been meaningless. A carving says that they made it for eternity for all Mights to respect. Still, today we mostly respect them and care for them ... and for our own purposes we set up stones and texts too.

We can parallel our carvings to laws on stelae and walls in south. Seeing it in carvings with no order and with many layers might be hard. When we see Evenstorp, Law of the Naked and many more untouched carvings we understand their sacred art.

As said indirectly in the first section we have to scale down to the small villages. We cannot expect more than small bits and fragments of laws and that are up to our definition of law. For them the ritual was all-important and the ritual itself was a kind of law and much to be understood.

The marriage code shows that a single word "handtake" said all about marriage, since everyone knew what it meant.

In this chapter is some methods embedded or clear and the main issue is to compare with our first province law, the older Vaestgautalagen. At this stage I have only read twelve Swedish laws but later I will complete it with other Scandinavian laws.

We can recognise some methods:

A) indirect ... Peace laws and territorial claims.

The indirect evidence is the simple logic that when one individual or many have a job to do it is natural to have a plan. If they are many conventions are needed. If the job is to be done often or in every season it is natural that they create customs. Then they make some rituals for certain occasions and in the long run they become laws. Since we do not use rituals we know of, we do not understand that a ritual is a law too.

The primal reaction of many is to think about crime when they hear the word law. In fact it is a very little part of a law ... even in our law today it is only a fraction. In the small villages or even in folklands there were very little aggression. For instance the bushmen of today do not know about aggression while they are living in small family clans.

Aggression is for a little part up to what we eat and the climate. The aggression level rises if we eat much pork in a hot climate. Usually aggression and stress increases when living in bigger groups. It is logical result of crowdedness seen among pigs, fishes, hens and many species and may be near cannibalism. Aggression increases rapidly with owning and materials in circulation and in its surge the drugs and beer became early a cause.

Very early in the human history survival and normal human friendliness created conventions about respect for territories. It is pure logic that in time neither side gains from struggles. Of course there are still tribes today and also nations like the USA, Israel and Iraq, which would fight every day if only the global society allowed it. Nevertheless, it is not the normal case.

Ceremonial border fighting is a part of peace because they play how they even after a battle can achieve peace. We can say they forego the war by making the peace ceremony. Then they do not need war ... and they avoid the dirty jobs.

Treaty RTA is one of the old Indo-European methods in keeping peace with all Mights. We all know that over time there are variations up to the rulership and the individual characters. The last sentence is valid in cities and nations and as far as we know not much actual at the time and place we study.

The conspiratorial mind will se fight and open bones in this section from Vitlycke. Maybe no one observes the bird-heads at all. They are not in the real world. Note also the little one.

On this carving we have to know the entire story. The rock as a whole is like a big footprint. In the toe is a little text "Is Toe of village".

A man with long arms divides most of the foot blades. There is this border between the foot blade and the heels. It is impossible to know whether the heels are symbolising a third part or the neighbouring village, which is the nearest solution. Anyway it is a treaty and not a battle.

Another indicia are that we do not see folklands before the Viking Age. We can expect some rulership during Roman Age when the Eriles was the leading class in southern Scandinavia. However, we do not know their kind of it. They tell the Danes to be their successors.

We have nearly twenty province laws in Scandinavia, which tells us that there were no great kingdoms before the known history. They wrote the first national law in 1340 in Sweden before that their lawmen and own laws mostly ruled the provinces.

The negative evidence is that we have no proof that kingdoms existed before out known kings. Yet, the first kings were on paper said to be elected by the people up to old German tradition with no permanent leaders. Leaders were elected for a special occasion or a defined time ... as it still is in our parliament.

B) parallel.... Archeologists have dug up the evidence of imported cultural elements as the means for farming and very early wheels in Denmark. The megalith culture with ritual axes asks for an explanation from where they got the ideas as for instance the double axes. The scientists have not thought to bottom and width in these questions. We have to parallel us to the southern cultures from the beginning in fifth millennium BC.

About the vocabulary subjects are pictures of situations which we probably recognize as understandable. Figures are the single idols or icons for an underlying ritual or programme. Let us look at some subjects before we go to the codes.

C) ...The ritual leadership seems older than administration and/or rulership including some power. From fourth millennium BC we have on Dal early finds of ceremony-axes and in the next period follow big pickaxes. They are found in few examples and some of the pickaxes consisted of shale and I am not sure that they were meant to use at work. Then we get the hypotheses that on Dal were several ritual societies, but we do not know about rulership. Establishments like Evenstorp and Haugsbyn speaks for common things and cultural areas. In Haugsbyn there has been some avenue known around 1840. My parish could have been another place but with no stony remains left. Once there was a relatively big hill with about 70 graves and some of them made of stones, but now gone except the hill. We know that in other places they had wooden henges and we can suggest that possibility too.

D) ... From the Edda we know the sentence "Tor vige" as a saying about the peasants god Thor, which was the idol for consecrating in the peasants society. Marrying people was only one of his duties. The ceremony when giving land to someone might have been the same as when marrying, as we shall see.

We know that when we speak about peasants' law it concerned everyone in a folkland until they established the nobility in early Middle Age.

Maybe we can see a society with different law spaces, which means that different classes live beside each other with their own laws. Not many parts but for instance a peasant's law space and the traders' law space.

The marrying Thor show the same gesture we see at the border and the idol was an icon for all acts of treaty as a collective name. It is often confusing that we have many words for individual acts, but in structure they are all the same.

The figures are bound together at the feet with a cloth I presume. That is still custom in southern places and they speak about a sacred cloth of both Inanna and Isis.

Thor's sword can date the situation to 1200 BC. Later in the marriage code we see the earlier "handtake" from Haugsbyn. This ceremony indicates that from the former common treaty, an act now seals with a ceremony with leaders wearing swords. It is much like when the church took over the act.

E) ... My understanding started at the Law rock in Haugsbyn, "The Naked demands for fences during the season" freely interpreted. "Eureka" it is natural that I for long time was deep in the well of Mimer. The symbols reminded of the symbols in other cultures, but not.

When I began with the season round I read "The hood rises ..." and the wavy line showed running time. I began to understand that it was about astronomy and events along Time River. In fact we find almost the same saying in Egypt meaning that at winter solstices it looks as if the hood is rising. In their words the sun god Ra raises the hood.

Roughly we can date the symbols in Haugsbyn to 3000 to 1000 BC and the Sumerian symbols were out of known use in Sumer before 2000 BC. However it seems reasonable that other connected cultures used them longer since we see the neo Hittitian culture used figurative symbols in last millennium BC. Of course I had to learn little by little and seek all threads to their ends. Even Egypt used the old symbols in sacred texts in temples and outer reliefs to the very end.

