Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
THE NORDIC MARITIME CODE
Hugo Tiberg*
The Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, have enacted a new Maritime Code (MC),1
which incorporates much of the Hamburg Rules, although the participating countries have not ratified Hamburg and formally adhere to Hague-Visby. The new Code also contains rules on affreightment but otherwise mostly reiterates the provisions of the old Code from 1891 and other legislation pertaining to ships and shipping. Iceland alone retains the joint Nordic legislation of the 1890s with its various amendments. This account,2
will look briefly into the new Chapters 13 and 14.
General
Code references
The Nordic Codes were hitherto based on common drafts prepared in the 1880s to 1890s and enacted, so far as Sweden is concerned, in 1891. Their carriage of goods rules, amended in 1936, were substantially identical and had identical section numbering. The substantial similarity remains in the 1994 Code, with few exceptions; but section numbers now differ between Denmark and Norway, on the one hand, and Finland and Sweden, on the other. The Danish-Norwegian text has running section numbers through the Code, while the Finnish-Swedish system has new section numbers for each chapter. This article will cite Swedish chapter and section numbers first (e.g., 13:22, meaning Chap. 13, s. 22) with the corresponding Danish-Norwegian section number in brackets.3 “Nordic” will be used hereinafter to refer to the four participating nations, thus excluding Iceland.
Vessel centered and goods centered carriage
Chapters 13 and 14, into which the Code divides carriage, are called On Carriage of General Cargo4 and On Affreightment5 of Vessels. The distinction, which really contemplates the division between vessel and goods centred transport, manifestly limps:
* Professor of Law, University of Stockholm.
1. Published in English with a Swedish parallell text issued by Juristförlaget Stockholm 1995 (Axel Ax:son Johnson Maritime Law Institute Publications No. 16). Citations are of the translation.
2. This account is based on two longer articles in [1995] Svensk Juristtidning (Swedish Law Journal), References therein will be omitted here.
3. The Axel Ax:son Johnson translation uses the same system for Chaps 13 and 14.
4. The Swedish “styckegodstransport” means literally “piece-goods transport”.
5. The Axelsson Johnson translation employs “chartering” as a more generally used term. “Affreightment” to many has become reserved for quantity contracts for unspecified vessels, which in the Code has a special heading.
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