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  • The Conversion of Scandinavia. Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe by Anders Winroth
  • Thomas Lindkvist
The Conversion of Scandinavia. Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe. By Anders Winroth. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Pp. 256. $38.

This book by Professor Anders Winroth of Yale University conveys the profound changes in the centuries around the year 1000 in the North of Europe. These have been labeled differently within the indigenous historiographical traditions. It has been described as the Christianization and incorporation of northern Europe within a wider cultural and European context; but this period has also been regarded as the formation of the three realms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, thus the very foundation of the later and present nation-states. Here these two transformations are analyzed intertwined.

The Viking Society and its transformation is a highly interdisciplinary field of study. Great contributions have been made by historians; their studies have been based mostly on narrative sources produced outside Scandinavia, such as the chronicle of Adam of Bremen from the late eleventh century, but also on later sagas written mostly by Icelanders and recording developments in Norway. The indigenous Scandinavian written sources—the brief runic inscriptions and the intricate Icelandic verses—are all enigmatic but are here well used to illuminate wider social and historical perspectives. Archaeological excavations and investigations have during recent decades contributed substantially to the understanding of Scandinavia during these transformative centuries. Several long halls as centers of chiefs and mighty men have been recognized.

Winroth has eminent insight into the wide-ranging research within different disciplines and discusses not least the written narrative sources. He points out that earlier generations of modern historians often followed the medieval narrators and their emphasis on an institutional framework. He is well acquainted with the comprehensive and varied research and guides the reader to synthesizing conclusions and wider perspectives.

The essential narrative of Winroth’s book is the conversion and incorporation of northern Europe into the greater cultural community of Christian Europe. He stresses that this was mainly an affair of the social elite within Scandinavia. The Scandinavians Christianized themselves, at least their chiefs. The Viking Age was violent, but the Vikings were not worse than others. Their deeds were recorded by the Christian scribes to a far greater extent than those of other marauders. An economy of plunder dominated; booty and demanding tributes were ways of acquiring wealth. But equally important was control of the exchange of precious products. Scale and military organization differed between groups, but essentially, as Winroth points out, there were great similarities between Charlemagne and the Vikings; both were substantially engaged in acquiring wealth from areas outside their realms, although by different means.

The possibility of gift giving was a necessary prerequisite to attracting followers and liegemen and thus establishing lordships. The ability to organize expeditions paved the way for increased power. The competition and struggles between warlords and petty kings and the external Viking raids are here regarded as an external extension of the attempt to reproduce and expand lordship. The Scandinavian colonization in, for example, parts of the British Isles or in hitherto uninhabited areas like Iceland are here regarded as an elite migration in order to carve out new lordships.

The external activities of the Scandinavians are mostly recorded in sources dealing with westward movement into Anglo-Saxon England and the Carolingian Empire. [End Page 253] But the Scandinavians also traveled in other directions, although the sources pertaining to those travels are limited and therefore less observed here. But one example bound to the North is highlighted by Winroth: the Norwegian chief Ottar reported to King Alfred how he collected tributes from the Sami population in the far Arctic North. The tributes in precious and exotic products were also attractive in markets further south in Europe. The Swedes undertook expeditions to the east across the Baltic Sea and further on. In Rimbert’s Life of Ansgar, for example, are recorded regular tributes demanded from an area in Curonia on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea.

The competition between warlords paved the way for more centralized lordships and ended with the making...

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