[Gandur] Jens Peter Schjödt: Old Norse Religion - The Reconstruction of a Construction

[Gerður Halldóra Sigurðardóttir]

Jens Peter Schjodt will give a lecture next Tuesday, the 13th of March, at
17.00 in room 201 in Árnagarður, on Old Norse Religion – The Reconstruction
of a Construction.

 

Looking in the handbooks on Old Norse religion up to the 1970s (and perhaps
much later), one gets the impression that we are dealing with a religion in
the same sense as when we are dealing with for instance Christianity or
Islam, i.e. that we are facing a religion which, although there may be
differences from place to place and from one period to another, has some
central clusters of belief and some basic rituals which must be performed by
everybody.  During the last decennia, however, many scholars, including
myself, have questioned important parts of this view, acknowledging that an
orally transmitted religion as was the case with the pre-Christian will not
have the relative stability as religions with central authorities and
domatics, as we see it in canonical religions.  This, in may ways, forces us
to revise our view, not only of the religious worldview(s) in the North, but
also has some serious consequences for our way of dealing with this subject
matter.  In the lecture I shall attempt, firstly, to state what seems to be
a more realistic view of Old Norse religion, and secondly to discuss some of
these consequences.  Notions such as “model”, “comparativism” and
“constructionism” will be discussed, and a couple of examples will be given.

 

Jens Peter Schjodt is a lector at Aarhus University, The Department of
Cultural Studies – Study of Religion.

 

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