Christianisation of Scandinavia

The meeting of old tradition and religion with Christianity has been described and interpreted in different ways. An one end, some see a harsh break, the two sides clashing and
Christianity more or less violently overcoming the old ways. At the other end is the idea that, while controversies did occur, there was a gradual change towards new ideas and
practices. In southeastern Norway, the change from traditional pagan Viking graves to Christian graves happened during the 10th and 11th centuries. The graves are usually classified
as pagan or Christian by grave goods or lack thereof, grave type, and/or location. The distinctions are however not always straight forward. The paper will present examples
of graves that do not fit the norm, and discuss how they may partake in a better understanding of the interplay between new and old traditions in a time of change.

This is the presentation that I give within the course "Medeltidens Europa" at the University of Gothenburg. The 60-minute lecture (40+20 minutes) is followed by group work in which students try their hand in medieval source criticism and analysing artwork.

Summary. Seven small tiles of green porphyry
and one of serpentine have been found in Sigtuna.
They are likely to have been used in portable
altars. This high number is unique in Scandinavia
and can only be compared with six porphyry
tiles found in Hedeby/Schleswig.
Red, black and green porphyry was prized by
the emperors in Rome and Constantinople and
later by Early Medieval monarchs. Green porphyry
was quarried in Greece. These quarries
were not in use during the Early Middle Ages.
Instead, the material was scavenged from the remains
of Roman buildings and reused e.g. to
cover the reliquaries in portable altars.
The Sigtuna tiles probably came from the ruins of
Cologne.
The Sigtuna tiles are particularly interesting
since they were not found in Medieval churches,
but when excavating the town plots. They appear
in contexts dated to the 11th and 12th centuries.
The earliest finds date from a time when there is
no archaeological or written evidence of any
churches, even wooden ones, in Sigtuna. It is
therefore suggested here that Christian cult then
took place in private banqueting halls, which
seem to have stood at the far end of each of the
more than hundred town plots in Sigtuna.
The first wooden churches were probably
built c. 1060 when a bishopric was established in
Sigtuna. About 1100 the building of six or seven
Romanesque stone churches commenced. They
are among the oldest masonry structures in all of
Sweden. Except for the cathedral in the middle
of town, all churches were built along a new
street, parallel to and north of the main street and
the settlement area. Sigtuna’s church topography
reflects an intention to create a sacred townscape
for ceremonial processions where both King and
God were praised. It also reflects the idea of the
holy and heavenly city.

This paper questions how prevalent Christianity was in Sweden by the time the King of the Swedes officially converted in c. 1008, using mortuary evidence. Burials are used as evidence for practice rather than identity. I summarise and identify five major characteristics for identifying Christian burial practice, and use these characteristics as a method for determine the proportion of Christian practice in Sweden. The paper uses two case studies, a rural cemetery on Gotland, and a wic cemetery at Birka.

"Under perioden 11 oktober till 22 december 2010 utförde
Arkeologikonsult en slutundersökning av gravfältet
Spånga 193:1-2 i norra Stockholm. Gravfältet
har av allt att döma hört till den före detta byn Rissne.
Undersökningen föranleddes av att Trafikverket
planerade bygga en ny trafikplats vid det så kallade
Rissnekorset som en del av utbyggnaden av E18.
Föreliggande rapport är en redovisning av slutundersökningen
och dess resultat.
Antalet undersökta gravar uppgick till drygt femtio.
Tillsammans med de nio gravar som undersöktes
1969 bör gravfältet totalt ha omfattat cirka sextio
gravar. Alla gravar utom en var anlagda enligt tidigkristen
sed med jordande av de döda, men med
inslag av förkristna föreställningar och spår av handlingar
i syfte att avvärja gengångare. Gravfältet har
varit i bruk fram till senare delen av 1000-talet e.Kr.
När de första gravarna uppfördes är inte helt klarlagt.
Samtliga var dock vikingatida."

