Heresy and Heterodoxy in Medieval Scandinavia

Abstract

Although medieval Scandinavia was home to no large-scale heretical movements, it did experience heresies, heretics and stridently heterodox views. How many? The answer, as it turns out, is less certain, yet more interesting than the figure established in previous scholarship. Specifically, this essay challenges Jarl Gallén’s position (as articulated in his entry on ‘heresy’ in the authoritative Kultur-historisk lexikon för nordisk medeltid) that cases of heresy in medieval Scandinavia were (1) rare and (2) occurred exclusively in Sweden. The five cases Gallén cites are set against nearly a dozen other episodes, cases that often involved the same criteria (i.e., the language of the charges, the authorities disposing of the cases and/or the theological bases for the charges), which ought, I argue, to be part of any discussion of heresy and heterodoxy in the medieval North. The essay concludes that such instances were neither limited to Sweden nor rare, but rather appear fairly regularly as regards both the spatial and temporal frames reflected in the historical record.