From Swords to Plowshares : Space and the Peace of the Home in Medieval Nordic Law, c. 1150–1350

In From Swords to Plowshares: Space and the Peace of the Home in Medieval Nordic Law, c. 1150–1350, Fraser Miller explores medieval Nordic peace legislation through a spatial perspective. He looks at how this unique form of legislation was used to regulate the domestic space in high medieval Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Gotland, and Sweden through an inter-Nordic comparison of the extant medieval Nordic laws. It is the first work of its kind to subject all of the laws from the period to an inter-Nordic legal comparison, and to employ a spatial theoretical perspective in such a study. Domestic peace regulations established special protections for the home and farmstead against different types of violence. But what types of violence, the areas and legal subjects that enjoyed such protections, and the level of that protection, varied considerably in the laws. The uneven development of legal protections, behavioural demands, and restrictions transformed the space of the home and wider farm into a patchwork of norms. This phenomenon, which Miller designates “peace zoning”, highlights the heated negotiation of the domestic space taking place in the Nordic legal arena in the High Middle Ages. This is a doctoral thesis in History at Stockholm University, Sweden 2025