Some are sceptical and say that the symbols are only scribble made by young herds to clear out their thoughts and keep time going. Yes, some may be, but all the well-organised pictures and strings are not. We have to examine a rock carefully to extract different layers and styles to see what belongs to each other. Then maybe we find new organised pictures from the scribble. For me there has been sufficient material in our many carvings for these books. However maybe I after this will look closely at the scribble, but for that I need to visit the places for several times to sort out everything.

Then, if we agree that the symbols are intelligent work of normal people like us, we can compare us with other cultures and see if we have something in common.

Several years I spent in studying languages in this aspect. The Anglo-German-Scandinavian languages including Finnish my life have given me. Now and then I have worked with the Latin family. Then much time was spent on the early symbol languages in search of a synthesis for the vocabulary. It is hidden in our complex languages of today and with fewer words than today of course.

Some evidence we may find in our place names and I made a journey through the Old World. A single world is not good evidence but it maybe is a play-wall and lead further to other words or known subjects. Many words and fragments create an impression and a picture we know from the impressionism.

We have also to learn from expressionism how to feel what life was like and that they were like us. We should not analyse love else it will die. But a combination of analysis and feelings will bring us nearer our ancestors and give us respect and affection, as they are our grandparents although in many nodes backward.

Too much distance makes us inhuman and mechanical and isolates us from intuitive thinking needed to understand more. The main problem is to translate feelings and diffuse knowing to understandable words. No one becomes master in a short time and only if we are masters of the subject area we can clearly describe it for others.

My sentence is, "Speak and we know who you are" ... and we need to speak to clear out our ideas. It is a good method to write down or discuss with others to learn more and sort out the structures.

In pictures made of symbols and icons with much to be understood that being true to the old is difficult "language" and to explain it understandable to our time. Writing these books is sometimes difficult, because the languages will not write it in the way it were. Thinking it in a space-time is one of the problems.

English is the worst language because the vocabulary has diverged much from nature and ritual old society. In Scandinavian languages many old ideas are still in use in everyday language. A quite normal word is "bopaale" used to say that we settle down and set a pole. I do not find that old idea in English. They are many more.

In ritual societies they work for the deity and that is reflected in the language. We have to use the method advised by Snorre Sturlasson. That is to write it once for them with clockwise rotation and another for those with anticlockwise rotation in their brains, so to speak.

Ideograms describe things understandable by figures or connected symbols. The Egyptian system was to write in syllables and in the end an ideogram expressing the idea in it. For instance they had more than 50 symbols of man to show the different actions of man. Our normal life consists mainly of repeated action with different intervals. Some are daily other are by week, months, year. Then when we learn to organise our life in rituals we will get more done, will become peaceful and relaxed when we control our life

... but do not forget the Cat' s advice the relaxing time without rules and rituals and just have fun, without TV to tell when you shall laugh ... Egyptians, Sumerians, Minoans look all relaxed and have fun. That we can learn from and seek in other places, because the laughing and truly happy live longer with less pain.

F) The sext aspect is that we may find some small fragments in our province laws. They can tell us and connect us to early laws or customs and we can explain what we se by these known elements. They are not many but what else do we have?

Tradition and continuity are normal signs in the behaviour of mankind. In a world with no written laws different kinds of mnemo-technique were used to manifest the laws and make things legal. The symbol act was one of the means and manifestation in stone or with stone were others.

Our oldest province laws are from 1210 to 1230. They are surely mostly new versions of older gathered prejudices. We can expect activity in making laws in the first kingdoms in tenth century. Then not only the Norwegian and Icelandic laws, but also in southern Scandinavia as the earliest area with nobility and a bigger population. Then we can ask how much did the nobility learn during the co-operation with the Romans.

In our early laws we find small fragments we can use. On the other hand we only find fragments on our rocks, but in the small folklands were no need for more than rules in essential matters. Them we shall look at following the "bolkar" = beams = codes or sections in our earliest codified province laws.

A nature man from Siberia expressed once "Everything is man" as his place in the universe. It is the natural way not only to measure the universe by oneself but live with the universe.

In English they say "child of nature" but I see no childish in this, however much of our bounds we get in the early years. So I use sometimes the expression "nature man" for the original state when man often was barefoot with the same potential as earth.

In our shoes and with nylon near the skin we can generate up to 50 000 volts, I think. It is the old lesson about the cat's skin and the ebonite rod. Once I learned that my mood varied with the electrostatic capacitance between earth and me. I never wear nylon after that.

The natural state is as far as we can come from living in a big city. Most of the life we have no contact at all with environment or is not in symbiosis with nature. We all have our present time and space nearest. That is to wear one's heart on the sleeve. It is natural that the earliest "astronomer" chose significant animals from their year to mark events on the round.

To the subject we may add the ritual animal. That means that they tied the hunting ritual mostly to only one or perhaps two animals and a pure man's world. We know it from the poems in Kalevala about hunting bear and the feast was a model for the wedding too.

My grandma had been the bride of the bear and maybe my grandpa was half bear as he got 63 bear noses in his lifetime. Folk memory in Vaermland tells that the bridegroom was hiding in the woods and the young men hunted him and brought him to the wedding house. Since there were many with Finnish roots in Vaermland, maybe the custom is Finnish.

However, in the time of wilderness in the entire Europe the bear was the main animal. We can see it from the names that they are often foreign since it was a part of the secrets not to mention his name. They gave him foreign names at least during hunting time. In other seasons they may have called him honey-paw and other loving names. The symbolism with bears was very alive in Viking Age when the real man wore a bear-guise, at least in pictures. On the spear head there should be a sleeping bear and ornaments of the kind is found.

The other ritual animal was the elk. In Kalevala they call the dream elk Hiisi. Especially in the rock carving in north are many elks, but when they look for elk bones in the remains at sites there are none. The only explanation is that the bones as well as they give back bear-bones to Mother Nature so that she can create new life. It is just a ritual act telling how they taught about the circulation or the round of Mother Nature.

Maybe someone laughs at those primitive rituals. Nevertheless, the elk is still the ritual animal. Scandinavian hunters lose their head when the season for elk comes. They say Sweden stands still for a week or two. I have never been in that tribe, but I think they do not practice ancient rituals. On the other hand there are many practical rituals involved such as the after talk, follow up and feast afterwards.

In my childhood gormandising in roasted ribs always followed the slaughter of the Christmas pig ... it is perhaps what the Celts called Bron Trogain or the "meat fury".

Many places in Europe still celebrate calendar events of ancient origin. Some has a ritual animal as symbol. The Straw Bear festival in Whittlesey, Cambrigdeshire before Plough Monday may be of late origin since its issue is to collect money for the unemployed ploughboy. Nevertheless, the bear as symbol in the ritual raises some questions about some older tradition.

