ABSTRACT
The Liber legis Scaniae was earlier known as a "paraphrase" of the Law of Scania due to its reliable rendering of the Old Danish text. It is a thesis underlying the present translation that this denomination underestimates the importance of the Latin text and its author. Readers of this Latin version of the Law of Scania may have been found among students at the cathedral school and among those who in their daily life were confronted with questions of law. For anybody knowing Latin, reading the text of Anders Sunesen would be a shortcut to an understanding of Scanian law even if the Danish text is written in a comprehensible and rather clear Danish. The purpose of the Liber legis Scaniae thus seems to have been both didactic and practical. In some manuscripts the Liber legis Scaniae ends with the words "composuit ad utilitatem totius terre", thus indicating "that the work was done for the benefit of the whole province".