During the 1972 rescue excavation prior to a motorway construction project in the Swedish region of Södermanland, a previously unknown Viking Age burial ground was found near the farmstead of Årby in Turinge parish. The find included some early Christian graves as well as a boat grave that resembled a pre-Christian burial of a wealthy lady of the late Birka period. However, over the following 40 years, archaeology has developed new concepts and methods that seem to challenge this idea. Thus, a recent object ‘autopsy’ revealed that the boat grave dates from a much later period than previously assumed. This raises some interesting questions regarding the ecclesiastical organization in the 11th century. Why, all of a sudden, revive ancient burial rites? Was it an attempt by the people of Turinge to reconnect with ‘a lost world’? (Tesch, this volume.) In this paper, I intend to explain some of the details that contributed to the re-evaluation of the Turinge boat grave.

Until the end of the 12th century Mecklenburg-region belonged to the Slavic dominated areas of the southern Baltic region, which remained in pagan believe. Christianity established itself finally with the immigration of Christian settlers from the west of the empire around 1200. This historical change is illustrated by few archaeological finds. Testimonies to this process include the holder of polycandelon-type chandelier, a nodus as part of a cross-base or candlekstick, and fragments of romanesque censers, all of which were discovered during systematic detector searches by volunteer archaeologists on late-slavonic settlement sites and in a castle.

The aim of this paper is to discuss some aspects of early Christianity in Rus', especially the role played by people of Scandinavian descent, known until the end of the tenth century as Rus' and subsequently as Varangians, and whether that role may explain the receptivity of early Christianity in Rus' that still found expression in the twelfth century, for instance in the adoption of a sequence of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian martyrs in the litany of a Russian prayer.1 In that discussion a phenomenon that I have tentatively labelled "Varangian Christianity" will play a major role, as will some reflections on the spread of early Christianity into the territory of present-day Finland prior to its integration into Sweden and the Roman Church as a result of crusades starting in the twelfth century. With regard to Christianity in Rus' as well as in Finland, the veneration of the Norwegian king and martyr St Olav, who is one of the martyrs mentioned in the litany, will also be touched upon.

"Abstract:  "Whenever discussing the Christianization of Scandinavia, the Lake Mälaren area comes into mind. A large number of rural burial grounds with early Christian graves has been excavated, making this region an ideal point of departure. But, the Mälaren region is more than mere countryside. Here, we also find the town Sigtuna, founded c. 980, allowing us to distinguish between urban and rural burial practices. In urban environments, such as Sigtuna, early burials are relatively uniform and influenced by the Christian standard. At the same time, the situation in rural areas might be best described as “anything goes”. This is usually attributed to a weak ecclesiastical organization. It seems plausible that the diversity seen in rural burials can be connected to the enormous production of rune stones during this period. Should rune stones, thus, be understood a sign of a society in crisis? The old ideology was strongly dependent on ancestral cult that tied individuals to particular farmsteads (oðal). A key question is whether religious hybridity also should be understood as a form of resistance, not against Christianity as such but against new Christian concepts that threatened this ancient oðal ideology – that is monarchy, the church and the individual ownership of land according to canon law. Recent archaeology provides many clues that might contribute to our new understanding of the Christianization of Scandinavia as a process of social change. Hence, individual changes in dress symbols, imagery and building structures, as well as changes in communications by land and sea do not only reflect change on an individual basis but on a greater scale.

The project´s starting-point is a boat grave in which a woman had been buried with dress adornments that (for untrained eyes) may seem generic for a 10th century burial. But a good scientist should never trust first impressions! Instead, the burial took place much later, in a time, when Christianity had been well established in the area. Nonetheless, the heirs chose to stage the burial in a pre-Christian style. The question is of course, why? Another question would be:  is this kind of retrospective burial practice a typical phenomenon during the introduction phase of Christianity in Mälaren region?

As a theoretical framework, we are trying to implement the modern concept of hybridity. Thus, rather than identifying individuals as either Christian or Pagan, many of them should more properly be characterized as both! This new approach might contribute to our understanding of religious identity."

Other papers from the project in the same publication:

Gunilla Larsson. The Boat as a Symbol in a Changing Society.

Michael Neiß. A Lost World? A re-evaluation of the boat grave at Årby in Turinge parish, Södermanland, Sweden.

In this text, it is argued that we need to take the issue of alterity seriously to avoid categorizing the post-burial practices into contemporary western dichotomizing concepts. Inspired from recent research within the “ontological turn” it is suggested that we need to rethink familiar concepts such as burial, grave, individual, death and mortal remains and explore other dimensions of the old burials as they may have appeared to the recently Christianized Late Iron Age communities.

