Related Papers
Journal of Historical Sociology
Introduction: Trust and Protestantism: Has Lutheran Theology Influenced the Trust Culture Sustaining the Scandinavian Welfare States?
2020 •
Sasja Emilie Mathiasen Stopa
Power and Conversion. A Comparative Study of Christianization in Scandinavia
Alexandra Sanmark
Viking and Medieval Scandinavia
Bridges to Eternity: A Re-Examination of the Adoption of Christianity in Viking-Age Sweden
2016 •
Sara Ann Knutson
This paper reconsiders the nature of Christian conversion in Viking-Age Sweden and traditional assumptions of a centre-periphery model that places Viking and medieval Scandinavia on the periphery of Christian Europe. Notions of Scandinavians as barbarians lingered and tainted outsiders’ perception of them even after conversion, as seen in early medieval texts which portray Scandinavians’ Christian beliefs and practices as trivial or unsophisticated. The Swedish Viking-Age runestones provide evidence that challenges the assumption that Christianity was passively appropriated to Scandinavia from Europe. Instead, the runic material helps demonstrate the Scandinavians’ originality and sophisticated understanding of the new religion by exposing how they adopted and incorporated Christian beliefs and practices into their uniquely Scandinavian context. Scandinavians’ adoption and application of Christian concepts, such as the development of Purgatory and its association with bridges and Christian deeds, to their monuments in order to accommodate the new religion is particularly examined.
International Review of Mission
Christianity and Swedish Culture: A Case Study
1995 •
Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm
Religion, Brain & Behavior
Religious belief and cooperation: a view from Viking-Age Scandinavia
Mark Collard
Pneuma
Scandinavian Pietists: Spiritual Writings from 19th-Century Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, by Mark A.Granquist (ed.)
2018 •
Christopher Richmann
Religious Otherness and National Identity in Scandinavia, c. 1790–1960
2020 •
Frode Ulvund
History of Swedish Identity through Religion
Prabhanjan Mutalik
Religion has influenced human thought, shaped the identity of the people it inhabited and set the cultural milieu it existed in for centuries. The essay sets out to explore the complex interaction between religion and the identity of a nation in a Swedish context. Sweden's rich, interesting and well documented history, ranging from the myths of the Old Norse to the current state of modernism and rationality, provides ample material for this endeavor.
Cultural studies on Folk Religion in Scandinavia
Cultural studies on Folk Religion in Scandinavia
2012 •
Anders Gustavsson
search in Scandinavia. The emphasis in this publication is for the most part on Swe- den. A major portion of the research has been concerned with conditions in the coastal province of Bohuslän in western Sweden, with glimpses of neighbouring areas in Norway. Following the introductory chapter, a study is presented showing the vari- ous forms of expression taken by folk religion in the daily life of past times, with stress on the early 1900s all over Sweden. Using a diary and letters written by a farmer living in the 1800s, I have been able to study how folk religion functioned on the local level (chapter 3). The issue of how the human senses make themselves felt in popular religiosity is the subject of a separate chapter (chapter 4). In Sweden, and not least in Bohuslän, free churches and intra-church revival movements, such as Schartauanism and the Evangelical National Missionary Society (EFS), have played an important role since the late 1800s. I have therefore studied different aspects of such movements in some of the chapters. This relates to periods of revivals (chapter 6), the connections between different generations (chapter 6 and 10), the construction and control of norms (chapter 6 and 9), connections to other local revival movements (chapter 6 and 7), and also to the surrounding secular society (chapter 6, 7 and 10). Religious contacts over the national border between Norway and Sweden (chapter 5) and attitudes towards older popular conceptions about supernatural spirits (chapter 8) have also been subjects of research. The most intensive study has focused on the many different aspects of the Pentecostal Movement on the island of Åstol in Bo- huslän, where it was possible to follow a process leading over a great length of time from existence as a local minority to that of being a cultural majority and its effects on the local society (chapter 6). Summaries have been placed
Social trust: Global pattern or nordic exceptionalism?
2004 •
Jan Delhey
Cross-national comparative analysis of generalised social trust in 60 countries shows that it is associated with, and is an integral part of, a tight syndrome of cultural, social, economic, and political variables. High trust countries are characterized by ethnic hom*ogeneity, Protestant religious traditions, good government, wealth (GDP per capita), and income equality. This particular combination is most marked in the high trust Nordic countries but when this group of outliners is removed from the analysis, the same general pattern is found in the remaining 55 countries, albeit in a weaker form. There are indications that rural societies tend to have comparatively low levels of generalized trust but no evidence that large-scale urban society tends to undermine trust. The cause and effect relations between trust and its correlates are impossible to specify but the results suggest that the ethnic hom*ogeneity and Protestant traditions have a direct impact on trust, and an indirect one...
