SOURCE AND GENRE
Den ældre Gulathings-Lov (Gulaþingslög), Christian Norwegian provincial law, chapter/section 27 (“Um bruðlaups gerðir”), printed pp.16–17 in Keyser–Munch's edition. DISPOSITION: READY WITH QUALIFICATIONS.
OLD NORSE
oc .xiii. dagar iola. En ef þeim dögrom tecr maðr kono er nu talda ec. þa scal beöta firi þat aura .iij. biscope.
TRANSLATION
“And the thirteen days of Jól. If a man takes a wife on the days I have now listed, he must pay a fine of three aurar to the bishop.” The prohibition is part of a list of disallowed marriage times, not a general description of feasting.
DIRECTLY ATTESTED
This edited law text explicitly counts thirteen days of Jól within a Christian marriage-regulation calendar and prescribes an ecclesiastical fine for taking a wife at prohibited times.
CONTEXTUAL
The immediately preceding restrictions include Sundays/fasting and periods around Christian festivals. The edition’s apparatus gives “xiiii — B” for the thirteen-day numeral: another indicated textual branch reads fourteen, so thirteen is specifically the edited main text, not an invariant reading across witnesses. B's full text or parchment has not been independently examined.
MY INTERPRETATION
The wording proves that an extended Christmas/Jól legal calendrical interval was recognized in this law's main edited form. It can inform medieval Christian scheduling, but does not itself measure everyday celebration length.
NOT ESTABLISHED
Thirteen uninterrupted days of feasting or drinking; a fixed pagan thirteen-day Jól; identical day counts in every manuscript and legal tradition; universal observance of the rule.
FIND IT YOURSELF
Rudolf Keyser and P. A. Munch, eds., Norges gamle Love indtil 1387, vol. I: Den ældre Gulathings-Lov (Christiania: Chr. Gröndahl, 1846), §27, printed pp.16–17, especially p.17 and footnote “xiiii — B.” Proofread transcription of edition page: https://no.wikisource.org/wiki/Side:Norges_gamle_Love_indtil_1387_Bd._1_017.jpg ; full chapter: https://www.heimskringla.no/wiki/Gula%C3%BEingsl%C3%B6g_%28Gulatingsloven%29 . The textual body and published apparatus note were checked; the B-witness manuscript and modern legal critical editions were not independently collated. SL-072-A–C.
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CHRONOLOGIES
(1) Represented/regulatory: Christian medieval Norwegian provincial legal practice, not a dated pagan event. (2) Textual formation: legal material accumulated/reworked in medieval Christian centuries before and during manuscript transmission, rather than a single demonstrable year of original composition. (3) Witness and consultation: preserved in multiple legal manuscript readings; the 1846 printed edited text and its explicitly printed “B” variant note were inspected through a proofread page transcription with scan linkage. No original manuscript was autopsied.
VARIANTS AND DEPENDENCIES
JÓL-072 and the catalogue's earlier Gulaþing-law JÓL-002 concern different laws in the same corpus, not independent manuscript traditions. Christian day-numbering provisions in other lawbooks (JÓL-077/078) are separate legal texts, but cannot be pooled to reconstruct an unattested pagan calendar.