upon their lords in terms of protection of their rights, especially insofar as these were claimed by other, neighboring lords. Related themes emerge in the following chapters in which, in a discussion of narrative in deposition re- cords and of Weistümer respectively, Teuscher considers the ways in which depositions came to be constructed not so much as verbatim reports but by the expectations of the legal matter in hand, and challenges the notion of an immutable law as transmitted in Weistümer. In short, this is an illuminating study, which grapples purposefully with the issue of how, in the particular context of German- and French-speaking Switzerland, law was used in multiple and complex ways and transmitted by parties who were moving in general terms toward a greater reliance on writ- ten form, but who were often committed to a sense of an old and established oral law. Teuscher offers both a valuable case study of later medieval legal de- velopment, as well as a more general reflection on the processes in the devel- opment of legal traditions and, in also making his work more widely available to an Anglophone readership, through this clear translation of a work first pub- lished in German in 2007, has produced a welcome and significant contribu- tion to this area of research. Phillipp Schofield Aberystwyth University Christine Ekholst, A Punishment for Each Criminal: Gender and Crime in Swedish Medieval Law, The Northern World Series, Leiden: Brill, 2014. Pp. 238. $142.00 cloth (ISBN 978-90-04-27144-9). doi:10.1017/S0738248015000140 Medieval historians generally dismiss Scandinavia as an oddity, distinctly un-European in its development, and, as such, incapable of offering insight into broader European trends. Nonetheless, the Sweden that Ekholst describes is conspicuously European. It experienced an all-too-familiar process of state formation, marked by transference of power from local notables who coordi- nated a judicial system based on individual compensation to centralized justice in which the king acquired a monopoly on punitive violence, and compensa- tion disappeared in favor of the death penalty. Ekholst also highlights how medieval Sweden contrasted with Europe: it had a higher percentage of free, land-owning peasants. Her book establishes how a study of gender in that con- text can offer powerful insight into broader discussions in medieval history. Ekholst’s work is broken into six chapters. Chapter one sets the foundation for understanding the complexity of Swedish law. Before centralized justice, Book Reviews 471