As peace and security are essential to social development and prosperity,it is no wonder that people all around medieval Europe did their best to expand the scope of peace while trying to reduce the amount of unlawful behaviour and violence in society. The growth of the princes’ judicial powers, as displayed in laws, statutes and practice, played an important role in these efforts. In this paper the emergence of peace statutes is linked with the growth of royal power in later medieval Sweden, c. 1250-1500.

The lack of written sources prevents a student of Swedish legal history from reaching back into the very early Middle Ages, as documents only start to emerge with the Christianisation of the country. The Catholic church managed to stabilise and establish its position in Sweden around 1100, while the Christianisation process came to its end a century later. The role of the Church was important in transforming the oral legal tradition into written laws. The first layer, the provincial laws, written down in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, contain elements both of the ancient oral tradition and of new legislation. These laws were partly the work of private judges, partly of law commissions and confirmed by the king, but they all represent a compromise between the interests of magnates, the church and the king. The next step in expanding the royal legislative powers was taken by King Magnus Eriksson (r. 1319-65),on whose initiative the Town Law and Law of the Realm (countryside) were enacted about 1350. The Town Law remained in force until 1734, but the Law of the Realm was later replaced with the version given by King Christopher of Bavaria in 1442 (r. 1441-8). The peace legislation from the mid-thirteenth century was,therefore,the first form of nationwide Swedish law and the predecessor of royal statutory legislation, which emerged in the 1280s.

The peace legislation should be set in the context of the increasing role of the king as guarantor of his people's peace and justice. Peace legislation gave the king a reason to limit feuds and supplement the local justice system with the institution of the royal assizes. It also made the king a party to compositions and forfeitures, transforming justice into a profitable business, and generally making him the most important actor in the secular judicial system.