EXC 2060 A3-36 - Paganisations: Memorialised Paganism as an Element of Scandinavian and European Identities

Scandinavian paganism in the Early Middle Ages is of crucial importance up to this day. That applies to the cultural memory of modern nations both inside and outside Scandinavia as well as to popular conceptions of medieval Europe in a global context and to the multi-faceted memorialisation of pre-Christian mythology in Old Norse texts from the Middle Ages. Pagan Scandinavia is, however, only accessible through external perspectives, either of Christian communities without Scandinavia or of Christian descendants of pagans within the North. Therefore, all written sources provide imaginations. The project aims at comparing synchronous phenomena of the paganisation of Scandinavian history in cultural memory from the Middle Ages to the 21^st century, providing the basis for the reconstruction of a diachronic development. Crossing the boundaries of historical epochs will help to make visible the entanglement of the history of ideas and specific political constellations and interests in different historical contexts. As a result of comparative analyses of texts from Scandinavia and other European regions, the project will contribute to our understanding of stereotypes and images connected to the “pagan North” and their political implications in different contexts up to this day.