För äldre forskning om Mälarområdets kristnande har Adam av Bremens skrift om ärkestiftet Hamburg-Bremens historia från 1070-talets mitt haft stor betydelse. Det av Adam beskrivna hednatemplet i (Gamla) Uppsala uppfattades länge som en symbol för motståndet mot ärkestiftets missionssträvanden, för vilka Sigtuna fungerade som brohuvud. Adams krönika har också legat till grund för den utbredda uppfattningen att kristendomen skulle haft det svårare att få fotfäste i Mälarområdet än i andra delar av Skandinavien. De hedniska motreaktioner som omnämns i senare källor och som sägs ha förekommit fram till omkring år 1130 ger också en bild av ett samhälle som under en lång tid befann sig i ett kristillstånd, vacklande mellan olika former av religiöst präglade livstolkningar. Även det utdragna runstensristandet har tolkats i samma riktning.
Som kontrast till det begränsade och många gånger subjektiva skriftliga källmaterialet finns ett omfattande arkeologiskt material, framförallt gravar, som är samtida med det aktuella skeendet och som kan användas för att ge en mer nyanserad och ”opartisk” beskrivning av kristnandeprocessen än vad kyrkans ovanifrånperspektiv kan ge. Med utgångspunkt från detta material kommer jag i den här artikeln att diskutera några för skiftet avgörande frågor. En sådan är om Mälarområdets kristnande varit mer utdraget jämfört med andra regioner i Skandinavien - eller om det bara varit annorlunda? Det som framförallt skiljer Mälarområdet från andra regioner är de många gravfälten med tidigkristna gravar som undersökts under senare år och bristen på arkeologiska belägg för tidiga träkyrkor. Hur ska detta tolkas? En annan central fråga är vilken betydelse Sigtuna som kunglig stödjepunkt och kristen centralort haft för Mälarområdets kristnande. Slutligen diskuteras om den bild av kristnandeprocessen som det arkeologiska materialet ger kan ses som uttryck för ett mer eller mindre medvetet motstånd, inte mot kristendomen som sådan, utan mot de samhällsförändringar som följde i kyrkans kölvatten. I en epilog skärskådas missionsbiskoparna Adalvards respektive Eginos karriärer och deras gemensamma projekt att förstöra hednatemplet i (Gamla) Uppsala.
Artikeln omfattar perioden från Sigtunas grundläggning under slutet av 900-talet till och med 1100-talets andra hälft då en mer stabil kyrkoorganisatorisk utveckling började ta fart.

The Viking Age and early medieval period in Denmark was marked by extensive social, political and religious change but also strong continuity. Following the Conversion to Christianity old norms and beliefs were gradually replaced by new ways of thinking, new institutions and practices, even by new fashions in both dress and ornament. A wide variety of ornaments dating from the ninth to the twelfth centuries have been recovered over the past decades, the vast majority by means of private metal detector usage. Many of the jewellery motifs resemble those depicted in contemporary coinage or in the architecture and inventory of early churches but whereas coins and church buildings were very much associated with the upper levels in society, the small items for personal use, most of them of copper alloy, offer a different perspective on changing fashions and the integration of Christian beliefs in late Viking-Age and early medieval Denmark.

„Þá gaf hann Þór hamarinn ok sagði, at hann myndi mega ljósta svá stórt sem hann vildi, hvat sem fyrir væri, at eigi myndi hamarrinn bila, ok ef hann yrpi honum til, þá myndi hann aldri missa ok aldri fljúga svá langt, at eigi myndi hann sækja heim hönd, ok ef þat vildi, þá var hann svá lítill, at hafa mátti serk sér. En þat var lýi á, ar forskeftit var heldr skammt“ . Со оглед на тоа што поголемиот дел од песните и сагите настанале по завршувањето на Викиншката ера, останува отворено прашањето дали Хардвуеровите амулетки биле адаптирани за да одговараат на митот или обратно.
Поради тоа, целта на овој труд е подробна семиотичка анализа на овие навидум декоративни амајлии кои пред сѐ, не биле обичен накит, модна апликација или "статусен симбол"  за нивните носители, но самиот Торов чекан кој одразувајќи мал дел на божественоста со реална магична моќ, се обидувал истата да ја исползува во поттикување на реални аспекти на животот - заштита, плодност и ревитализација. Дали позади превезот на херкуловата суровица споменета во Такитовата Германија е сокриена постара традиција за носење на опредметена молња или нејзината појава е инвеција како знак на криза во локалната религија по доаѓањето на христијанските мисионери и противтежа на крстниот знак?