The Horn Dance they celebrate the first Monday after the Sunday following 4^th September in Abbots Bromley, Staffordshire. It seems to be a ritual before deer hunting as origin. The latest memory is that they defend the villagers' hunting rights. The suite includes six men with antlers, Maid Marian (a man dressed as a woman), the Fool in jesters' costume, a hobbyhorse and a boy with a bow and arrow.

In Scandinavian languages we have the prefix UR to express origin and we have about 40 words expressing different kinds of origin. To that the free use of the prefix UR with suitable words. When we use it, it is always going to the very roots. We share the use with the Hittitians and the method is the same as the Sumerian "first time".

Not having rituals for every occasion is rational and concentrate on a few. In hunting they needed only minor rituals when hunting tens of other species. For agriculture they needed only one spring ritual although they perhaps planted or sow other things at different times. For instance they sowed flax lastly in the end of May and between the early corns they sowed turnip and beans. My guess is that there were no special rituals and feast around the later sowing.

In the chapter about our many mothers I have discussed the archetypes in Europe and how the Sumerian myths explain a little about the ideas behind. Separating aspects like myths, rituals and believes in deities in a ritual society is impossible. They are entirety and just a parallel virtual world to reality. We cannot say that the rituals steer reality or vice versa since it is always interaction in stages. Describing a dynamic ever-changing world is difficult.

Maybe animating the vegetative natural circulation with humanlike idols became natural, because the doer in reality was the human. Then understanding the invisible processes in the soil was perhaps easier and maybe also the germination.

However we see odd animation sometimes as they initially thought corn to be eunuchs if animated to humans. Zeus planted Dionysus in his thigh to animate the winery. Kybebe, the Magna Mater of Anatolia is surely the fat goddess we find in shrines in for instance Catal Hüyük 6000 BC.

She is sitting between leopards and is giving birth to a ram. At first sight it may be odd, but from my experience I have heard earthy girls name their mate bull and ram ... a negative word is still whore-buck.

The later evolution was of course change due to agriculture. The Hittites had many other female deities but in the end Kubebe became the only one. However, the last phase is difficult to understand with reasons. The structure with Kybebe and the son-lover Attis mirrors the Babylonian Ishtar and Tammuz. Then follow the odd ritual when he cut off his penis under a cypress, his sacred tree. It was just that mysterious so it in some places became an ecstatic cult with wild spring rituals during the last millenium BC.

It is of interest for us too because we see some figures where the man has a dagger in his hand and look down as if something is missing. From the Celtic sphere we know about Eta in Echraide which in practice was a priestess in a wagon and mostly driven by a mare. In Phrygia two lions drove her carriage. We see that motive also in Scandinavia during Bronze Age and the subject was living in the Edda.

Furthermore we have in the Germanic world some placenames implying diddies with several synonyms. Speaking it freely about that kind of things seems taboo. Thinking about Kybebe as the origin to these remains is nearest.

We cannot know anything about their rituals and them surely varied from place to place and need not be the same as the spring ritual with wagons in the suite. Spectacular and mystic rituals are not the normal. Maybe they need a bigger population so that many are taken by the idea.

From the 17^th century we know about witch-hunting in some provinces, but not on Dal. The things show sober-minded trials in few cases when some had used witchcraft. The court just wanted to calm it down or show that it did not work. Never it became mass hysteria and I believe a crowded landscape is needed for that.

In my youth placenames with a name-like root was supposed be a god's place. Now the pendulum has its swing too far to the other side when all names are supposed have been taken from the nature around and no mythological names at all. Linguists give us many weak spots already there because many names cannot be nature names and have a natural meaning in older language. The other part is the suffix and dating. Literally they say that they created place names later than 500 BC with a relative dating.

Usually my first question is why they believe that they should interpret the suffix LEV as root meaning "to leave". Since we know that people eagerly lived in clan villages when they introduced taxation we may suggest that there was no owning. That means that no one left anything them simply lived on the family estate without distributing it legally from generation to generation. I think the main parts of these placenames are meaning "the bread of a certain deity" as "lev" means bread.

Another local solution is that the suffix INGE should have something to do with an ancient king created by academic speculation. Then why do we find the same suffix in Germany as far as Rhineland?

It is understandable if we find it in England perhaps, though? To me it is simply a dative suffix meaning, "to give in" with Celtic or Sumerian syllable order. We know the first element or unknown deities meaning that the place "gave in" in that name.

Continuous settlements are normal from Skaane-Denmark southwards and why should they change names? We can presume that the oldest placenames are from Bronze Age onwards. Yet the question is too wide to analyse here.

This is only to tell that I have used a study in European placenames as a mirror and inspiration. Often we get only names or in the best case a group of names that may say something about the organisation of society and sometimes through the mythic names. Then it is to seek after the explanations and a better proof and weave it into the story.

An example is the placename Veddinge in ancient Denmark. Does the name come from "wet" and does the term wedding come from a bath ritual at marriage? Time and dialects have eroded all names but still they light our imagination.

In our day we name roads after things we want to store or honour. Would people have been otherwise in those days? To give a name is always a sacred act. That is what I see in placenames and in carvings made with a clear composition. Evidently we can only make conclusions about names which clearly show a deity involved by some synonym.

The first clear goddess in connection with a law we see is in the naked foot prints on the Law rock at Haugsbyn. We cannot give her a normal name. With piety and respect for the writer of the law I call her The Naked because he wrote it that way. The Law begins and ends with naked two feet.

In Denmark the culture was more stable with more people to keep traditions and place-names alive. So we find names like Gyr, Gyden and Gyrsting which we can understand as icons for rain or "to give out". The later idea seems to have been the idol for a thing too, probably at Candlemas.

Maybe it is the moment for a summary of the structure of idols in fertility. The mythic Maiden of Watergate has no special myth of resurrection. We have to look for the New Moon Maid in the pre-mythic story about Enlil/Sin and Ninlil with her mother Nunbarshegunu later Inanna and Dumuzi and the females are "mother and child" and not seen much in Sumerian myths. Nevertheless, it is Ishtar and Tammuz, Isis and Horus, Demeter and Kore, Kubebe and Attis and in Levant and Palestine there several remains of something like these. The other variant is the early complementary sisters mostly with the aspects new moon and morning star. Their division was with one in Underworld and the other mostly in air but with a journey to Underworld ... however Inanna for instance let her husband Dumuzi make that dirty trip.

The above sisters are easily mixed with two other sisters as in Egypt Neith, an archer and Nephthys, the moisture and watering. We sometimes see Sumer/Babylonian Inanna with a bow and sometimes as a naked watering Maiden. Artemis is the Greek variant of Neith or the Maiden with a bow. To the picture we have to add the brothers by Christianity and other forces made the evil and the good, but I doubt it was the original concept.

