In the fourth book in the extensive work of the Christian scholar Adam of Bremen, the temple of Uppsala is described along with the heathen’s rituals and practices. Adam of Bremen is the main source of the Swedish history during the late Viking era to the early Middle Ages, and that’s why his fourth book is still interesting for us to analyze over and over again. This essay deals with Adam of Bremen’s notations of the temple and the possibility of an existing temple, like the one in Adams descriptions. With earlier research and the archaeological material as starting point I’ve examined the probability of the existence of Adam of Bremen’s temple and if so, where in Old Uppsala it would have been built. In my study I also go through some of the previous studies about Adam’s temple and discuss different theories. The essay then continues with a discussion on more contemporary material in order to examine whether it is possible to say anything new about the temple. I’ve used content analysis to extract the key notions in the text in order to apply them on the archaeological material to see if they confirm each other. A historical critical method helped with the source criticism, since Adam’s Gesta Hammaburgensis is almost 1000 years old. The first part of the essay is a historical flashback from the research of the 20th century, where relevant material is discussed. The second part focuses on the material from the excavations Gamla Uppsala – framväxten av ett mytiskt centrum. In the early studies Adam’s Gesta was considered genuine and indisputable and so was the belief of the existence of the temple. Later it became obvious that Adam hadn’t experienced what he’d described, and many recent researchers chose to believe that part of the book is exaggerative, and that the temple was really just a hall. I’ve been able to see that not much of the old or the more recent material supports the thought of an independent temple building, and I agree with the researchers which suggest that the closest we’ll come to finding a temple is the multifunctional hall buildings. There are some interesting discoveries from the excavations regarding rituals in Old Uppsala. The ritual objects that were found were tied to several significant locations in the area, not to a specific building. The high-quality discoveries were linked to the royal estate plateaus (Kungsgårdsplatåerna) and it’s likely that the cult had been controlled by the conductive layer in society, which had its abode there.

The purpose of this study is to present a critical analysis of how certain themes of the Norse pagan religion are portrayed in ten selected textbooks used for Religious Science education in grades one through nine. The themes included in the analysis are; the description of the transition from the Norse Pagan religion to Christianity; Adam of Bremen’s portrayal of human sacrifice, and lastly Ibn Fadhlan’s characterization of widow burning. By using a critical knowledge text analysis, and applying a theoretical starting point that pedagogical material analyses and interprets events from a specific perspective; in this case from a Christian perspective, I have from the study concluded that the chapters covering the Norse pagan religion in these textbooks have a distinguished Christian bias seen as the norm. The themes analysed in this study all describe different phenomena in a similar way and make use of the same sources, even though these are often questioned. The Christian religion is delegated a prominent role whereas the Norse pagan religion is portrayed as it’s opposite, undeveloped and barbaric.

This essay takes its start in the problematic situation concerning source material in the study of the Norse religion before the Christianization of Scandinavia. There is a lack of written sources from the time when the religion was still practiced. There are plenty of archeological sources economic situation than their religious beliefs. The Icelandic stories written in the 13th and 14th centuries give us a broad pictureof the Norse mythology, but the writers were Christians which makes their reliability questionable. The focus of this essay is therefore on two texts written during the time when the Norse religion was still in practice. The first source is the travel notes written in 922 by the Muslim scholar Ahmad ibn Fadlan who met a group of the Rus’ people. The Rus’ were mainly Scandinavians (possibly from Sweden) and their religious practices hence falls under the category of Norse religion. Ibn Fadlan showed a great interest in the Rus’ and describes their ritual sacrifices and a funeral of theirs in great detail. The second source is the description of the heathen cult in the Swedish town of Uppsala written in 1076 by the Christian scholar Adam of Bremen. He describes Uppsala as the last outpost of the religion and among other things he describes their practices, their ritual sacrifices and a golden temple. I’ve used a comparative method as well as a historical critical method in order to findcredible similarities between the two sources. The focus is placed on the descriptions of the ritual sacrifices in both of the texts and how they can be understood in their context. This is done to find a common ground within the religion in order to construct a framework from which further research may find its foundation. With the help from earlier research on these two texts, on other written material, such as thethe Icelandic stories, and on archeological findings I’ve found many similarities between my two sources which can be considered as real parts of the Norse religion. These are the sacrifice to images of the gods, the sacrifice of different animals, the sacrifice in sacred groves and the hanging of scarified animals in trees and on treelike poles, the central role of sacrificing heads of animals and different ritual practices in order to experience a higher reality. Human sacrifice can be strongly questioned and both of the texts point to hanging as a mean of execution instead of sacrifice.