2018. ‘Processes of Religious Change in Late-Iron Age Gotland: Rereading, Spatialisation, and Enculturation’, in Place and Space in the Medieval World, ed. Meg Boulton, Heidi Stoner, and Jane Hawkes. Routledge Research in Art History 1 (London: Routledge): 32-46.

The Christianisation of Scandinavia was a fundamental change to religious life at the close of the Iron Age (c. 1000-1100AD). Modern scholarship has sought to investigate not only the transformations brought about by this shift, but also the survivals of earlier phenomena. This article seeks to examine evidence for both continuity and change during the Christianisation of Gotland, establishing – as far as is possible – the state of pre-Christian sacral places, particularly vé. Using Guta saga’s account of the first churches built in Gotland as a catalyst for comparative study, the subjective changes undergone by such sites during church-building are examined, and issues of spatial control and inculturative Christianisation are investigated. On the basis of findings from this study it is argued that the Christianisation of Gotland was a nuanced process of preservation and alteration, not a simple one-for-one replacement of one religion by another, and was both responsive to and driven by spatial issues. (154 words)

As a result of the publication of some major excavations in Sigtuna, we are now able to make firm contextual and functional interpretations of the various early medieval town plots. We can also evaluate the different parts of the town for similarities and differences. One subject that can be studied is early medieval literacy, and finds connected with this suggest that writing was already an important part of daily life in the 10th and 11th centuries. Together with runic inscriptions on bones, the evidence comprises several styli and at least one wax tablet. It seems fair to deduce that the importance of reading and writing increased as a result of a closer connection to the Christian church and the establishment of an episcopate in 1060. The excavation of the Professorn site in 1999-2000 is not yet published, but the finds suggest writing activities at a possible clerical level; while the runes written on a rib from a late-11th century context may possibly offer us the first known name of an ecclesiastic in Sigtuna:  a “Master Nicholas”. The report from the major excavation at the Trädgårdsmästaren site in 1988-90 provides the opportunity to describe activities, international contacts and even (family?) continuity spanning over generations on specific plots. Alongside goldsmiths and jewellers we can also trace the presence of scribes and painters, represented by writing tools and pigment finds. This paper does not offer a final synthesis of this topic but should rather be read as a first overall view of the possibilities hidden in the Sigtuna finds, with the aim of inspiring research in the future.

Nærmer man sig det arkæologiske museum i Frankfurt, mødes man af synet af en smuk gammel klosterbygning opført af Karmeliterordenen.
Selve klosteret er fra ca. 1240, og opførelsen af dets gotiske kirke startede i 1270. Det monumentale og smukke kirkeskib er naturligvis museets hjerte, og det var her, Archäologisches Museum i Frankfurt og Nationalmuseet i februar 2017 åbnede udstillingen Odin, Thor und Freyja – Skandinavische Kultplätze des 1. Jahrtausends n. Chr. und das Frankenreich finansieret af Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond, Kulturfond Frankfurt RheinMain og Kulturdezernat Frankfurt
am Main. Et tema i udstillingen handlede om samspillet mellem de hedenske danere i nord og de kristne frankere i syd i perioden omkring
800-tallet. I begge samfund satte religiøse forestillinger og rituelle handlinger i høj grad de politiske dagsordener, og det er tydeligt, hvordan
udvekslinger mellem de to samfund har været en væsentlig faktor i magtens udformning og fysiske fremtræden. Ud fra det perspektivdykker
denne artikel ned i en håndfuld af de fortællinger, der blev fremhævet i tilknytning til de udstillede genstande.

