Retsbevidsthed og social normering i Grønland før den europæiske kolonisation

Grønlandsk retshistorie

Abstract

This legal-historical inquiry examines legal consciousness and social normativity in pre-colonial Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), advancing the thesis that a dynamic array of customary norms—functionally equivalent to juridical rules in small-scale societies devoid of hierarchical authority or sovereign enforcement—sustained viable communal orders geared toward survival imperatives. These norms, evidenced through detailed regulation of property (e.g., first-occupancy principles for land and renewable resource territories marked by cairns or usage continuity, private ownership of movables such as kayaks, tools, weapons, tents, and dogs, nuanced partage of hunt proceeds prioritizing the initial harpooner or spear-owner while fostering egalitarianism, and lost property return obligations), family law (e.g., pragmatic, non-ritualized marriages arranged via family heads, polygyny among skilled hunters with hierarchical co-wife arrangements, incest taboos, a system of patrilineal inheritance favouring the eldest capable sons with maintenance duties for widows and minors, and contagion-avoidant corpse removal), criminal sanctions (e.g., blood feuds as expected retaliatory justice destabilizing settlements, differentiated homicide categories permitting preventive, merciful, or witchcraft-related killings while proscribing lust murder, tolerated necessity theft from communal depots, and punitive violence or shaming for egregious violations), and procedural mechanisms (e.g., song duels adjudicated by audience laughter as reputational shaming, teasing for minor disputes), evinced a robust proto-legal consciousness attuned to communal approbation and disapprobation.