Johanne Hildebrandt - Estrid, Sagan om Valhalla

The fifth installment in the Sagan om Valhalla series is Estrid. I had the great honour of reading it in advance thanks to the author Johanne Hildebrandt.

Estrid is the daughter of Sigrid and Svend (Tveskæg) although everyone except for Sigrid think she is the daughter of Erik (Segersäll). She is also twin sister of Olof (Skötkonung) who will be king of the Swedes. Estrid gets kidnapped, and struggles to get back to her mother.

In the beginning of the book, Estrid belongs to the death goddess Hel (just like Freja eventually did in the first trilogy). I have sort of thought about having death as a theme for one of these entries about the series, because it is an over-arching, ever-present theme throughout all of the books. However, again there is a theme I thought more about as I was reading Estrid, so I will have to postpone it again. It seems fitting also, since Estrid is said to choose life over death as she converts to Christianity.

I somehow find Johanne Hildebrandt's depiction of the convertion in line with all the other supernatural things in the world she builds up and it certainly is quite imaginative. For real, however I think faith had extremely little to do with why people in Scandinavia became Christian. My MA thesis in Archaeology was about how the Christianisation can be shown in burials from the time ca AD 800-1200 in the Mälaren region in easternmost Sweden. (It is in Swedish, but can be found here if someone wants to read it, because much of my thoughts that I will write bellow is further developed there.)

To me the time period had much more to do with changing power structures and identities. It is the time of the centralisation of power, of town establishment and really also the time from which we get our first power figures that can be named and at least to some extent fleshed out from written sources. Traditionally this time period is often thought of as the time of the foundation of the Swedish (and Norwegian and Danish) nation states, but I will say that it is not. That concept was not made up until the 19th century (first and foremost to get the citizens's loyalty) and historical and archaeological research about the past was an important part of the creation of the concept.

So what did really happen then at the end of the time period those same scholars named the Viking Age? There are certainly a change towards a much more centralised power. The picture of this is also coloured by the 19th century and not least by the theory of the male conqueror (which I will probably have the opportunity to get back to in some entry later), but we can say that the power changed from being more localy based to more centralised.

The other major thing that happened  during this time period that we actually can say for certain happened: the Christian (Catholic) church was established with clergy, parish organisation and everything. This is really the aspect of the period which I find so interesting. There are actually great differences in what the different types of resources tell us about the Christianisation. Everyone who has gone to school in Sweden have to have heard the name of the German monk Ansgar. He is said to have been sent to Scandinavia as a missionary and there is a biography written by another German monk called Rimbert about him. This and the history of the Hamburg-Bremen archbishopric written by Adam of Bremen has been very influential on the research perspective of the Christianisation. The archaeological material from this period does not show a cut between the older and the newer traditions as clear as the written sources want. Instead the borders are fluid and there is no clear indication as to what is Christian or Pagan. The discussion, especially in the Contract archaeological sector, tends to end up in more or less stereotypical interpretations. The problem I think is that there seldom are any stereotypes in real life. It is easy to write about them and make life black and white, but the truth is that it really is not. Everything is put in the grey area in between the extremes and that is really what the archaeological material show us. As for who was Christian or Pagan, I think it was based on the social context. If one needed to be Christian, one was, and if one needed to be Pagan, one was. Knud den store (the great) is actually a very good example of this. He ruled as a Christian among the Englishmen and as a Pagan among the Danes. Sigrid Storråda is interesting in this aspect, because she seems to have been content in her Pagan faith. I wrote about her probably having a great political mind in my entry about Sigrid and this might seem to contradict it, but maybe it says more about what power she had. Maybe her power was so well-founded in society that she did not have to turn her coat depending of who she spoke with?

Olof's coin

The historical Olof Skötkonung is mostly famous for having been baptist by the English missionary Saint Sigfrid in Husaby in Västergötland, Sweden and for being the first to mint coins in Sweden with the help of English mint masters at the end of the 10th century. It is most likely that the name Skötkonung means Skattkonung (treasure king) and derives from his minting activities.

Because of the minting happening in my home town Sigtuna and the plot actually involving Olof, the choice for this entry's archaeological find was pretty easy. The text on the coin says OLOF REX SVEVORUM, which means Olof, king of the Swedes on the other side can be read SIDEI which has been interpreted as either a spelling variation of the name Sigtuna or an abbraviation of Situne Dei meaning God's Sigtuna.

Since I read it as a script directly from the author, the cover was borrowed from here and the picture of Olof Skötkonung's coin from here.