Christianization in Scandinavia

Since the early days of archaeology, Viking-Age burials and burial customs have attracted much attention. Evocative tales of warriors and their deeds preserved in Old Norse poetry and sagas, and recorded in the historical chronicles of church and court scribes formed the background for the interpretation of some of the most prominent finds, the burials with weapons and horse furnishings. To antiquarians and archaeologists of the nineteenth century, it was almost self-evident that a life so closely tied to warfare and violent expansion abroad would also find expression in the burials of the time, and many of the early discoveries appeared to confirm the view of the Nordic warrior who was expected to arrive with full fighting gear in Valhalla to continue his life amongst the brave warriors of Odin. Since then, the archaeological evidence has increased considerably, providing a far more extensive basis for the study of Viking-Age burial practices today than a century ago. Typological and chronological analyses of individual objects and burials demonstrate the diversity of the weapon burial practice of especially the 10th century. In a period of significant political and religious transition in southern Scandinavia elaborately furnished equestrian burials and weapon burials were one of the means of to demonstrate the position and the political and religious preferences of the Viking elite.
The study is divided into two parts: Vol. 1 Text, including bibliography and site index, and Vol. 2 Catalogue with 24 maps and 70 artefact plates.

Masters Thesis: The reputation and importance of Ari hinn fróði in the development of the Icelandic literary corpus is evident and widely recognized, but nevertheless, the importance of Íslendingabók in the development of the Íslendingasögur has not been investigated in detailed.
Showing the importance of the narrative structure and fundamental argumentation of Ari Þorgilsson in the genesis of an Icelandic historical ethos that allowed Icelanders to recover, reshaped and made use of their pagan ancestry is important to understand the close relation that Icelanders kept with their past in the centuries following the conversion.
Thus, it will be investigated how Íslendingabók represents an emerging ethos in Icelandic scholar tradition, that re-appropriates the past as praise-worthy but looks forward to a Christian future. In Íslendingabók, Ari chose an array of historical events, that became in the Íslendingasögur creating a Christian narrative that, like the one of many Íslendigasögur, evolves from one pole towards the final resolution. Ari’s narrative gravitates around the Christian origins of the land, and its final rising of an independent Church in the land.
By doing this, Ari created a new cultural ethos in Iceland, that wrote in vernacular rather than Latin, and influenced the narrative structure of the sagas while also rising the indigenous narratives to an scholar production.

Tesch, Sten (ed.). 2017. THE SHIFT - Viking Age religious custom and Christian faith. A multidisciplinary perspective on the Christianization process in the Mälaren area (Sweden). Published by Artos förlag.  Utgångspunkt för denna antologi om Mälarområdets kristnande är en seminarieserie med rubriken ”Det långa skiftet – ett forskarmöte om kristnandet och lokalsamhället under vikingatid och medeltid ur ett Mälardalsperspektiv” på Sigtunastiftelsen 2011–2013. Deltog gjorde forskare från olika discipliner – arkeologi, historia, runforskning, religionshistoria, ecklesiologi och teologi – intresserade av att diskutera detta specifika forskningsproblem. De flesta av bidragen är skrivna av de forskare som medverkade med föredrag eller deltog i denna seminarieserie. Snarare än svar på hur skiftet fick sin religiöst organisatoriska form, är bokens syfte att med sina tretton enskilda bidrag problematisera och öppna för ett fortsatt fördjupat samtal.

Will the current discovery in Poland force us to reevaluate what we think about the Viking Age outside of nowadays Scandinavia? The death and possible burial site of the Danish king Harald Gormson Bluetooth till now was one of history’s most enduring mysteries. We live in an era in which the use of satellite technology is bringing astonishing results, though. The space-based reconnaissance allowed us to look at large swaths of landscape and find archaeological disturbances within the land, some as small as 12 inches (30.5 centimeters) long.