There is a growing acceptance that pre-Christian religion in the Nordic region was not a single monolithic cultural system, but rather varied along a range of geographic, social, temporal, and even cognitive axes. Despite this, relatively little scholarly attention has yet been paid to distinct articulations of Late Iron Age Nordic religion, with both the physical and social settings of religious praxis notably understudied. This dissertation therefore seeks to contribute to the emerging discourse of diversity and variation in pre-Christian religion in the Germanic Nordic cultural area during the Late Iron Age (c. 500-1200 AD), examining issues including the situation of sacral social spaces, the differences between cult performed in public and private contexts, and the relocation of the sacred over time, particularly in response to the Christianisation. Drawing on medieval textual accounts, archaeological evidence, and toponymic data, the tension between the twin tendencies towards unity and diversity in a range of Late Iron Age religious contexts are explored. Models of pre-Christian religion\s in a range of settings – from public cult at Gotlandic þing-sites to household religion in settlement-age Iceland – are analysed with tools and methods developed in the wider History of Religions, leading to the conclusion that pre-Christian Nordic religion was practiced in a range of physical and social settings, and exhibited remarkable diversity over the course of the Late Iron Age. The dissertation therefore argues that while we can meaningfully speak of “pre-Christian Nordic religion” in the singular, to do so is best done when comparing or contrasting Nordic paganism to other religions. A number of more or less distinct pre-Christian Nordic religion\s are also identified, including those that appear to have been particular geographic articulations of the wider religion; those that employed different sacrally-charged spaces in their pursuit of hierophany and kratophany; and those that appear to have been the religious output of a distinct social unit. It is hoped that these findings will prove relevant not only to scholars and students of Late Iron Age religion, but also to fields including the Study of Religion, Scandinavian History, and Viking Studies.

Key Words: Late Iron Age, Viking Age, Pre-Christian Religion, Space and Place, Religious Development, Religious Variation, Christianisation, Household Religion, Gotland, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there". These are Leslie Pole Hartley's famous words. Traces of bygone cultures appear to us in landscape and objects, and reveals not only cultures very different from our own, but also big differences between contemporary cultures in the past as demonstrated in material culture. In this paper I discuss cultural variation observed in archaeological sources as visualisation of identity, with particular focus on religious cult in Romsdal in Norway.

Dissertation presented at Uppsala University, Tuesday, 11 June 2019 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Full text PDF Link: http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1304837&dswid=3468

Abstract
Therus, J. 2019. Den yngre järnålderns gravskick i Uppland. Framväxten av den arkeologiska bilden och en materialitet i förändring.
Aun 50. 452 pp. Uppsala: Uppsala universitet. ISBN 978-91-506-2762-6.

This thesis examines archaeological approaches to burials and changing mortuary practices during the Late Iron Age (c. 500-1100 AD) in central Eastern Sweden. Understanding the change in mortuary practices is fundamental to the study of the Late Iron Age. Our knowledge of burial customs is largely colored by 20th century studies of burial monuments, in particular the large mound, boat and chamber burials, which was often combined with analyses of Eddic and saga material. More recent excavations, however, have shown that burials are much more complex than previously thought.
  This thesis comprises two parts. The first considers eight formative publications, written between 1904 and 2005, in order to  examine  the  historiography  of  Iron  Age  burial  archaeology.  It  explores  the  changing  perception  of  graves  and  the archaeological practices documenting them. The impact of Björn Ambrosiani’s two-part model is considered as influential in shaping the definition of burials and their typology.
  The second part of the thesis addresses the changing mortuary practices of the Late Iron Age and highlights several burial types and practices, centered on cremated bones and stones, which have not been sufficiently studied. Two major changes are identified during the period. The first comprises a move from dispersed to individual burials, while the second consists of a change from cremation to inhumation practices that coincides with the Christianization process. This part of the thesis features a number of case studies that illustrate the change in mortuary practices. Among the phenomena discussed are the stone structures called hǫrgr, the amulet rings commonly found in cremation burials and at older cultic sites, and the hybrid nature of Late Viking Age burials.
  The study found that from the late 900s to the late 1000s, cremation and inhumation are practiced side by side in many burial grounds. The discussion introduces the concept of “bridging practices” – memory practices consciously connecting the past and the future, as a key to understanding the burials of the period. These bridging practices served to facilitate and normalize processes of change, and are argued to be the defining trait of Late Viking Age mortuary behavior.

