THE SPACE OF CHRISTIANIZATION: THE NORWEGIAN STAVE CHURCHES OF SÉC XII AS INSTRUMENTS OF POWER AND DOMINATION
Medieval History; Christianization; Norway; Hybridization
This research seeks to analyze how the Christianization of Norway leads to the creation of new spaces of hybridization, being responsible for the formation of a new mentality, at the same time that we can observe a maintenance in the relations of power and domination through the union between the powers of the “missionary kings” and the Church. Highlighting the 12th century Norwegian stave churches as the main source of research, the analysis proposed here will turn to a more systematic observation of these sacred spaces of memory, describing their specificities and analyzing how the presence of pre-Christian interpretations can be seen as an expression of social ideologies, linked to the maintenance of power and domination relations within a new social logic, in which churches were used as a centralizing point of power and also as a mark of the social hybridization process existing between the arrival of Christianity and pre-Christian culture.