It is almost amazing that once we create a virtual idol and give it a name we believe it has existence. Is it humanlike then preferably the fixing one? In our time we have the TV series becoming an Otherworld. I have seen people partly live in a world between their own and the series. In other places the discussions are about the figures in Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest and so on. Maybe it is an eternal behaviour of mankind?

Still I have tried to write some names with their real and rational aspect to keep mind in the most interesting structure ... what was the use?

Ugarit at the Syrian coast was a cultural melting-pot with many enclaves including Assyrians, Hurrites, Hittitians, Babylonians and earlier Sumerians and Akkadians, Egyptians, Aegeans. The schoolboys had dictionaries for the main languages of the people in the city.

The mythic world became a melt of the main Sumerian and Egyptian myths. Ugarit is the true home of the Indo-European culture with interaction in all directions. Even Egypt learned something and imported Astarte from Ugarit. The text tablets from Ugarit are from 1400 to 1200 BC. And in parallel they have found papyruses in El Amarna archives telling about Anath and Astarte.

I think is best to define them as "the towards heaven rising" respectively "the earth seeking". They are abstractions of the moon phases and in parallel the cultivating act moment by moment. To the entire myth belong the harvest act moment by moment. A bull is included in the rituals and it is of course the animal resurrection as a parallel world.

We have to think about the attitudes too. Many a scientist searches for mighty Mights and frightened people adoring them. They believe our carvings are filled with adoring adorants with lifted arms. In reality they are few. In Egypt lifted arms was a gesture of rejoicing.

We know the Minoans as steady rejoiced people. Christianity and fundamentalism made man deadly serious. The Canaanites set safe "ingathering" as the main issue ... and maybe that is why those people by culture have been the most known gatherers in the world. In Scandinavia we are cool and reflecting maybe. We are only interested in the spring rituals, just to spark a new season. There are few carvings about the harvest and maybe partly because agriculture was not a big issue.

Nevertheless the carvings on Dal are older than texts about Anath in Ugarit, so we cannot be sure how much was the same. Anath may be the later Anahita known from the Persians. They defined her "the wet and sturdy" and we see her on some Bronze Age razors in Denmark too.

She is a normal variant of the New-moon-maid the people in Haugsbyn already knew about when they wrote the law. She maybe was simply the Spring Maid as we still use for a special day in Mars.

Another archetype during last millenium was the "sitting Lady". Maybe the Phoenicians introduced her as figurines in their trade. Besides her sitting pose she has characteristic big cow eyes. Their maiden was Tinia, probably image of Libra an actual constellation at the time.

All these facts prove something about the religious practical life. It can with scientific precision not be tied to more than the places involved. Still we have something as a base and ask for when we investigate other places. We have to remember the manifold. For instance I believe that they in Vaestergautland in fifth century AD had three archetypes of ritual leadership: the maid, the pair and the male leader.

We can say that the ritual carving is at the same time a calendar and a ritual code in their law. Ritual and law are much the same in a ritual society. Nowadays the fundamentalists in some religious countries cannot sort out what is law and what is religious behaviour and rules for it.

In the early province laws were no separate king's code. The Older Vaestgauta law has an addition about it in the beginning of the Rightless Code. We can understand that they saw a society without a king or defined highest legal instance out of order and lawless.

Before they invented the king, the All Geats' thing was clearly the highest instance, which means that the direct democracy was practice before. The population was small and the subjects were few so they could gather all people to the thing. The lower hundred things were lead by the law reader, and a selected local court was the judges' assembly.

The administrative law reader with the duty to effectuate the decision on the thing. Besides him was surely a ritual leader if not in same person and with duty to lead rituals of the season. We have the word "naeskung" which literally we may understand as a king on spit. Another word is "vising" which perhaps means leader of the vi, i.e. ritual leader. However we have to leave open that the hundreds or folklands maybe had other constellations.

The concept king is late evolution and the first kings used Latin and called themselves REX. The runic stone in Rauk tells about 20 kings at the same time so seeing the word, meaning leader of a small county is reasonable. The step back to the law in Haugsbyn is about 2500 years from the above.

From that we can suggest a priestess as the ritual leader and two administrative leaders for agriculture respective the herds. In Evenstorp we see a division by a couple. There is also a pair and in Ugarit texts they were the writers/readers with the law tablets.

Behind it all we can expect mostly the direct democracy as known from the Germanic past. The thing was the entire population and leaders were chosen for decided events. That kind of problem increased with growth in population and forced them to organise the society to be more than some family clans.

We know from Vaestergautland that they had quarters of a county. Their mathematics were geometrical in series 1,2,4,8,16 or the other 3,6,12,24 and maybe their mnemo-technique was to have few models easier to remember.

Anyhow we see the naked feet of the goddess. They divide the lower quarters equally and a quarter in the upper half is "owned" by a bigger man in a tunic. The last quarter maybe belongs to the man in a tunic and with a belt. The tunic here as belonging to an idol may be import from Hittites. The "fitness-belt" as sign of macho power became fashion and we see it on warrior figurines.

The symbol at right besides the big boss is perhaps the lot used to share different things such as parcels out of the common field. The shape of the lot "cut out" a bit of universe or whatever is set as the common ground. The lot was also used in Greek voting but that is another thing.

This picture from Backa Bohuslaen is perhaps the ornum-principle we know from Jutland.

They divided the local society so that the leader had one part, the ritual leader one part and the rest were for the ordinary peasants. Here maybe that the two crossed circles are symbols for two groups such as cultivators and herds. Further the sitting Lady shows that she occupies the time from the down-step to Dog. The funny elk is perhaps a symbol for the leader.

Ornum means perhaps "an out take". It was a big step from the equal thing areas, when the thing cut out land from the common ground. It was the beginning of the class society and feudalism. This means that before that the family clans of course cut out their territory, but the free area was common law space and the use of that should be decided on the thing.

The next legal word is birke, which means a law space, cut of the common space like a marketplace or perhaps territories for the nobility of traders. Our province laws are solely for the peasants law space. A birke became an island in the common space. Still used in Denmark the Town's Court is called Birkeret. As always we have to understand their way of thinking and how they had to create new words for everything when new problems occurred.

Later with the written law in 12^th to 13^th centuries they renewed the logic structure with new words. They called a "cut out" of common ground "taka" and a cut out of a village area was called "holmtaka" which means an island and understood in the village.

We know also that single combat had to be on islands outside common law space. When Vikings came to a new land, the tactic was to settle on an island before the next step. Maybe traders also settled on islands easy to protect before they got a regular enclave. The idea of the above birke is the same as the enclave in Near East where mother cities founded factories for trade.

