I don't know... democrat-ish ideals maybe. It's the same law in Sweden and arguably the Scots got it from when the Danes ruled the land. (In these matters, you can rather safely lump together Danes, Swedes etc into a generic "Norse" category.)
And interestingly Denmark doesn't have this law. Sweden, Norway and Finland all have it, and they all have decently similar cultures. Denmark might be the outlier because of it's small size?