Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 8

GRIPLA8
academic publications. The Roman-Catholic Church exerted a powerful
influence on civilisation in the northern and western parts of Europe dur­
ing the Middle Ages. This civilisation was flanked by wild nature to the
west and the north—the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Sea—and by the
world of the Eastern Orthodox church to the east and Islam to the south.
The parts of Europe dominated by the Roman-Catholic church were far
from being homogenous regions, however: countries and districts had
their own characteristics and cultural peculiarities as well as common fea­
tures. the particular characteristics of different countries of course had
both natural and historical explanations, rooted in social and geographical
conditions or circumstances as well as past history. With this in mind, it is
worth asking whether the extent to which we look at the Scandinavian
countries as some kind of unified whole within Europe in the Middle Ages
is an anachronistic illusion created by later history. for a long time, various
differences have been evident between the groups of people who combed
the Atlantic sea-ways, claimed settled and unsettled islands in the Atlantic
and not least, who had fertile dealings with Celtic peoples, when compared
to those people who sailed their ships to the Baltic Sea and along Russian
rivers, and who established relations with the inhabitants of the continental
European mainland. Those in the first group—Icelanders and Norwegians—
were quick to accept Christianity and to learn to write in their mother
tongue but those in the latter group—which included the Danes, who also
had many dealings over the North Sea—wrote mainly in Latin for a long
time. nevertheless, medieval authors describe the Scandinavian region as a
region divided in three main parts, as can be seen in volume four of Adam
of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiæ Pontificum, and in Snorri
Sturluson’s Heimskringla.
Preserved sources, or lack of sources, set the limits for historical inves­
tigations. Emphases will differ in critical accounts based predominantly on
written texts, and in those that direct their attention towards interpreting
the material record that is evident or has been uncovered by archaeologists.
there is great variation from one region to another across the Scandinavian
countries in so far as the possibilities opened up by the sources are con­
cerned. To a great degree, the wealth of written sources on parchment has
its roots in Iceland; archaeological evidence (including runic inscriptions) is
especially prominent in central and eastern Scandinavia. these differences