In Vaestergautland with no coastal area they took the king because having someone from outside as the highest judge in delicate cases was convenient, I suppose. Judging known people or friends is never easy. A king from outside was a good solution and if he did not fit they could throw out or shorten him with no feeling because he was stranger.

The duty of the king was to arrange the fleet or simply defence or expansion of the country in the time we know. Since there are some boat-lifters in our carvings we can think about the sailing period which at first was sixteen weeks. On some runic calendar sticks they marked that the boat was set out first of May and taken up in the beginning of October.

Since there were no kings as far as we know during the Carving Age we cannot expect Vikings in our waters then. However, someone must have organised the trade. Besides specialised Eriles it can have been a matter for the thing to organise and feed a ship or two for the trading tour, since we have remains that point at private property in metals and luxuries.

Maybe a special class become traders and arranges their trading routes. Travelling it around with bigger ships and some armed men to protect the gods was not as easy as that. Then the custom demanded for change of hostages to keep the balances with the natives and insure that peace was kept. That kind of treaty was perhaps arranged by changing of youngsters to be a visitor to cement friendship. Another solution was marriage, which worked at least in first generation.

This concerns peaceful trade and not robbing Vikings, which seem to have been the exception from normal international law so to speak.

The Romans were bandits on land with no sense for good customs. There is no proof in this question. Nevertheless it is like a black hole once it is there we must fill it with something. Trade without traders and rules for the trading is no continuous trade. In Scandinavia it was in many places that without flint or metals no tools and then no food on the table.

When thinking in legal terms the marriage is always a treaty. Not only between the two but also between the family clans and the surrounding neighbours are third part. Marriage leads usually to children and they are first the responsibility for the family clans. Yet, in worst case it can be a matter for the neighbours and the collective around.

I feel and seek insight in that the early statues of a child in caves and the Sumerian fragment about "the naked child and her mother sleeping in Underworld". They just urge the society to take care of the motherless child.

Another aspect is that marriages establish bonds between just people and is not depending on private property. It becomes some sources for defending property and local achievements. With sufficient land and space for living there was no need to distribute owning of land.

They simply lived on the estate and arranged private areas when needed. Think if your family owned 25 square kilometres of land. No need to be jealous about something common with neighbours or feel stress from a crowd

... however, it puzzles me, that people always steam together and fight for space, even when there is plenty of it? ... maybe it is the owning instinct that where people are is the best of everything. For me as a half bear it is a mystery. I like to be reeling around in a big wood, lonely or with some friends is just the same. But, if I see a crowd I make a yaw. Maybe it is my genetic heritage.

The legal idea is "handtake" as the symbol act that they sealed a treaty of marriage. The act is named VEIPA, which is the same word as sweep, referring to the cloth we se on Vitlycke. Originally it was the cloth of Inanna and Isis and symbol for uniting. Every child after that was a responsibility for both sides. Much has to be understood such as other symbolic acts like the gifts.

Others were transactions to give the young couple a good start and friends to rely on if needed. This act was in use until the church took over and demanded to be the new Thor.

In the line we also see the young couple in waves and then we may reach the question about the word "wedding".

The old rituals have been the same to our days. Yet they have a Midsummer wedding in Bengtsfors Dal in the old style. We can see it on photos from the beginning of this century. In the province laws weddings should be after the season. Maybe the reason was that the stores were filled and there was time to celebrate almost as long as they wished. Nevertheless, in ancient times we do not know when they celebrated weddings. We know the ritual weddings to be in spring and at midsummer.

The yearly resurrection in fields was a constant carrying for a new generation and practice for family life too. I remember people from my youth when the farms were small and every being had a name and personality. I have seen men and women cuddle with their animals and nearly spoil them. A local vet said once that a farmer on Dal rather give his last bread to the animal and starve himself. That is the real marriage with Mother Earth.

In our day we name roads after things we want to store or honour. Would people have been otherwise in those days? To give a name is always a sacred act. That is what I see in placenames and in carvings made with a clear composition.

We do not now if this code were actual at all. To distribute inheritance property is needed. Archaeology tells that during Bronze and Iron Age big halls was the normal case. That suggests just family clans at the settlements. That does not mean there was no personal owning.

When the fashion was skeleton graves, they usually got personal things with them to the afterlife. However, we cannot be sure that they buried the entire family in the same fashion and neither do we know what they owned. They needed much more tools in a normal life. Maybe they buried only the dearest things with the individual.

Archaeologists owe thanks to the nobility in every time, because they left after them remains, while others went back to Mother Earth as naked as they came. The burial customs are proportional to richness I believe.

During my lifetime I have read many scientists with the opinion that mankind is aggressive and love war. It is not an easy question. How can mankind expand if war were natural? In 17^th century and the wars in Europe the birth rate was very high about 4 as if people wanted to compensate the many kills in slaughterings and war diseases.

Yet, the increase followed even the centuries after the wartime. The population on Dal was less than 10000 year 1600 and more then 80000 in 1850. I think the cause was that the family clans were broken up.

The technique in agriculture was the same overall with exception for 9 big estates owned by nobility. However, the amount of producing units increases with distribution and partition of inheritance concerning land. Years 1600 there were few farms less than 1/4 mantal. One mantal was a unit of 300 to 500 hectares depending on the fertility of land. Already the new military system with privates owning 1/8 was a step towards small units, but in the end many owned less than that. With the same methods it could not feed a family and that was the cause behind the emigration in the middle of 19^th century.

Studies of gathering societies show that they keep the population down to what a territory can give. The same is case with my fishes princess of Burundi I have had for a decade. One breed can give maybe 50 adults as I saw in the first breeds. If that were the rule, it would have been filled with fishes and no water in this long run. They control the breed to a suitable size. I think we can see that among nature people too.

Cultivating and civilising are followed by increasing population, but for instance in Sweden today the birth rate is about just keeping population constant. Behind every birth there is overall a decision if people want and can feed the child. However these conclusions are made just on local bias and do not explain big populations as China and India.

If we shall make an overall hypothesis, it might be that mankind's aim is to keep their own species alive on a level that has enough food. The behaviour of nature is to use every niche of fertility. For that nature evolves specialised beings. Every being is depending on the underlying substrate and cannot grow over that in population.

This is evident logic, however it looks like exceeding limits while mankind manipulates the substrate. Oh yeah, humankind has exceeded the limit artificially mostly by war against other beings and has introduced monoculture as a sort of cannibalism. Maybe the scientific truth is hard to hear?

This reasoning aims at some conclusion about the overall attitude of humankind. We have to look behind our absurd and non-loving age. We know that there have been tribes and cultures with inhuman behaviour, but that is not the normal. Mostly we have to class their behaviour as fundamentalism around a set of ideas without limits and reasons.

