Abstract
Although they highlight the Norse (religious) term siðr ‘custom’ and its cognates, some researchers of pre-Christian Scandinavia suggest that the concept of religion involves a Christocentric discourse and should be used cautiously, or even only for Christianity. Some scholars therefore recommend a categorical distinction between pre-Christian (religious) siðr and Christian religion. This paper contributes to this ongoing discussion. I argue that while it is meaningful to highlight the term siðr and its cognates, the distinction between pre-Christian siðr and medieval Christian religion is problematic. 1) While siðr had various meanings in vernacular language, the current debate emphasises only its religious aspect, thus turning the indigenous term into an implicit etic concept. 2) The word siðr and its cognates were also used in medieval Scandinavian languages as designations for Christianity, and hence, the categorisation of pre-Christian siðr and medieval Christian religion is misleading. 3) The distinction between popular siðr and formal religion is fundamentally based on the two-tier model of popular/folk religion–religion. 4) The vernacular (religious) word siðr in the sense of ‘religious customs, the religious aspects of the conventional way of life’ and the heuristic category of (lived) religion are in fact complementary in the study of religion in both Viking and medieval Scandinavia.
Highlights
They highlight the Norse term siðr ‘custom’ and its cognates, some researchers of pre-Christian Scandinavia suggest that the concept of religion involves a Christocentric discourse and should be used cautiously, or even only for Christianity
2) The word siðr and its cognates were used in medieval Scandinavian languages as designations for Christianity, and the categorisation of pre-Christian siðr and medieval Christian religion is misleading
4) The vernacular word siðr in the sense of ‘religious customs, the religious aspects of the conventional way of life’ and the heuristic category of religion are complementary in the study of religion in both Viking and medieval Scandinavia
Summary
All the researchers who highlight the vernacular world siðr and the problems involved in using religion as a heuristic concept in studies of pre-Christian Scandinavia maintain that Christianisation represented the introduction of Catholic Christian religion. Fredrik Svanberg states that religion is unsuitable ‘for use as a descriptive or analytical category when trying to understand lifeways in Scandinavia before the introduction of Christianity’ (Svanberg 2003, 143f.) In his series of studies of the Christianisation of the Swedish island of Gotland Torsten Blomkvist applies the concept of religion only to ‘the period spanning the Christianisation period ... The Middle Ages’ (2002, 2009, quotation 2002, 194), since the vernacular languages in pre-Christian Scandinavia lacked a word directly corresponding to religion, and Blomkvist considers it ‘impossible to have notions specifying a certain concept if the concept does not exist’ (2009, 196). Some scholars who conceptualise medieval Christianity as religion argue that the same concept is problematic or even completely inapplicable in studies of pre-Christian Scandinavia, since the vernacular languages lacked any equivalent word. Christianity was gradually introduced to Scandinavia between the 9th and 11th centuries, the term religion was not used as a common denotation for Christianity in Latin or in the vernacular languages before the Protestant Reformation. the vernacular words used to encompass the Catholic traditio, i.e. theology, liturgy, ceremonial, and popular traditions, etc., in medieval Scandinavia were precisely the same as those previously denoting the pre-Christian religious traditions: ON. siðr, OSw. siþer (‘custom’), medieval Swedish (= MSw.) sedh, and ON. siðvenja, MSw. sedhvenia (‘ingrained custom’)
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