(Kristinn réttr) on the island of Moster in 1024 , hence again a testimony of a political
event.
FROM WHERE DID THE NEW RELIGION COME?The traditional view has been that Norway was Christianised from England, whereas
Denmark and Sweden were mainly from Germany. The reason for focusing on the
German Church is of course Rimbert’s Vita Ansgarii and Adam of Bremen’s Gesta. Both
are biased in favour of the Hamburg–Bremen diocese, and both writers obviously have a
mission – claim ecclesiastical authority over the northern provinces. Today research
instead stresses the importance of the Anglo-Saxon Church especially during the early
phase of Christianisation. There is today also a great interest in possible links to the
eastern Church. The contacts between Scandinavia and eastern Europe have been exten-
sive, but obvious evidence for a religious impact from the Byzantine Church is more or
less lacking.
Traditionally – and for good reasons – a focus in the discussion on the Christianisa-
tion of Scandinavia has been on the tenth and eleventh centuries. Today we are more
inclined to accept that Christian culture had infiltrated and influenced Scandinavian
society for a long time, probably for all of the late Roman and early medieval periods
(the Iron Age in Scandinavia). This influence may be seen in a change of cult practice,
the emergence of a new kind of nobility, perhaps the emergence of new gods, new burial
customs etc., changes not necessarily of a religious kind.
We therefore look upon the Christianisation as a prolonged process, which partly has
been a successive influence of a socio-cultural kind over a long period of time, which
eventually resulted in a conversion and a change in religion of a more official kind. The
real impact and decisive change, however, come when the Church has gained such power
that it is possible to organise the Scandinavian provinces and implement the new
religion in society with the parish church and parish priest. By then we have reached the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
THE FIRST BISHOPS AND THE
ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCHThe first bishops we know of are those who were ordained to some emerging town,
a civitas, and then those who functioned as the itinerant king’s counsellor, attached to
his personal court. In the 960 s the archbishop of Hamburg–Bremen appointed three
suffragan bishops to be placed in Hedeby, Ribe and Aarhus, probably as a way of
announcing the interest and superiority over the northern province. At least two of
these bishops, however, never set foot in Denmark. It seems obvious that there was
competition between the German and English Churches in this period, leading to
the paradox that up to the mid-eleventh century, Scandinavia from a judicial and
administrative point of view belonged to the German Church, but more or less all the
bishops came from England. Today there is a tendency to tone down the impact of the
Hamburg–Bremen’s diocese even more, changing focus to the archbishopric in Cologne,
especially for the tenth century. It seems obvious that the English Church must have
had an important role especially during the first part of the eleventh century, when
Canute the Great was king over England, Denmark, Norway and ‘parts of Sweden’.
–– Stefan Brink––