Frostating Law

The most famous quote from this law is "at lögum skal land várt byggja en eigi at ulögum øyða" (with law shall our land be built, and not desolated by lawlessness) which also appears in a number of Norse laws, and is inscribed on the illustrated memorial.

[2] The version that has come down to us dates from around 1260 in the time of Håkon Håkonsson (1217–1263),[1] who inscribed the first chapter with introductory amendments, although portions of the law are likely to be several hundred years older than that.

In 1280 the Thing more formally adopted the law and Magnus the Good (1035–1047) asked that it be written down.

The Håkon Håkonsson version is also known as the Codex Resenianus, after the historian Peder Hansen Resen who gave the only surviving version to the University of Copenhagen (unfortunately later destroyed in the 1728 fire at the Copenhagen Library).

In Norwegian it is found in the Norges gamle Love (I, 121–258) as Den ældre Frostathings-Lov.