Nordic religions in the Viking Age /

Based on archaeology, folklore, and an anthropological examination of Nordic mythology and religion, DuBois's scholarly, detailed examination of religious interrelationships during the Viking Age (800-1300) relates and compares these materials with the surviving 13th-century literary sources. By 1300, Christianity had unified and consolidated Scandinavia as earlier independent religious beliefs were fused with or replaced by Christianity. This is the only work that seriously studies and evaluates how the literary texts that have traditionally shaped scholarly views of the early pagan Viking Age were actually written in the 13th century by Christian intellectuals with their own agenda. The overall Nordic worldview of the sagas, theoretically describing the pagan Viking world of the ninth and tenth centuries, was actually presented in terms of the Christian perspective from which they were written. Nordic religion during the 500-year period treated by the author can be seen as a remnant of its past or a reflection of its present. The book presupposes a general background of the Viking Age, with approximately 50 pages devoted to notes and bibliographical listings. For research libraries with graduate programs in medieval studies. G. G. Guzman; Bradley University