Pre-Modern Seminar No 27: Daniel Sävborg and Fredrik Charpentier

On Monday October 28th 2013 Professor Daniel Sävborg and PhD student Fredrik Charpentier will give a talk called:

“The pagan reaction in 11th century Sweden - new thoughts on an old problem”

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The seminar will take place in the library of Skandinavistika (Ülikooli 17, 3rd floor, room 305) at 18.15.
 

A short presentation of the lecture:

“The standard view was for a long time that Sweden was christianized clearly later than the other Nordic counties, and a famous and dramatic episode in Swedish history was a pagan revolt in the 1080s, when the Christian king Inge the elder for a period was replaced by the pagan Blot-Sven (‘Sacrifice-Sven’). During the last decades this story has been questioned by several scholars, and the historicity of Blot-Sven has ben denied. The arguments have been based partly on a negative evaluation of the sources (as late and Icelandic), partly on a new historical view which says that the christianization of Sweden was almost completed already about the year 1000, and that a pagan opposition as late as in the 1180s is thus impossible. In a new project we use an interdisciplinary approach and examine both the written sources and the historical and archaeological context. By the help of that we hope to be able to test the historicity of the pagan revelotion in the 1080s and, if possible, the historical existence of Blot-Sven.”

Daniel Sävborg is Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Tartu with Old Norse texts as his main field. Fredrik Charpentier is PhD student of History at the Centre of Medieval Studies at the University of Stockholm. He will defend his doctoral thesis about the state formation in medieval Scandinavia during the spring 2014. He is now a guest researcher at the Department of Scandinavian Studies in Tartu.

Everybody is welcome!