Summary:
Sigtuna is the oldest town still extant in Sweden. It was founded c. 980, almost two hundred years before urbanization, the real expansion of towns, took place in medieval Sweden. Sigtuna is situated on Lake Mälaren in East Central Sweden, c. 35 kilometres north of Birka and 35 kilometres south of Gamla Uppsala (Old Uppsala). The settlement area stretches along the southern tip of what once was a large island (7 x 4 kilometres), now the Sigtuna peninsula, located between the waterways leading to Uppsala (fig. 1a and b). When the town was founded sea level was c. 4-5 metres higher than today and Lake Mälaren formed part of the Baltic Sea. The only place suitable for settlement and building was a narrow flat strip of virgin land on the tip of the island, about 100-150 metres wide, between the shore and a steep rocky ridge. Topographically, a hilly area separated the town from the rural settlements on the island. It was also distinct from the rural settlements on the opposite side of the waterway, as these did not regularly face the water. Strategically, however, Sigtuna was centrally located at an intersection of important waterways, which facilitated access to large parts of the Mälar region by boat or by ice in the winter. In other words, this location seems to have been very deliberately chosen: in the midst of, but separate from, the surrounding society.
The first part of the article focus on the physical structures that existed in early Sigtuna - houses, plots, townyards, cemeteries and churches along with the town plan. I will also discuss why and by whom the town was founded, the staging of the town as a setting for political power; who the inhabitants were and how a Christian Mass could be celebrated in the absence of regular church buildings. This is followed by a discussion on whether or not Sigtuna had an interactive relationship with the aristocrats in the Lake Mälaren region. The article ends with a comparative perspective on Scandinavian and European urbanization during the late Viking Age and Early Middle Ages, with main focus on town plans.

This dissertation considers Viking Age Scandinavian inscribed runestones in order to determine their societal origins and the impacts they had on Viking Age religious cultural changes. The three types of monuments discussed are: runestones with religious inscriptions and magical texts; runestones with mythic, legendary and religious imagery; and runestones with political and religious intentions. By comparatively examining Pagan and Christian runestones, the question of which culture initially drove the production of these memorials is addressed. Twenty-five runestones are examined in detail, including the stones of kings Gormr Gamli and Haraldr Blátönn in Jelling, Denmark which serve as primary case studies and representative examples. While religion is the dominating motif of Scandinavian runestones, the evidence shows that no conclusive answer exists on the Pagan or Christian origins of inscribed runic culture. This study proposes that religious hybridization or syncretism is the strongest possibility, yet  further research into more precise dating methods needs to be conducted.

Some recent studies concerning early medieval Europe have suggested that Scandinavia and Francia represented two ideological poles with which other populations within the Germanic world might have intended to align themselves. While such a view sometimes may be useful, it may also over-simplify a more complex situation. Scandinavians must have recognised cultural distinctions between themselves and Christian Europeans, but may not have viewed these distinctions necessarily as emblems of opposition unless faced by a direct political or military threat. Indeed, ideological contrasts concerning the way society was structured and power was wielded may have cut across apparent ethnic boundaries.

Roman influences on early Germanic society may have assisted in the creation of a ‘Germanic’ identity. Roman pressure also may have affected the development of Germanic governmental structures, encouraging king-centred governmental ideologies that contrasted with possibly older, assembly-centred systems. Scandinavia, never threatened by Roman domination, may have retained assembly-centred structures longer than other Germanic societies. Southern Scandinavia’s ‘central places’ of the Early Germanic Iron Age, such as Gudme, may have had functions comparable with those of the later Old Saxon Assembly and Icelandic Alþingi. Such sites may have provided a focus for an emergent Scandinavian identity. This assembly-centred system may have been disrupted as chieftains struggled to attain the kind of power enjoyed by their counterparts in king-centred societies (much as happened in medieval Iceland), perhaps explaining the poverty of archaeological finds in the region from the Late Germanic Iron Age.
The growing Frankish threat to Scandinavia in the eighth century may have both spurred further consolidation of power in the hands of the élite and, initially, provoked an ideological reaction against Christian Europe. Yet while wary of domination by Christian European kingdoms, the Viking-Age Scandinavian élite may have envied their powerful model of lordship and had an interest in accessing elements of their culture. Such a situation may be reflected in historical legends, particularly the Scylding-Skjöldung cycle, which perhaps developed during the Viking Age. These legends might represent not source material for historical glimpses of early northern Europe (as is often assumed) but rather Scandinavian attempts at self-definition in relation to the burgeoning and powerful cultures of Christian Europe. Scandinavia’s eventual adoption of Christianity and Christian lordship in the course of the Viking Age largely resolved the ideological contrasts that had existed both within Scandinavian society and between Scandinavia and Christian Europe.

