Continuity and Change: Forms of Liminality in the Sacred Social Spaces of the Pre-Christian Nordic World

Abstract

The varied nature of Iron Age religious sites in Scandinavia has been the cause of much scholarly debate, particularly in terms of their continuity and centralization - or lack thereof. Little focus, however, has been placed on the general patterns of spatialization displayed by these sites in the wider pre-Christian landscape. This article therefore seeks to examine the social spaces engendered with sacral value by pre-Christian Scandinavians. Drawing on a range of evidence, including toponymic, textual, and archaeological corpora, a model is proposed whereby, despite the ongoing physical changes in such religious sites during the Iron Age, an underlying continuity may be found in the non-physical characteristics of their spaces. It is concluded that different manifestations of liminality - geographic, temporal, and dimensional - lay at the heart of these late Iron Age sacral spaces.