Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 143

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munities through relating themselves differently to available collective
perceptions of tradition, mythology or cultural landscape. this could have
been the case, first of all, in pre-Christian times when no political power
could or would enforce ideological and symbolical uniformity. “Beyond the
Vikings, then, lies a world of many cultures, realities and life ways, not just
a single and uniform ‘Scandinavian viking Age culture’” (Svanberg 2003a,
202). This should be rather obvious for archaeologists who study precisely
localized communities and contemplate the differentiation in these com­
munities’ material cultures. For historians, a warning is sounded by those
who claim that the authors of the source texts recorded in the 12th and 13th
centuries were “…playfully, but quite innocently, playing with forms and
contents inherited from a previous, but religiously speaking long dead era”
(Simek 2006, 380). therefore, “…the use of these mythographical, high­
medieval texts as source material for a pre­Christian, pre­medieval
Scandinavian religion certainly is abuse” (Simek 2006, 380).
taking into account such results of recent studies on the pre­Christian
past, one should not be surprised that Christianization was not uniform in
Scandinavia. “There was not a single Christianization process but in fact
many different Christianizations” (Svanberg 2003b, 147) that geographi­
cally conformed to the identified viking Age regions of specific ritual
systems (Ibid., Fig. 62). It was only the gradual reinforcement of territorial
control of the early state centres that enforced relatively homogenous reac­
tions to the eschatological expectations of Christianity. thus, in the long
perspective, Christianity – which raised social consciousness above the
individual and local “ethnic” beliefs – helped to overcome cultural differen­
tiations and subsequently eased contradictions, allowing the formation of
much broader “national” identities. That is why Christianity may be under­
stood as the corner­stone of the establishment of the stable territorial
organizations that took shape in the 10th–11th centuries.
not so long ago, the Christianization of the areas that bordered the
northern and north-eastern edge of the post-Roman core of Europe was
viewed as a rather rapid process, initiated by zealous missionaries and
effectively executed by devout monarchs. This concept followed the eccle­
siastic tradition which equated the end of paganism with the official inclu­
sion of whole peoples (gentes) into the Church. the general character of
the process was also defined through focusing on similarities between the
DeConStRuCtInG tHe “noRDIC CIvILIZAtIon”