Learning cooperation from the commons
2019
Berge, Erling
The paper discusses the link between commons as they might have been used inprehistoric Norway and the rules concerning the exploitation of the commons asfound in the oldest known legislation for regions of Norway, Gulating Law andFrostating Law. One clear social dilemma has been identified: the setting of acommon date for moving animals from the home fields up to the summer farmsand home again in the fall. The problem was obvious and the solution notparticularly difficult to institute. Many more problems were of course present,but they did not rise to the level of a social dilemma. All such problems weremanaged by the rules enacted by the bygdeting along with other problems of acommunity. In particular the process of inheritance, the problems of fencing,how to change borders between neighbours and between individually ownedfields and the commons, were treated by extensive rules. The bygdetingmanaged such issues from prehistory until the 16th and 17th centuries whenreforms initiated by the Danish-Norwegian kings started to take effect, makingthe rule-of-law more uniquely a task for the central authorities and of lessconcern for the local communities. Maybe the basic legacy of the long historyof local rule was a strong belief in the court system, that it would secure the oldsaying: "By law the land shall be built, not with unlaw wasted".
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Este registro bibliográfico ha sido proporcionado por Norwegian University Library of Life Sciences