Fragments of a conversion: handling bodies and objects in pagan and Christian Scandinavia ad 800–1100

The article discusses aspects of changing relationships between the living and the dead in Scandinavia in the Viking Age (800 – 1050AD) and the beginning of the Early Middle Ages (1050 – 1100AD). This period was characterized by the change of religion from Paganism to Christianity. The changes and variations in the treatment of the deceased' bodies and the grave goods are explored in a number of case studies. Fragmentation and wholeness in relation to changing world views are analysed, through a discussion on personhood: On what constituted a person in this period, and how persons were deconstituted through the acts of the burial during a period of religious change. Parallel ways of handling of bodies and objects in the graves are examined, demonstrating that treating the bodies and the grave goods were a means of negotiating or handling different notions of ideas of the body, death and the afterlife.