THIRTEENTH-CENTURY Scandinavian law codes describe a levy that may be conceived of as a naval militia. Such levies existed in Denmark, Norway and Sweden in similar, though not identical, forms. On the basis of territorial subdivisions into skipæn, districts responsible for supplying a ship, and of these districts into hafnæ responsible for furnishing a member of the crew, the kings of Denmark had, in theory, a fleet of about one thousand ships at their disposal. They had sizeable naval forces but raised them in a unique way, very different from states in the seventeenth century and later.

The age of this organisation, called in Old Norse leiðangr, Danish leding, is disputed, as are the contents of the provincial laws in general. Older generations of scholars were prepared to seek the origins of the laws in a remote Tacitean past while in recent scholarship it has been claimed that they were basically new rules, intended to change the law in Scandinavia, not to record or conserve ancient customary law. It has recently been argued that the code of Jutland was meant to complete and supersede older legislation, like the code of Skåne, and that it was intended as a national law; only the death of Valdemar II in 1241 prevented its raification at all provincial courts.