Podcast appearance: Bishop Grimkell, and Anno 1024

Earlier this year, I was invited to participate in an episode of the podcast Anno 1024, a podcast dedicated to topics pertaining to the millennium anniversary of the so-called Moster thing, or Moster assembly, in Western Norway. The episode is available here (in Norwegian only).

The anniversary is based on the texts of two law collections which were written down sometime in the second half of the twelfth century. These collections are known as the Gulathing law code and the Frostathing law code. They are named after the two major law provinces of eleventh and twelfth century Norway. Gulathing - or the Gula assembly - covered most of the western seaboard of Southern Norway, from Sunnmøre to Agder, as well as various parts of the central valleys of the interior. Frostathing - or the Frosta assembly - covered the western seaboard from Romsdal and northwards, eventually also including Hålogaland, as well as parts of the hinterland of the Trondheim fjord. 

In the law codes, we read that the Christian law was introduced by King Olaf Haraldsson - the later Saint Olaf - and Bishop Grimkell at the Moster assembly, which has traditionally been dated to 1024. There is an ongoing debate about whether this claim is actually true, and whether there was an assembly at Moster, and also whether this was the starting point for introducing Christian legislation in Norway. It is clear that King Olaf did collaborate with ecclesiastics to strengthen royal control over the Norwegian juridical infrastructure of the time, and also to strengthen his legitimacy among the people. However, whether the introduction of Christian rules can be dated as precisely to one assembly, and whether there was an effort to reform the laws in the way described by the twelfth-century texts of the law codes, is highly uncertain. 

These are some of the questions that are discussed in the episode. While the host, Torgeir Landro, and I agree on the main issues, there are also other scholars who interpret the material differently.