The normal is that they have arranged and respected the demands for territory in some way. The need for fenced territory followed when they cultivated herbs all sorts from vegetables to corn. It is natural that there are always small struggles between people and one cause is women another is property.

The Sumerians tell us that jealousy caused the first wars and perhaps hunger when the "mountain people" took easy food from the cities in the fertile plain. Next step erased the pure Sumerian culture when Sargon and others created their own army and made it religion to conquer land. It has been the nobility and certain leaders with ambitions that have been the war creators.

Some blame leaders like Hitler and Saddam, but without a clan of followers, the business community and industry it would not work. We have often in my lifetime seen the war nation number one USA try to solve internal problems with war going. Just at this very writing moment, USA in the name of God is bombing Iraq.

In our old justice an enemy should not be a witness, not execute penalties or be a judge. England and USA have left the relativity system of peace. Then it is now new that they make a war declaration against Saddam and try to murder him. The question is "Can a peace organisation like the UN be in this business and still be a peace organisation?" Up to my ethic thinking there is some screwed here.

Now they are together being a war beast like Saddam Hussein in the relativity system of war with no ordinary rules. This show we can use the concept of analysing ideas and relativity to know what is really happening ... before this, I had some more friendly thesis hoping that treaty and peace would be the rule in future. War creates only new enemies and murders the innocent child.

Real democracy demands for equality and respect among every little single clan or group of people ... it is as easy as that. When the big nations suppress folks demanding for self-governing and tolerate that they omit human rights there is no global democracy in sight. They maybe talk about democracy.

Still, it is only an infantile and beastly struggle for power. I would not use the word primitive, because so-called primitive people are wiser than that. Only an awaked population using the rules of democracy can keep the uneducated beast in the shack. The beast is nobility and the forces wanting war and using oppressive methods and with no respects for other people and nations, of course. The people in war going nations are within the rules of democracy as guilty as their leaders ... it is as easy as that. In this sense I think our ancestors were wiser than we.

Our ancestors would have named it the Wolf and themselves taken on their bear-guise to fight or defend maybe, we will never know. Sometimes war may be defence. Big brother names many of those going to war as terrorists. Others cannot see that big brother or other beasts suppress them.

I have suffered from this idiotic behaviour in nations and have seen it over and over again concerning all from small groups to nations. I am tired of it and refuse to name it intelligent behaviour of a human race supposed to be the thinking one.

Along the Time line mankind have lost natural behaviour as a part of nature. They call the trend civilisation? A natural biotope regenerate up to its limits. Once I found a deep hole with old perch and if I remember right, there grew moss on them. Anyhow the skin was thick like an armoured tank. From the creature weighing 1500 gram were left two cutlets of about 300 grams.

There were only a few in that black hole and I had to wait for many years before it was possible to get something like that again. I never went there because I became wiser. The last twenty years my aquariums are like a conscience to love the friends of my fishes and not fish or hunt for fun. That experience is about a natural nature which cannot feed more than the regeneration. It can be increased up to certain limits as is seen with the variations through years. The normal rule is that over-consuming is the same as dead of species.

Mankind has once been wise enough to understand that when they were anxious to get conditions for their own regeneration. I see in my Concise Oxford Dictionary that the word regenerate means synonyms to = "breathe new and more vigorous and spiritually higher life". We hear the fundamental Gregorian songs in the gothic cathedral here. Steady higher and higher is the aim of nearly every nobility with capital. I use the word here as a definite form to the unlimited generate and mean to generate 1 : 1 over time.

Maybe fundamentalism, celibate and general eagerness to be on top create the attitude in man to conquer the world spiritual as well as unknown and known areas.

The wisdom in the analysis made in the time of Etana is for long forgotten ... to see we have to stay on earth and care for our garden and nearest world. Monks in church or monk-like capitalists at Wall Street do not build or regenerate they only consume.

In Israel they think that they and only they created civilisation. In the world they have to be the best ... in spite of the advice to be modest, given by their own prophet Amos. If civilisation is to kill Palestinians and other neighbours and to deny people living space and let us pay the bill ... then it is no progress at all. One Hitler in my lifetime would have been enough. People like this and their protectors are destroyers of the world order we wish for by the UN.

In the early symbolism we see the wisdom of balance, tolerance and natural struggle for life and space. The two addas are sometimes fighting sometimes drawing in the same direction.

With these reflections I tried to fence in the area of humankind and see what was a natural behaviour in ancient times. Most laws were created to meet new demands and situations. No one creates them for fun or for a group of advocates to have something to do and earn from.

Now to the more practical claims for land. Some say that the footprints are made of gods. Gods do not make footprints! Others say that they are claims for land. Every eternal manifestation is a claim for land and it has to have a continuous population to stay alive. We respect mostly our rock carvings since 6000 years and more. Mostly because it is no idea to sow on rocks, I suppose.

They made many carved claims in the same way as when we sign a certificate of owning. The writing style is the owner and the dating is the common convention to begin the claim.

From known times we know the symbol acts to manifest owning of land. They might have been used in different cases earlier.

On Dal was the act to take a handful of soil and put it in the shoe. Then say "Now I have soil in my shoe and stand on my own land". That act is surely older than the one in our province laws. It implies an outer Might giving a piece sod of land in the kirtle of the new owner.

We cannot say if men always were dressed in a kirtle or if the lady of the house owned the land at the time they created this act. However we see people with kirtle short or long at the carvings. The interesting part is that the act needs a local king or priest to give reason. The latest known reformation of this act was when Olof Skautkonung ca 1000 BC seemingly was behind owning of property by donation of the king. The king owned the unclaimed land and got some of his income from that.

The structure is that it is "a gift". Legal possession became necessary with taxation and the family clans had to show the legality of their owning. Later a new concept was "the pledge". That made it possible for the king to give the nobility land for the time being and against a duty to help the king with whatever it could be. Other means was "the liberty" or freedom from taxation.

The Karelian act is much nearer the original treaty between man and Mother Earth. They cut a strip of turf and lifted it up. The new owner should crawl under it and get married with Mother Earth. The same ritual was used to confirm foster-brotherhood and company in trade and so on. We may ask if they made the shrines in Underworld for these rituals? Mother Earth became the highest judge and a virtual witness to the acts.

On Zealand the ritual act was that the claim was made by the man throwing his sickle over a bit of land. It is just the old act to cut out a living space.

About the customs about the field we have custom of "encircling". With private property the encircling of a field was to show that the one who had made the act of owning legally owned the field. Maybe they used the same act to settle a claim for a folkland in the very beginning?

In rituals they encircled the field in a suite with a sacred idol. Christianity believed their cross or relic was more sacred than the image earlier or other religions used. It is always the question of to come in power and stay there. Cultures with equality, tolerance and forbearance are spared from that kind of struggle.