This dissertation studies the transition from the Viking Age to Middle Ages in Sweden using the Romanesque churches as the main source material. The aim is to explain societal change, especially that connected to land ownership and taxation.

When Christianity was introduced into early medieval Swedish society, most of the cultivated land was already “locked” by odal (allodium), which meant that the land could only be used by members of a family holding the right of odal. A strategy used by the Church in its struggle for overtaking land was to demonstrate its full ownership of the land of a vicarage by means of the architecture of the parish church – the church was provided with an apse. If the land of the vicarage consisted of “borrowed” odal land, the chancel was built instead with a straight east wall. This can be demonstrated by way of a comparison of the land-holdings of vicarages as shown on cadastral maps from the 17th century. The situation shown on these maps should reflect the early medieval situation, and an analysis shows that the vicarages of churches with an apse have most of their holdings concentrated to large blocks of land, whereas the vicarages of churches without an apse have their holdings mixed with the land of the other farms of the village.

Analysis of the distribution of the different architectural types of parish church in relation to other recorded phenomena shows the great importance of the collective in pre-Christian and early medieval society. The idea of odal was linked to collective society. The Folkung rebellion in the 13th century was most probably caused by the transition from a society based on the collective to a society based more on the power and ownership of individuals. The king’s odal right to Uppsala öd (the land of the old royal dynasty) was converted into a new type of ownership, according to which the king held the land in virtue of his office.

in Swedish, with an extensive English summary

We present a hypothesis for the location of Barcelona Roman amphitheatre from a series of reasoned archaeological, urbanistical, toponymical, topographical and epigraphycal arguments. All the information comes together in the place where today the Gothic church called Santa Maria del Mar is located. This Christian building, with roots in the Late Antiquity, is placed between Barcino walls and the sea. And in fact, it was the study of the most primitive phases of this church that inspired the following proposal.

Paper given to a congress, Saint Henry and the Christianization of Finland, marking the 850 anniversary of the Finnish Church, published in Suomen Museo – Finskt Museum 2006, Helsinki 2007, pp. 39-54.
The wider context of the Danish involvement in the crusades to Finland is now explained in English in Ane L. Bysted, Carsten Selch Jensen, Kurt Villads Jensen and John H. Lind, Jerusalem in the North: Denmark and the Baltic Crusades, 1100–1522, (Outremer: Studies in the Crusades and the Latin East, 1). Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. Pp. xiv, 393 (rev. in Crusades vol. 12, 2013, pp. 251-51, Jonathan Riley-Smith).

During 2017, a Viking age - early-medieval grave field was excavated in Oppeby, Nyköping Municipality, County of Södermanland, Sweden. The oldest burials were at the earliest from the late ninth century, while most graves could be dated to the 11th century. Both heathen and Christian burials were found. The youngest grave, a mound, had a very late dating: to the middle of the 13th century. It is discussed that the late iron age-style burials may have had a connection to the conflicts that then existed between a conservative fraction, the so-called "Folkungapartiet", and the new kingship wich was supported by the papal church.

In Swedish.

