Ancestral entanglement : An entanglement-theoretical study of the religious dimension of the late Viking Age runestones and the Scandinavian odal system

Sammanfattning

This study examines the entanglements that connect the late Viking Age runestones with the religious dimension of odal, ancestors, and land ownership in Scandinavia. The aim of the thesis is to develop a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the late Viking Age runestones and their connection to odal, religion, and land ownership. The study is delimited to the Iron Age and the early Middle Ages with an extra focus on the late Viking Age, a transitional period where the Christianisation of Scandinavia challenges old traditions and practices. The most important source material in the study is the corpus of late Viking Age runestones, but the study also draws on medieval Scandinavian legal texts, folklore, Old Norse mythology and archaeology. The methodological and theoretical framework is based on entanglement theory where entanglements between humans and things are analysed. The findings of the study suggest that the late Viking Age runestones is entangled to the religious dimension of odal, odal land ownership, ancestor cult, and Christianity. The study also finds the snake iconography on the late Viking Age runestones to be entangled with the tomtorm and ancestor cult. The result corroborates earlier findings that the late Viking Age runestones were a response to the Christianisation of Scandinavia and that the change in burial customs disrupted the cyclic odal ownership system that was entangled with the burial mounds. To reestablish the odal ownership and the ancestor afterlife to the farmstead, runestones where erected, functioning as adaptors between two religious systems, Christianity and ancestor cult.