Keywords: Late Iron Age, Viking Age, burial practice, bridging practice, monument gravity, historical gravity, grave, memory, hǫrgr, amulet ring, cosmology, cremation, Christianization, settlement archaeology, mortuary behaviour, dispersed burial

Link: http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1304837&dswid=3468

In the grounds of the present-day Sigtuna Museum, which occupies a central location in the town, extensive evidence of an early Christian milieu has been found, comprising a cemetery and the foundations of a stone church. It is assumed that this was a diocesan church from the finding of what is likely to be a bishop’s grave under its eaves. The formation of the cemetery has been dated to the middle of the 11th century while the stone church is considered to have been built some decades later. It has previously been noted that there are two categories of graves in the cemetery. The later category is contemporary with the stone church, as these graves have a similar E-W orientation as the church. The earlier category is orientated WNW-ENE, and these graves are believed to be connected to a postulated wooden church preceding the stone church.
In the summer of 2013 a minor archaeological investigation was conducted on the site by Stockholm County Museum. A skull was found that arguably belonged to a grave with a different orientation to either of the above. Several graves with diverging orientations occur elsewhere in Sigtuna. It is thus concluded that there existed a third category of burials that were inserted prior to the existence of any church or cemetery. The orientation of these latter graves was determined in relation to the townscape of adjacent plot boundaries, alleys, and streets. These graves were thus originally arranged within smaller burial sites that were integrated into the urban landscape. These burial sites were in use during a period from the 10th to the mid-11th century. It is considered that a royal residence was situated in the grounds of Sigtuna Museum from the town’s earliest days. A royal presence is also discernible through the coinage modelled on that of England that was minted here during the late 10th–early 11th century. It is therefore suggested that the place as a whole, up to the middle of the 11th century, was a Christian royal centre, perhaps established along the lines of an English minster. This Christian centre would have formed the backdrop for the earliest burial sites. The subsequent creation of a cemetery and the construction of a wooden church most likely signals a period when the older royal centre had lost its importance. An episcopal see may have replaced it, functioning as the centre for the new Sigtuna diocese established through the Archdiocese of Bremen, an event that can be dated on historical grounds to the early 1060’s.

"Abstract:  "Whenever discussing the Christianization of Scandinavia, the Lake Mälaren area comes into mind. A large number of rural burial grounds with early Christian graves has been excavated, making this region an ideal point of departure. But, the Mälaren region is more than mere countryside. Here, we also find the town Sigtuna, founded c. 980, allowing us to distinguish between urban and rural burial practices. In urban environments, such as Sigtuna, early burials are relatively uniform and influenced by the Christian standard. At the same time, the situation in rural areas might be best described as “anything goes”. This is usually attributed to a weak ecclesiastical organization. It seems plausible that the diversity seen in rural burials can be connected to the enormous production of rune stones during this period. Should rune stones, thus, be understood a sign of a society in crisis? The old ideology was strongly dependent on ancestral cult that tied individuals to particular farmsteads (oðal). A key question is whether religious hybridity also should be understood as a form of resistance, not against Christianity as such but against new Christian concepts that threatened this ancient oðal ideology – that is monarchy, the church and the individual ownership of land according to canon law. Recent archaeology provides many clues that might contribute to our new understanding of the Christianization of Scandinavia as a process of social change. Hence, individual changes in dress symbols, imagery and building structures, as well as changes in communications by land and sea do not only reflect change on an individual basis but on a greater scale.

The project´s starting-point is a boat grave in which a woman had been buried with dress adornments that (for untrained eyes) may seem generic for a 10th century burial. But a good scientist should never trust first impressions! Instead, the burial took place much later, in a time, when Christianity had been well established in the area. Nonetheless, the heirs chose to stage the burial in a pre-Christian style. The question is of course, why? Another question would be:  is this kind of retrospective burial practice a typical phenomenon during the introduction phase of Christianity in Mälaren region?

The project is a collaboration between archaeology and the history of religions. As a theoretical framework, we are trying to implement the modern concept of hybridity. Thus, rather than identifying individuals as either Christian or Pagan, many of them should more properly be characterized as both! This new approach might contribute to our understanding of religious identity."