By Jackson Armstrong

On Friday 24^th and Saturday 25^th February 2017 our project hosted its first symposium, on the subject of ‘Cultures of Law in Urban Northern Europe’. This was funded by the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies (RIISS) and was held in the Craig Suite at the Sir Duncan C. Rice Library, University of Aberdeen.

After a welcome from Michael P. Brown on behalf of RIISS, and an introduction offered by Jackson Armstrong, the sessions, chaired by Anna Havinga, Adam Wyner, Andrew Mackillop and William Hepburn included the following presentations:

Graeme Small (Durham) and William Hepburn (Aberdeen) – Typology of the written record: materiality and process in the Aberdeen Council Registers

Christian Liddy (Durham) – The publication of law

David Ditchburn (TCD) – Time: Extracts from the Aberdeen Council Registers

Edda Frankot (Aberdeen) – Legal business outside the courts: private and public houses as spaces of law

John Ford (Aberdeen) – The Voyage of the James of Veere: Maritime Law in Aberdeen in the Early Sixteenth Century

Claire Hawes (Aberdeen) – Debt, Morality and the Law in fifteenth-century Aberdeen

Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz (Amsterdam) – Conflicts about property and inheritances in sixteenth century Danzig

Jelle Haemers (& Chanelle Delameillieure) (Leuven) – Jurisdiction and Marriage in the Fifteenth-Century ‘Registers of the Aldermen’ of Ghent and Leuven

Michael H. Brown (St Andrews) – Burghs and Regalities: Conflicts of Jurisdiction

Jörg Rogge (Mainz) – Pax Urbana – the use of law for the achievement of political goals

Andrew Simpson (Aberdeen) – Texts of the Medieval Scottish Common Law in the Aberdeen Council Registers

Jackson Armstrong (Aberdeen) – ‘Malice’ and motivation for hostility and non-lethal wounding

Joanna Kopaczyk (Edinburgh) – Language as code: language choices and functions in a multilingual legal culture

Anna Havinga (Aberdeen) – Language shift in the Aberdeen Council Registers

Adelyn Wilson (Aberdeen) – Legal education in Aberdeen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Proceedings on Friday 24^th also included a visit to Old Aberdeen House (Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives) with Phil Astley, and to St Machar Cathedral.

The objective of this first gathering was to present ‘gobbet’ style extracts from primary sources, and to raise questions for development illustrated by those extracts. We look forward to reconvening in 2018 to share draft papers developed from these initial questions and discussions, in collaboration for an edited collection of essays on the subject.