Vikings, Diversity, and Religion: Scholarly Tools or Wishful Thinking?

There is a growing acceptance that there was no such thing as “Viking” culture, and that imposing modern categories onto Iron Age society can be deeply misleading. Nonetheless, employing labels like “Viking” and “religion” can help distinguish their subject matter from neighbouring concepts like “Anglo-Saxon” and “magic”, however anachronistic such categories might seem when studying the late Iron Age. This paper explores the construction of such useful anachronisms, drawing on range of textual, archaeological, and toponymic data to explore tensions between different forms of “Viking religion”. Focusing on two case studies – the particular paganisms practiced by Gotlanders, and families at home – it argues that Iron-Age Scandinavia exhibited a surprising amount of religious tolerance and diversity.

Luke John Murphy completed his PhD at Aarhus University in Denmark in early 2017, and has since worked at universities in Iceland and Sweden before returning to the UK, where he now works as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Leicester.