Pre-Christian Scandinavian royalty. From the legendary kings to the 11th century kingship
Pre-Christian Scandinavian royalty. From the legendary kings to the 11th century kingship

Summary/Abstract: This article focuses, as the title already expresses it, on the Pre-Christian Scandinavian Royalty, not from a political point of view, but from the perspective of what we nowadays call ideology of power. This means that we will try to identify the whole system of beliefs regarding the ideal ruler and the concepts that support his right to the throne and to the exercise of his authority . The ideas used to build the image of the perfect kingship in the pagan Scandinavia continued to exist long after the difficult process of christianisation, thing which meant in fact that the conversion was never fully completed and that this area remained distinct from the rest of the continent during the Middle Ages and even later. Even if the article refers to the Northern monarchy up to the 11th century, we included in our references a 13th century work allegedly written by the king Hakon Hakonsson, “Konungs Skuggsja”, to show this particular aspect: the fact that the pagan ideas were deeply rooted in the endemic society, the fact that they still shaped the concept of the perfect king and that there was no breach between the Christian period and the previous one, but rather a balanced continuity.

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