It is a new legal island inside the land of wild and tame animals, fishermen, mountaineers, gatherers, and hunters. The later were not affected and saw perhaps the cultivators as a new market. In the Alps some early metallurgists began to use the same rituals as their customers, the cultivators.

The "law" of Val Camonica is not as clearly as the law in Haugsbyn a treaty between the newcomers and the older old businesses. There has surely been much more bartering locally than we may imagine without evidence. When established the cultivators could barter crops with handicraftsmen for instance.

In Sumer the struggle was much nearer because it was on open grassland and the herds had to be more careful with their animals. The solution was marriage around Uruk and the rich literature tells about the word fight between the herd and the cultivator.

We see in Haugsbyn that the Naked demanded for fences. The same paragraph we find in our province laws. The fences around the crops and garden should be in order before they let out the animals or before the sowing. That plus the "spring and harvest peace" were legal and also ritual elements in the yearly life.

In Sumerian legacies we see three elements: the border stone, the rope and the stick. We know them all from late province laws. The stones at the border, the rope to measure land with and the stick to mark land and partitions. The striped stick preferably hazel was almost a sacred symbol. If there was some struggle about hey, it could be set in a ban by setting a striped stick in the field under investigation. Among Celts MacQuill was the hazel stick and the ban was sometimes to get the ox to change position.

 … This lot from Kalleby Bohuslaen was perhaps used to lot out the share in a common field. Exact equality is impossible to obtain but in the end will the aim at it give all equal shares. This of course also shows indirectly, that equal democracy was the main issue.

From the province law of Zealand we know that new land were taken by the act of cutting. The claimer throws his sickle over the piece of land to be claimed.

Now and then we read spectacular headlines "Were our ancestors cannibals?" ... and other spectacular statements making odd cultures normal.

In scientific reasoning we should ask, What do we compare with? ... and in our time with our wished ideas? ... or with reality? Should we compare them with their own time? Should we compare them with constructed ethics in our time?

My method is to reason about what we see and what consequences a certain rule or behaviour may lead to. Maybe good old Plutharkos is behind that? First steps must be to understand what we see. First technical steps are that the evidence should be valid in a court too. In modern words is the principle that everyone is innocent until the court has proved other.

The present technology and life style is not eternal as I see it. Our ancestors strived at eternity as far as I can see.

The old cultures of ours are nearer us genetically than foreign cultures far away. Our ancestors should be treated with the same respect and humanity as we today use towards the global society. Americans and Jews may have their terrorists but we see all people as equals with equal right to land and respect. We will understand if the "the naked tramped on get angry and use force."

It is just self-defence and an accusation against us when we do not care for the rightless in the global community. I do not think that our ancestors practised a broad global humanity and tolerance, but within the borders of their Mights they cared for the weakest. It is that attitude I am aiming at as suitable even in the global society.

The relativity in this code is that the causes to crime were few in a sparsely populated land with little property to battle about. In the collective society much was common and the community cared for their own members. Bad habits and beer have always been cause to trouble. During the entire 17^th century at Dal were less than 10 murders. One was in the woods and the entire county became responsible because the murderer was not found. Another might have been jealousy but mostly it was manslaughter with beer as one big cause.

In our big cities collective responsibility would be impossible. The ethics is fading out and those with money or status always win. Lately I have observed a new legal term to rescue them. "Intent" is the advocate term which free many. In older laws it was as simple, if you cut a finger on someone you have to pay for it. No intent freed them. The consequence of a crime set the sanction and the third man should be protected.

I think the legal ethic has gone off the rails. The victim should be the main issue and other hypothetical reasoning is something for the smoky rooms with advocates. Maybe earlier reasoning about motives and anger causes it. Motive may be a mean to solve a crime but should not affect the sanction meant to protect victims or society overall.

Anger has nothing to do with a judgement about who did what. As long as our days' judgement is under all critics we cannot judge others. We have had some cases where we know that two or more have committed a crime. When they cannot settle it, which did what they treat them like an innocent. The economic crimes we shall not talk about. These conclusions are somewhat overall but symptoms of local and also global right in the hands of capital and politic power.

That is not the natural right aiming at protecting the individual and his life space and have clear sanctions against behaviour that causes lost and hurts innocent victims. The human rights are never better than the system practising them. Only the collective community can balance out evil forces in a society, local or global.

The wisdom in legal rights is that they should be formulated logic and clear so that ordinary people se that it is the only right solution. That is because initially the law cannot depend on force but on reason. The aim in law is as they once said to protect the naked and innocent to keep the treaty between man and man and between man and nature. It is a question of survival of mankind.

When law become a tool for ruling it is not a natural and equal law anymore.

From the Celtic area we know about different sanctions for some crimes such as drowning, hanging, fire, sometimes all three together. The ultimate cases were crime against the total world order in the society ... or perhaps surrender caused by too mighty Mights.

Some archaeologist seems to have difficulties in judging finds from this area of human behaviour. We have simply too few finds and too little reference ground to make overall statements. We can only say that they had some system and sanctions for certain types of crimes. The statistic to our days is that they were few

The Phoenicians had surely a special gesture for "Hello" besides the lifted arm or arms and sometimes with a stick to show that they were almost unarmed. We see the greeting with a lifted hand and the thumb pointing outwards on a sarcophagus in Cartage and in about ten sure carvings in Scandinavia. That is maybe a greeting gesture used within the fellowship of traders. Another global gesture is the "handtake" when negotiating in business.

Trading metals was a necessity and suggesting that in the first centuries known Eriles had their roots in the Bronze Age trade. At limes they became honoured as Germans = Brothers and steles for the Northern Mercurius was made for them. In Icelandic the word is spared with the opposite value "tiresome peddler". That maybe says something about their methods.

In East Scandinavia and Finland was a system with "farmaen" = travelling men trading from Gotland, Volga and up to the Arctic Ocean. Maybe they were tiresome too, because they came as guests and should have room and food, whether it was time to barter or not. From the Middle Age we know they had the right to collect taxes too.

Since we find the same writing symbols in northern Scandinavia we can speculate in occasional or organised trade from south to north early in time.

It is symptomatic that they are two as traders often worked in fellowship and they had fellows abroad. Historians tell that when the Phoenicians traded with the North Africans they had to lay out the merchandises on shore and row back to their ships. The buyers then examined the offer and laid up their barter to be examined by the traders.

Another method was that the Phoenicians played a scene as a word-struggle with a seller and a buyer, so that the local people could think and decide, make a buy or not.

The old Vaestgauta law says "A slave, a horse and cattle, hoofed and horned animals, cut clothes, shafted weapons should be bought and sold with friend and witness". That paragraph mirrors the situation with the Phoenician scene.

