Personal Religion among the Ancient Scandinavians and the Fulltrúi-Concept

Abstract

The question of personal religion among the ancient Scandinavians has centered around the concept of having a deity as one’s fulltrúi ‘trustworthy friend,’ ástvinr ‘close friend,’ or vinr ‘friend.’ Most scholars of the twentieth century regarded the concept as a true expression of pre-Christian Germanic belief. By contrast, modern scholarship strongly tends to see it as a construct of medieval authors who took the saints’ cult as a model to describe the personal piety of their ninth and tenth century compatriots. On the basis of a passage in the Old Norse translation of Clemens saga, corroborated with archaeological evidence and some skaldic verse, e.g. Sonatorrek, the present study argues that the religious concept of fulltrúi and its parallel terms developed in pre-Christian times.