Olof Sundqvist is one of the more important voices in the history of pre-Christian Scandinavian religion, a scholar who combines a rare mastery of the source material – whether historical, philological or archaeological – with the command of the theoretical literature of his field. This has notably allowed him to produce a comprehensive account of the religious ruler ideology at work in Scandinavia before the introduction of Christianity. Designed to replace the concept of sacred / sacral kingship, Sundqvist’s model rests on a perceived relationship between ruler and god. While worked out with pre-Christian material, such a concept inevitably calls for comparison with what would eventually replace Scandinavian polytheism. Hence “The Demise of Norse Religion”, which focuses on the key decades between c. 950 and c. 1080. But the book is not so much about conversion (although it contributes to the ongoing debate on the Scandinavian conversions) as it is about the death of a religion, and the various ways in which pagan religious ruler ideology was dismantled. Focusing on this process is an apt choice in that it reflexively reveals the workings of this ideology. Indeed, those who attacked it – the rulers themselves – had previously stood to benefit from it, and soon identified its weak points.

The text is organized into three main parts. First is a preparatory discussion defining the object (Old Norse religion) and the problem (why and how do religions such as this end?), situating it within the state of research (chapters 1–2). This is followed by a comprehensive discussion of the strategies adopted by rulers to replace and / or displace previous practices and beliefs (chapters 3–7), and third, an analysis of the rear-guard action by Pagans in the various Scandinavian countries (chapters 8–11). The whole is concluded by a synthetic chapter (12). Sundqvist’s choice to focus on actors and their strategies, presented in the first part, derives from the nature of the sources. It is also based on insights gained from ethnography, in particular Joel Robbins’s fieldwork among the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea, which showed that the dismantlement of traditional religion was not performed by outside agents of the new religion (missionaries e. g.) but rather by the Urapmin themselves. Hence Sundqvist’s decision to focus on indigenous agency. Due to the nature of the sources, this means focusing on kings and chieftains, and requires conceptualizing religious change in terms of a top-down perspective, as a process that has strong socio-political implications. This approach in turn allows Sundqvist to point to the sort of reasons that lie behind rulers’ decision to change, most notably their desire to participate in wider social, economic, and political networks.

Casting the issue in terms of the winding down of the old religion enables Sundqvist to give new twists to well-known episodes, such as the “sacrificial feast” at Hlaðir (e. g. Hákonar saga góða, ch. 13–18; discussed on pp. 76–93), which provides the author with a paradigmatic example of a key means by which newly Christian kings sought to effect the change. As the saga shows, they exploited the ritual expectations linked to their royal function as mediators between humans and gods. By refusing to sacrifice, they were removing themselves as an irreplaceable component of the system and thus threatened the whole. Likewise, Sundqvist’s approach provides a new understanding for the various medieval texts’ presentation of the pagan gods as misrecognized humans (euhemerism) or demons; less a matter of clerics theorizing from within their ivory tower than the counterpart of the violence for which missionary kings such as Óláfr Tryggvason are known (pp. 170–182). But as Sundqvist argues in Chapter 5, the process was not only violent, it did include more irenic strategies that implied the survival of specific pre-Christian customs such as ritual drinking. To account for these convergent strategies, Sundqvist again resorts to anthropologist Joel Robbins’s work who distinguished between “replacement” and “displacement” (p. 184), concepts that allow the two scholars to maintain the spotlight on indigenous agency. The following chapter (6) is a case study of Óláfr Tryggvason’s missionary activities that not only illustrates the strategies discussed in the previous chapters but also nuances established theories concerning the conversion. Sundqvist’s careful discussion of King Óláfr’s apostolic activities in Norway and Iceland demonstrates that it is not possible to construct a single general model (whether the “peaceful and gradual” one favoured by archaeologists or the “violent and abrupt” one of the historians of religion); rather, we must admit that the methods were context-dependent.

In Chapter 7, Sundqvist turns to the reasons why rulers tended to focus more on the practical and material aspects thereof than its immaterial counterpart. Rejecting theory-driven approaches that mobilize typologies distinguishing between “ethnic” or “cult” religions on the one hand, and “universal” or book-based religions on the other, Sundqvist concludes the second part of the book by highlighting the “pragmatics. The recently converted kings did what was in their power to do” (p. 253).

The third part investigates the conflicts that were provoked by the disruption of the old order. The discussion is organized spatially with a chapter each for Svetjud, Trøndelag, and Iceland. In his investigation of these pagan reactions, Sundqvist is careful to look at the grounds motivating resistance. There are religious grounds to be sure but other reasons emerge. Most importantly, the conflicts can be cast in political terms, as hinging on the form kingship should take, and thus where power should rest. The pagan party sought to preserve traditional kingship, where kings to some extent shared power with the assembly whereas Christianity introduced a more centralized kingship in which power was confiscated by the kings with the help of the Church. The Icelandic case (chapter 10), where violence and reaction were far less prevalent, functions as a confirmation of the socio-political nature of conversion as it points to the correlation between kingship and conflict. Hence, in his more general discussion of “pagan resilience” (chapter 11), Sundqvist mobilizes the typology of religious conflicts developed by the critical historian of religions Bruce Lincoln. This typology, distinguishing between religions of the status quo, of rebellion, and revolution, allows Sundqvist to account for the failure of pagan reactions, and highlights the dynamic nature of Norse religion itself as it moved from a hegemonic position (status quo) in the Viking Age to its eventual collapse after 1000 (having taken the form of a religion of rebellion/revolution).

“The Demise of Norse Religion” represents a useful and well-executed contribution to our knowledge of what happened in the crucial years of the tenth and eleventh centuries. But this is also a point of potential critique. In pursuing a reconstructionist agenda, Sundqvist necessarily adopts a particular methodological stance, whereby he accords credit to sources that are inherently problematic, because they are largely silent (archaeology) or because they are temporally distant (most of what we know of the tenth-century king Óláfr Tryggvason dates from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries). Hence, the many “probably” and “perhaps” that occur in his text, and reveal his honesty and reflexivity. In this, too, Sundqvist is participating in a debate that is far from closed.