--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, mike garcia <exavierstud@...> wrote:

>
> Heill llama,
>
> Thanks for this! I am curious, do you know the date of this law?

No, this is a bit complicated. The main body of the Elder Laws of the
West Gauts (Modern Swedish: Äldre Vestgötalagen) are preserved in a
manuscript from the 1280s ( Codex Holm. B 59;see Gordon: Introduction
to Old Norse, p. 169), but they may have been put together some
decades earlier, perhaps in the 1220s [
http://hem.passagen.se/peter9/lag/vgindex.html ]. However, the
section entitled 'heþnalagh' "heathen law" is only "extant in modern
copies but ultimately from a 13th century lawbook of Upplandic origin"
(Foote and Wilson: The Viking Achievement). Of course, if the name is
anything to go by, it must be older still.

> It is
> showing a Tradition on the insult stick (which I have found rare

accounts

> of this being mentioned anywhere)?

This is called 'níðstöng' in Old Norse. I don't know much about this,
except what I've read in Egils saga.