ættleiðing (ON) noun

Adoption, in the sense of taking a freeborn person into another ætt (see æt), is not mentioned in medieval Nordic law. (A possible exception is Jó V 9, which contains a provision for adoption of brothers or nephews, though it is unclear whether they are illegitimate.) The ættleiðing was the act of officially recognizing an illegitimate child and including it in the kin, thus giving it the right to inherit and partake of odal right. To begin with, this arrangement seems to have been used to adopt illegitimate children of unfree women into their father’s kin. In addition, however, other children born out of wedlock could be adopted in this way (e.g. slaves), and this became the only way of legitimization after the disappearance of slavery.

The act had to be performed in a special ceremony, described at length in the GuL (Løb, ch. 58). The legitimizer (the father) was obliged to give an ale feast with ale brewed from 3 sáld (ca. 290 l) of malt according to the measure used in Hordaland (Western Norway) and slaughter a three-year-old bull. He had to flay the skin off the right foreleg, make a shoe of it and place it beside the ale cask. He who was to legitimize must be the first to put on the shoe, then the one who was to be legitimized, then the one who was to grant him inheritance, then the one who was to grant him the odal right, then the other kinsmen. The father had to state that ‘I conduct this man to the property that I give him, and to wergild and gift, to seat and to settle, to fines and to [payment of] wergild, and to all personal rights, as if his mother had been bought with bride price’. A brother and a sister might legitimize a brother with themselves, and a father’s brother a brother’s son. A nookling and a scrubling (ON hornungr (q.v.) and hrísungr (q.v.)) might be legitimized in the same way as the son of a bondwoman. Other kinsmen might be legitimized and granted inheritance in the same way, if the nearest heir consented. He whom the father gave his freedom before he was 15 years old might also be legitimized, but all those who were in the same class as him with respect to inheritance had to give their consent.

The procedure described in the FrL (ArbB, ch.1) is less detailed and somewhat different. An important addition is the sentence that allows for the legitimization of a slave who had been given his freedom. (Whether this means that the slave in question was only partly or completely free, i.e. having given his freedom ale, is not clear.)

The ONorw provincial laws require the ceremony to take place at an ale feast, probably in order to make the act publicly known. It also had to be announced in public every 20 years until the adoptee had received his inheritance; from then on his inheritance testified for him the rest of his life and ever after.

The OSw verb for legitimization was ætleþa (q.v.); ODan used the phrase takæ i æt mæþ sæ ‘take into one’s æt’. In OSw and ODan law legitimization was a necessary element in the manumission of a slave, because only a free person could be adopted into a free kin. The ÄVgL (Äb 21) also mentions legitimization of children born out of wedlock. Legitimization had to take place in the assembly. In Scania a freed slave was adopted into a kin in the assembly (SkL 126). As in Norway the ættleiðing had to be performed by a special ritual, e.g. a previous notice of 7 nights (OSw siunættinger, q.v.) before the act could take place, the acceptance of the owner (to give his slave freedom), the payment of ransom, and the presentation of oath-bound men. The details are somewhat different in the various OSw laws.

adoption OIce Jó Kge 9
OIce Js Ert 16
ONorw FrL ArbB 1
ONorw MLL Ert 8
legitimation ONorw GuL Løb Refs:

Bagge 2010, 218; Helle 2001, 15, 127, 138; Hertzberg s.v. ættleiðing; Iversen 1997, 229, 231, 264, 267; KLNM s.v.v. adoption, træl, ætt, ættleiing; Nevéus 1974, 48, 80−82, 103−04, 128−29, 150−51; RGA² s.v. geschlechtsleite; Robberstad 1981, 349; Schlyter s.v.v. ætleþa, ætleþer; Strauch 2016, 53, 94−96; Tamm and Vogt 2016, 20