Verner Goldschmidt: Danish Sociologist of Law and Culture

Verner Goldschmidt (1916-82), Danish sociologist of law and culture, is known mainly for his longitudinal cultural sociological and legal studies in Greenland. He drew up the bill for the criminal code for Greenland, based on legal anthropological studies at the West coast, and he studied the Arctic peace model for criminal justice and the possibility of resolving conflict without violence in other societal situations (Cyprus). In 1964, at the University of Copenhagen, he founded the curriculum in cultural sociology for the faculty of humanities as a reaction to the positivistic development of the sociological discipline at the faculty of economics and social science. He also built up the department of cultural sociology. The following presentation concentrates on his participation in the juridical expedition to West-Greenland 1948-50, his current studies of the development after the enactment of the Greenlandic criminal code, his dissertation on the behaviour of the judicial authorities and the Arctic peace model, and his contribution to conflict resolution without violence.