Christianity To The Vikings Essay

As we have seen, the introduction of Christianity to the Vikings had significantly contributed to the end of the Viking Age in mid 11th Century, not only due to the persuasive Christian missionaries, and the realization of the benefits of Christianity, but also the forcible nature of Scandinavia king’s conversion of their subjects (which will be looked into in more detailed in due course). One must bear in mind that most of the evidence we have on the conversion of the Vikings is through archaeological excavations, as Gareth Williams explains that “we can see it in the archaeological evidences [that] Pagans buried their dead with grave goods, but Christians normally didn't, and this makes it relatively easy to spot the change in religion.”

This created the opportunities for wealthy men, who can naturally become authoritative and leaders due to the wealth and prestige they carried, as they had control of the resources. Furthermore, when Denmark become a kingdom, competition increased in Scandinavia, leading to the creation of three kingdoms. Bagge continues to argue that ‘Christianity had served as an instrument in the monopolization of power’, therefore centralizing the powers onto one figure and defining the kingdoms. With this in mind, the conversion of those three kingdoms gave two significant advantages to the kings of those kingdoms as it had allowed them, to remove paganism and therefore rid of competitors who may have pose a threat to the throne, as kings had dominance over bishops, hence being able to selectively pick and choose who would be bishop, and so minimize the threat to their throne. This power had a huge advantage which was not necessarily practiced in the Viking power system, therefore the opportunity to strengthen one position with cunning measures was not available to the Vikings. Secondly, all the perquisites of Christianity meant that kings could claim legitimated power from God and its prestigious international