The old provincial laws of Sweden are a great and important inheritance which this period has accumulated from heathen times. The laws were written down in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but they bear every evidence of high antiquity. Many strophes are found in them of the same meter as those on the tombstones of the Viking Age and those in which the songs of the Edda are chiefly written. In other instances the texts consist of alliterative prose, which proves its earlier metrical form. The expressions have, in places, remained heathen, although used by Christians, who are ignorant of their true meaning, as, for instance, in the following formula of an oath, in the West Gothic law: _Sva se mer gud hull_ (So help me the gods). In lieu of a missing literature of sagas and poetry, these provincial laws give a good insight into the character, morals, customs, and culture of the heathen and early Christian times of Sweden. From the point of philology they are also of great value, besides forming the solid basis of later Swedish law. How the laws could pass from one generation to another, without any codification, depends upon the fact that they were recited from memory by the justice (_lag-man_ or _domare_), and that this dignity generally was inherited for centuries, being carried by the descendants of one and the same family.[a] CHAPTER II NORWAY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY As early as 1790 negotiations took place between Count Armfeldt on behalf of Gustavus III of Sweden and various patriotic and influential Norwegians with a view to effecting a union between Norway and Sweden on equal terms, but the Norwegian negotiators expressed themselves unwilling to accept for Norway the government prevailing in Sweden. A minority of the patriots thought that the Danish yoke could only be broken by means of a union with Sweden, while a majority aimed at nothing less than absolute independence at any cost.