The Law of the Realm of Sweden, 1736.

Sweriges Rikes Lag – Gillad och antagen på Riksdagen, Åhr 1734.

The Law of the Realm of Sweden – Approved and decided by the Parliament, in the Year 1734.

(Stockholm : Tryckt uti Historiographi Regni Tryckerij [Printed in the Press of the Historiographer of the Realm], 1736). Contemporary brown full leather binding, front cover detached.

The new national Code of Sweden (including Finland) of 1734, enacted in 1736, was the product of one of the longest-lived Royal Commissions in Swedish history, appointed in 1686. The Code of 1734 is still formally in force. It was originally divided into the following books: Marriage, Parents, Inheritance, Land, Building, Commerce, Crimes, Judicial Procedure and the Execution of Judgments, respectively. The Code has been described as “the jewel in the crown of Swedish statutory measures of the premodern era” (Heikki Pihlajamäki in Comparative Legal History, 2019) and it still has a high symbolic value. Later legislative reforms have been successive and partial.

Provenance notes. This copy has been heavily used, shown in part by extensive underlining and notes in Latin and Swedish throughout, particularly on numerous blank leaves at the end. – It appears that we can reconstruct a very interesting ownership history for this volume. The inscriptions “J af N” and “Joh Mag Nordin” on the title page probably indicate ownership by the influential Swedish judge, civil servant, politician, and industrialist Johan Magnus af Nordin (1746–1823). In 1777, he became one of the few circuit judges (häradshövdingar) at the time who was not a nobleman. However, he was ennobled in 1788, adding “af” to his former family name, and was made a friherre (baron) in 1800. He was known as an intriguer, but he was also a faithful supporter of a strong royal power. One of his final positions was as governor of the province Kopparberg (Dalarna, in the middle of Sweden). – The blue stamp on the title page with a lion’s head and the name “Carl Gustaf” may well refer to Count Carl Gustaf “Lewenhaupt” (“Lion’s head” in old German) (1834–1908) who (in 1869) married Olga af Nordin (1847–1895). She was the daughter of Gustaf af Nordin (1799–1867; ennobled and adopted his uncle’s noble name af Nordin in 1807), who was the son of Johan Magnus af Nordin’s younger brother, the bishop, politician, and collector of manuscripts Carl Gustaf Nordin (1749–1812). Gustaf af Nordin was Sweden’s chargé d’affaires in Washington, D.C., 1838–45, and Sweden’s Ambassador in St. Petersburg, 1845–56. There he met the mother of Olga, the wealthy Russian Princess Helena Sergeiewna Stcherbatova (Russian patronymic, Щербатова). Count Carl Gustaf Lewenhaupt bought the Aske manor, near Stockholm, in 1872 and the family sold it in 1948. In the same year (on August 27, 1948), the UMN Law Library purchased this volume.