The double value is to be taken,
… non de sola patrisfamilias porcione sed de bonis communibus quotcunque fuerint cum patrefamilias in communione. Nam cum omnes lucrum respicerent in detentione non est mirum, si dampnum in ejusdem rei contingat omnibus restitutione.
… not from the portion of the paterfamilias alone, but from the common property, however many there may be with the paterfamilias in communione. For since all expect gain from the detention [of the thing stolen] it is not strange if all sustain loss in its restitution.
The paterfamilias in whose house the stolen property is found is evidently himself a member of a wider family group with common interests and liabilities. And the clause goes on to say that the accused must deny the charge with twelve co-swearers if the thing stolen be worth half a mark, or submit to the test of the ordeal of hot iron.
The resort to the ordeal if no co-swearers.
In Chapter XCIX. the ordeal of hot iron is described as having three forms: (1) that of walking on twelve red-hot plough-shares; (2) that called ‘trux iarn,’ applied to cases of theft: i.e. carrying an iron twelve feet and then throwing it into a basin; (3) that of carrying it nine paces and then casting it down: called, from the throwing, scuzs iarn. After the ordeal the feet or hands, as the case might be, were to be wrapped in cloth and sealed to prevent fraud, and so to remain till the sabbath, on which day it should be opened and viewed in order to ascertain the innocence or guilt of the accused.
This is one of the clauses which fixes the date of the Latin version, for the ordeal was abolished in A.D. 1215.[191]
On the whole, we may fairly conclude that the Scanian law when regarded from a tribal point of view affords additional evidence of family occupation or ownership and of the solidarity of the family group in Scandinavian society. But at the same time it shows that in Scandinavia, as elsewhere, family ownership was gradually succumbing to the new rules of individual ownership.
The same process of gradual disintegration of tribal usage is visible also in the chapters relating to wergelds.