Introduction

The modern world began to emerge in Scandinavia in the eighteenth century. European Enlightenment movements influenced the intellectual foundations of all European legal cultures, and the Nordic kingdoms were no exception. Both religious reformers and Enlightenment thinkers contributed to the development that spurred new concepts about the natural world, society, citizenship, and the nature and science of humanity. Religious renewal and secularized discourses on natural law were part of the same Enlightenment campaign that shaped the modern world emerging in the Nordic kingdoms in the eighteenth century. The constantly growing administrations in Denmark-Norway and Sweden caused an increase in legal and nonlegal rules and thus contributed towards creating a multilayer normativity governing citizens’ actions and behavior. Professionalization also became the new ideal with regard to reformations of the court systems. Legal conflicts no longer would be solved by laymen or officials holding a degree in theology, but by professional lawyers.