Reviewing the presence of animals in law is always a fascinating experience.
Laws tell us so much about how communities work, how they want to work, and how people think or are expected to think.
Regarding bears, the laws more often or not fall into two categories: rules around the hunting of bears, and the consequences of death or injury to livestock and humans. So far, so unsurprising. But we also get rules about tamed bears (in Iceland described similarly to dogs), or the penalty for breeding these animals, and the recognition in the Västgöta laws of bears as a "superior force" (ofsæsli).
The laws of Jutland and Scania talk of men raising wolf pups and bear cubs:
If a man raises wild animals such as a wolf pup or a bear cub, for whatever harm they do, full compensation shall be paid by those who raised them and have them in their possession [1]
while the Icelandic Grágás equates fierce dogs and bears raised in captivity:
If a man sets a fierce dog or a bear reared in captivity on someone, the penalty is lesser outlawry if no harm is done, but full outlawry if there is any visible mark of it or if he falls…[2]
In the Gulathing law, we find the death of animals by bears labelled as negligence:
if a bear attacks [it] or wolves rend [it], or if it falls out over a cliff, no herdsman being near—that too, is his negligence.[3]
In contrast, the Older Västgöta Law lists death of animals by wolves as negligence (if the herder cannot recover the remains), but bears and illness, as “superior forces”, which meant that the herder could not be held responsible for these occurrences:
If livestock perishes by bear or sickness, this is considered as superior force (ofæsli). One is responsible for wolves as for neglect if the remains of the livestock cannot be recovered.[4]
Were bears in some areas then seen as preventable and others not? Were there greater expectations laid on herders in certain locations? Did the bear hold a different status in different places?
I don't know what to make of it (yet), but it gives us just one example of how variation in attitudes or beliefs towards these animals existed across the medieval North.
Image credit: Harald Johnsen Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
[1] Helle Vogt and Ditlev Tamm, eds., ‘The Law Of Jutland: Translation’, in The Danish Medieval Laws (Routledge, 2016), 264; Helle Vogt and Ditlev Tamm, eds., ‘The Law Of Scania: Translation’, in The Danish Medieval Laws (Routledge, 2016), 74. [2] Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, and Richard Perkins, eds., Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás I (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1980), 147. Also tame white bears mentioned in: Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, and Richard Perkins, eds., Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás II (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2000), 203–4, 355. [3] Laurence Marcellus Larson, The Earliest Norwegian Laws: Being the Gulathing Law and Frostathing Law (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935), 69. [4] Thomas Lindkvist, ‘The Older Västgöta Law’, in The Västgöta Laws (Routledge, 2021), 51.
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