In 2013 a small archaeological excavation was carried out inside the nave of Uppåkra church, which resulted in the discovery of several children’s burials. One of them was dated to the Early Middle Ages, which opens up for the possibility that the medieval stone church may have had a predecessor. The aim of this article is to explore the evidence for pre-Christian and Christian ritual practices, and to address the question of religion in Viking Age Uppåkra.

The transmission of law in pre-Christian Iceland was an oral process in an oral society. In oral societies, such transmission processes may be characterized as a cultivation of cultural memory, which suggests that it was transmitted through a ritualized performance by a memory specialist. In the Icelandic context, this specialist was in all likelihood the lǫgsǫgumaðr. However, the connection between the transmission of law by the lǫgsǫgumaðr and ritual and religion has not yet been established explicitly. This is the subject of the present article, which first views the intricate relationship between law and religion in pre-Christian Iceland through the lens of Max Weber's theory of value spheres and subsequently treats the transmission of early Icelandic law as a cultivation of cultural memory.

In Old Norse the word troll is inextricably linked to the sphere of magic: in mythology it indicates supernatural creatures almost exclusively of female sex, often associated with giants with whom they embody both the spirits of the dead and the chaotic and uncontrollable natural forces, and it is from them that magic itself originates. Despite this dangerous bond and despite its destructive potential, in the pagan world view magic is still necessary and can also be used for a good purpose. With the introduction of Christianity this conception changes: the new religion, for which magic is idolatry and the work of the devil, not only counts magicians among the opponents of Christian missionaries, but attributes explicitly demonic characteristics to the trolls. At the same time, in above all legal sources the word troll began to be used as synonymous with witch or sorcerer, while a new unequivocally derogatory term, trolldómr (still existing in Scandinavian languages), was coined to indicate the magical arts.
The present article therefore intends to illustrate the fundamental stages of the process of demonization of trolls and magic against the more general background of the transition from a polytheistic to a monotheistic religious system, and from the opposition of order / chaos (or culture / nature) to the moral dualism between good and evil.

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.

The sagas of kings often display grand finales and impressive endings. From time to time, they also display the so called ‘beautiful deaths’, i.e. those deaths that have the immediate advantage of rousing admiration in a secular sense and to convey immortality, at least in the memories of people. The authors of the Kings’ Sagas seem to be fascinated by the ability to endure physical suffering and to maintain a virile and cool attitude at the moment of death, and by glorious and spectacular deaths on the battlefield, as were the poets from whom they took inspiration and information.
However, with the conversion to Christianity, the heathen conception of a “beautiful death” interpreted as being a violent death, was gradually replaced by the notion of “good death”, that not only required the fulfilment of the last duties to ensure eternal life but, if it was a violent death, it had to occur while fighting for a just cause.
As the Christian faith became firmly established, its insistence that a king should be morally worthy of his role became more important: a king who was thought to be living in a state of mortal sin or to be suffering damnation in Hell after his death was seen as being in fundamental conflict with his royal function.
The aim of this paper is to discover, through the methods of literary analysis, the attitudes of thirteenth-century historians towards the death of their royal characters in the light of Christianity, the way they coped with the new dictates of their faith and how they attempted a reconciliation between Gemanic stoicim and Christian piety.

0. Introduction (p. 171)
1. De pugnante in prælio iusto occiso (p. 174)
2. Suspensi in coemeteriis sepeliri possunt (p. 185)
3. De interfectis maleficio in adulterio (p. 191)
4. De vere poenitentibus in caritate decessis (p. 195)
5. Conclusions (p. 199)

The paragraph headings of this piece of research (n. 2, 3 and 4) are drawn from Guillame Durand’s Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, written in the late 13th century.

The process of Christianisation of Norway is traditionally linked to the effort of Olaf Tryggvasson and Olaf Haraldsson (later to be Saint Olaf) and the period of 995-1030. However, given the fact that people from the Scandinavian countries were aware of the cultural and social development in the rest of Europe, it seems safe to presume that Christianity was known in the North. Indeed, some written sources even indicate a certain degree of toleration towards the new religion. Archaeology, too, brings more and more proofs that the Christianity was known in Norway already in the first half of the tenth century, mainly on the west and south coast. Combining the evidence, one can assume that there were at least some Christians among the pagan Norsemen of the tenth century and that the life and work of the Norwegian king Håkon the Good, who was a Christian himself and who supported the religion, had been rather underestimated in the sources and later tradition.

