THE CHRISTIAN KINGDOM AS AN IMAGE OF THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM ACCORDING TO ST. BIRGITTA OF SWEDEN
The thesis of this study is that her task was to start a great work of reform in the church, beginning with the personal conversion of the individuals responsible for the wellbeing of the community and gradually involving all Christians. She intended this reform to prepare society for the second coming of Christ.
An Island in the Middle of An Island. On cult, laws and authority in Viking Age Gotland
The present-day small village of Roma on Gotland in the Baltic Sea was the physical and symbolic centre of the island in the Iron Age and into Medieval times.
The Swedish Kings in Progress – and the Centre of Power
Why did the rulers travel! One reason was purely financial: the economy demanded a constant movement of the household. Once the food supplies in one place of abode had been eaten up it was easier to move to a new residence than to transport provisions overlong distances. Mobility contributed to the proper utilization of the produce of manors.
Murder and Execution within the Political Sphere in Fifteenth Century Scandinavia
A quick glance at the regnal list of fifteenth-century Sweden shows that members of the nobility were at each others’ throats more or less all the time, especially from the 1430s and onwards.
Odin, Magic and a Swedish Trial from 1484
If we are to believe any number of histories, spiritual life in medieval Scandinavia, and especially the conversion to Christianity, is readily summarized: paganism collapsed against Christian conversion efforts in dramatic fashion at a meeting of the Alþing, or when a missionary bore hot iron, or an exiled king had a deep religious experience, or when a pagan revolt was finally overcome, and so on.
Qui facit adulterium, frangit fidem et promissionem suam: Adultery and the Church in Medieval Sweden
This paper was part of a series on Canon Law and Medieval Marriage.
Modern nationalism and the medieval sagas
Nineteenth-century romanticism had a special interest in both the medieval world and primitive, untainted rural culture. As the nineteenth century progressed and turned into the early twentieth, the Danes fell more and more under the nostalgic spell, tending to look upon the Icelanders through increasingly romantic and patronizing eyes
The Religious Orders of Knighthood in Medieval Scandinavia: Historical and Archaeological Approaches
Even if the various Orders of Knighthood reached Scandinavia somewhat later than most of the Christian civilization they soon became important religious institutions in Scandinavian societies in the same way as they already were in the rest of western Europe.
Sleeping bodies, jubilant souls: the fate of the dead in Sweden 1400-1700
The study of burial practices and the treatment of the dead has long been used to gain an understanding of the cultures of the past, particularly by anthropologists.
The Idea of North
Tacitus’s two important treatises, vital as sources for our knowledge of the life of the Anglo-Saxons, represent a people who know their limits and stick to them.
The archaeological record of domesticated and tamed birds in Sweden
This paper is based on a review of approximately 520 sites with subfossil bird remains in Sweden (ERICSON & TYRBERG in press). This comprises essentially all published sites plus a majority of the sites where the avian remains have been determined but not yet published.
Prayer in Peasant Communities: Ideals and Practices of Prayer in the Late Medieval Ecclesiastical Province of Uppsala, Sweden
The most ordinary way to act during prayer was to stand with hands together, palm against palm, and to pray in the vernacular often using mental themes to enhance the devotion.
Iron and sulphur compounds threaten old shipwrecks
Sulphur and iron compounds have now been found in shipwrecks both in the Baltic and off the west coast of Sweden.
Identity and Economic Change in the Viking Age
This project surveys a selection of hoard assemblages in order to scrutinize the changing relationship between economy and identity in Viking Age Scandinavia.
St. Birgitta: The Disjunction Between Women and Ecclesiastical Power
However, if one theoretically unseats the primacy of the Papal cause and instead places its importance within the context of Birgitta’s life as a woman, a more sympathetic portrait emerges. When I re-examine her visions and her life in this light, I find that Birgitta was divided in her allegiance to the Papal Father in her concern for women.
The Health of the North in a Renaissance Encyclopaedia
In 1555 a private press in Rome issued a volume in Latin with some 400 woodcut illustrations, most of the specifically commissioned by the author, these being in the form of vignettes at head of a majority of about 600 short chapters of the work.
Linnaeus’s Game of Tablut and its Relationship to the Ancient Viking Game Hnefatafl
The British game historian H. J. R. Murray was the first to identify the importance of Linnaeus’s description of the rules of a Lapp game called Tablut. This game, he argued, was related to, and possibly identical with, an ancient Viking game called Hnefatafl, which the Icelandic sagas frequently reference
Scandinavian Influences on the English Language
The Viking Age lasted roughly from the eighth century to the eleventh, with the Viking attacks on Europe beginning around 750 AD. The Scandinavians were excellent sailors, and they had impressive ships and navigational skills that carried them as far as North America (‘Vinland’) long before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.
Ohthere’s voyages seen from a nautical angle
But whatever Ohthere and his English hosts exchanged in the way of news and information, the re- corded account keeps closely within ränge of its objective: a geography of unknown and little known areas of Scandinavia and their inhabitants.
Researchers puzzled as grave did not hold remains of medieval Swedish king
DNA tests have revealed that the bodies of nine people buried in the tomb actually died sometime between 1430 and 1520.
Immortal Maidens: The Visual Significance of the Colour White in Girls’ Graves on Viking-Age Gotland
The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance of the colour white of cowry shell-beads in burials from the Viking Age on Gotland, considering aspects of gendered age identities as well as fertility and status.
Rex Vandalorum – The Debates on Wends and Vandals in Swedish Humanism as an Indicator for Early Modern Patterns of Ethnic Perception
The German word Wenden is documented as a synonym for Slavs since
the 6th century A.D.. Medieval authors also used Wandali instead of Wenden/Slavs
Analysis of the Putative Remains of a European Patron Saint – St. Birgitta
According to legend, the skulls of St. Birgitta and her daughter Katarina are maintained in a relic shrine in Vadstena abbey, mid Sweden.
Medieval Dreams: A Sample of Historical and Psychological Criticism
Deep into the Middle Ages, in Western Europe a small group of clergymen, mainly monks, had a monopoly on recording dreams in writing
Feminine and masculine in the images of power. A study of the changes in visual political symbolism in Sweden ca. 1350-1600
Feminine and masculine in the images of power. A study of the changes in visual political symbolism inSweden ca. 1350-1600 Berglund, Louise, PhD (Örebro University…