Since slaves are a speculative issue among historians and it is mentioned in early province laws, here a few words about the subject.

Especially Svealand had organised to go in Viking written in the law. The folklands should organise food for a ship from a specified number of villages. It was understood that they went out for robbing goods and slaves. At the time for the written law Finland was the target.

I have some joy in telling certain Swedes that we Karelians once drive them back to Sweden ... maybe the Swede has not forgotten it yet ... I wonder sometimes.

However if we are practical only nobility could use slaves and afford to have them. In Svealand they were used as farm bailiffs, which just tell us that it was a nobility matter. In Saudermanland it was forbidden to give oneself to slavery for debts ... as if they have allowed it before.

The southern laws give more nuances. If caught stealing the thief could be slave at the king's estate until the thing and verdict. From the law of Gotland we can cut "bought slave" with association to the Celtic system of clientship. "Have his freedom at the church door when his slavery is over". We cannot for sure say more. The nobility write the law and that is reflected in some writings where they see "little people" on as "legs".

Then it is time to compare with the salary and machine-slaves in our time. I remember the sixties when a man with a clock and a schedule followed every little moment of the manual workers. Then they afterwards instructed them how to work with a minimum of wrong movements. They speeded up the work and the number of worn out zombies. Who is boss the owner or the machine? Until this year Germany has had their "gastarbeiter" and in my generation "Arbeit mach frei" sounds in the back-head.

Since there were no towns there were no need for a town code. However the earliest code seem to be that of birke or ornum, which meant that an island was taken out of common land. We can also expect that the nobility and the traders claimed for their own "little island". In fact it was their strategy to settle down on islands with their merchandises easy to defend. In known time it became the Swedisk Bjarke Court and in Denmark the town code is still Birke Court.

This code is usually about practical things and rules for the year. Fencing it in the villages to keep small beings inside was natural. They should fence the vegetable garden to keep out the goats I think. In a village they are the most curious animals jumping up and down. They have a "goat eye" everywhere and taste everything. And those small things with two legs are of the same kind and in a glimpse they are gone.

A special case is the villages build on poles from different periods. Maybe they brought a river culture with them since it seems odd in our nature.

In our community they thought to build a round village in a lagoon near Vaenern a while ago. But it is only to think about the wet winter ... no place for human beings?

We know from the excavating that the houses grew bigger in time. They ended in big common halls as custom much of the time and we can suggest common fields for crops too. From the texts at the law in Haugsbyn we can ask if they had separate houses for the married people and the young unmarried?

They needed rules for open fire and work with fire. The main rule was that firehouses should be far from the man houses. Through the ages a normal plan for a village became custom. Houses were build for every purpose small animals small houses and bigger for bigger. Stores so that no thieves on two or four legs could easily come in ... and so on.

The rules were about the peace periods to keep all sorts of troubles away and out of the growing areas. All this was surely understood behind the early rituals of a year, as they are logic and natural in an organised community. The word "byalag" is difficult to translate to English of our time. Maybe community is the word for co-operation and equal sharing of almost everything and to that the duty.

The carving at the spit Ronarudden seems to be about paragraphs for the community and a time-law. In the province laws are peace periods for spring and harvest. Under the term we can set the sailing period for the younger men in coastal areas.

Game laws in hunting were up to the local conditions and animals. This law is at Aspeberget Bohuslaen. In a mixed community the bigger animals were a part of the industry. Slaughtering the animals in autumn when the meat is fat is wisest. It gives most for the efforts. All animals have their bad period when it comes to taste and nutrition. For instance fishes after spawning are not much as food. For every specie it has always been a question of "following the season".

The Horn Dance in Abbots Bromley is mentioned as a ritual before autumn hunt and similar were surely custom in other places ... When I see our elk-hunters go for the elk they have some practical rituals too.

The rocks in Bohuslaen and Austergautland have more wild animals than tame I believe without a statistic to lean on. Maybe they cleared land for grass-eating animals as a free breed. Upon that they got free sight when hunting them. It seems like a speciality when we see many pigs on the rocks at Ekenberg Austergautland. The early Roman folklorists tell us that horses and pigs were favourites in East Sweden.

In early Middle Age the acorn-pigs were favourites as natural taxes or rent to the landlords. On Dal the pig was not common however we do not know if there were oak woods enough to keep pigs.

That did not fit the nobility and fat farmers in 13^th century. They would not allow much fun. We know it in our days too.

Nevertheless we have always to remember that written law is one thing and real life another. Kings, landlords, the church and nobility could make rules and try to get their workforce and tenants follow them.

Mostly free farmers in their own villages followed their own customs. Dal is much an exception from common generalising since it was sparsely populated with few villages with many farms. Most of the claims were family estates, which lived their own life. This is what we know from 17^th century.

The law was a help if trouble were born. In the minor crimes and troubles the county was the judge and mostly it was a question of making peace. In delicate cases it was a good thing to have n outside lawman or judge. Especially on Dal with free taxpaying peasants they did not make fuss of nobility. In the ancient times we do not know too much.

Our province laws show that the provinces borrowed from each other. We can expect borrowing also in the five thousand years before. Trade and cultural movements were much more extensive than we can imagine and grip. The techniques in farming had to be imported as well as the metallurgy. Still some scientists see us as isolated and have our own ingenious evolution.

Christianity murdered the main idea of a trickster Loke. Fundamentalism and industrialists do not allow a thinking people and an idol with free thoughts. The murder of Loke was of the same kind as when the Romans destroyed the local Irminsul wherever the Roman high boot came.

Some scientists have investigated the Roman agriculture methods introduced north of the Alps and found that it was to the worse. They allowed only Roman gods within the empire before Nero understood that the German bear would rise once again if they too hardly tied the ropes. Maybe it was the beatnik in him that understood that? Still, in our days the Roman cultural imperialism is a fact. Many practices, a self-censure choosing the words and thinking allowed to be in the state.

Northern people stood up against the Roman Wolf in Teutoburger Wald or its neighbour-hood. The Viking Age became a defence against the Roman Wolf in the guise of the Holy Roman Empire. Again we are in armour against a wolf from south. Maybe they have to learn the lesson that the squared model for the south does not fit in the sparsely populated semi-arctic wilderness.

We are not used to a democracy that is not democracy but a guise. In general the Indo-European mind is not fitted for the Egyptian model of a central state. We all need to be in a free relationship with other groups of people as in nations. Code for the size of bananas and curve of cucumber is just too much.

The intellectual level of the southern commissioners or others does not impress me. They believe that we in Sweden should do with the same tax-level as in the overpopulated Southern Europe. That kind of the mathematics will give us much of the trouble in future because there are no reason and logic in it. It shows also the normal arrogance and disrespect that we find in every imperator we know about. Do never dictate what a democrat shall do.