Planerad föreläsning om romersk porfyr för Sällskapet San Micheles Vänner på Medelhavsmuseet i Stockholm 2020-03-11. Samma dag deklarerade WHO att Covid-19 var en pandemi, vilket gjorde det problematiskt att genomföra föreläsningen. Ett år senare fick jag en förfrågan från sällskapet om att skriva en artikel med samma ämne i sällskapets medlemsblad. Eftersom utrymmet i detta var begränsat, både vad gäller text och bild, förkortades den ursprungligen relativt omfattande framställningen. Här följer den ursprungliga texten mixad med den planerade bildpresentationen.

Улав Триггвасон вошёл в историю Киевской Руси после появления в дружине князя Владимира I. В Норвегии, куда Триггвасон вернулся и был избран королём в 995 г., современные историки рассматривают его как одного из правителей, заложивших основы государственности, собирания земель и христианизации страны. Он стал энергичным реформатором эпохи викингов, времени проведения глубоких религиозных и финансовых преобразований. Именно в правление Владимира на Руси появляются собственные деньги, а в правление Улава – в Норвегии. Одновременно с Норвегией началась чеканка монеты викингами в Дании и Швеции. Для всех, интересующихся наиболее ранним этапом денежной политики Киевского княжества, статья предоставляет возможность узнать, какие денежно-финансовые процессы протекали одновременно в трёх королевствах викингов.

In this article, the author uses different dating methods to try to show that the Västerhus cemetery was established between c. 1125 and 1250 and that it ceased to be used between c. 1375 and 1500. This time period is later than the dates proposed previously on the basis of 14C analyses of skeletons from the cemetery. In the author’s opinion, the 14C dates are probably misleading on account of reservoir effects.
The Västerhus church and cemetery – which yielded one of the best preserved and most well-studied medieval skeletal materials in northern Europe – were thus not established at the time of Jämtland’s official Christianization, as earlier claimed, but instead one or a few generations later. The author points out that several other early churches and cemeteries in Jämtland are just as late. Similar gaps in time between the official Christianization and the widespread building of churches are also known from other parts of Scandinavia.

Identità Multiple. Problemi, Metodologie e Fonti dall'Antichità ad oggi, Volume II - Tarda Antichità e Medioevo, Storia Moderna e Contemporanea, Atti del Convegno del Dipartimento di Civiltà e Forme del Sapere, 10-11-12 dicembre 2020, Pisa University Press, Pisa, gennaio 2022.

New interdisciplinary research methods and new models have been developed by the contributors to present new vistas of sacrality in the Scandinavian and the Baltic landscape. To open up these case studies, a selection of over sixty images and maps accompanies this cutting-edge research, allowing the reader to explore sacralization and the Christianization process within its medieval setting. "

This article explores, by using the model of inculturation, how Christ entered the world of the medieval Frisians. (1) It investigates what terms for "Christ" and "Lord" were adopted;.(2) It explores what imaginative roles were assigned to Christ in transforming medieval Frisian feuding customs. (3) It presents a detailed analysis of a complicated Christianized scenario which scripts how a killer has to reconcile himself with the party of the victim, a ritual known as "deditio".

Full title:
‘Fears, Sights and Slaughter. Expressions of Fright and Disgust in the Baltic Missionary Historiography (11th-13th centuries)’, in: Per Förnegård, Erika Kihlman, Mia Åkestam, Gunnel Engwall (eds.), Tears, Sighs and Laughter. Expressions of Emotions in the Middle Ages, Conference Series: 92 (Vitterhetsakadmien: Stockholm 2017), pp. 109-137