The Golden One - July 30, 2019


Swedish History - Why Did Sweden Become Christian？ Birka and the Frankish Empire

Topics
Christianization of Sweden
Hosted by
Marcus Follin
Mentioned
Ansgar Balder Sicily Birka Olav
Swedish History - Goths and Swedes. Uppsala Gravemounds The Wild Hunt Challenge - My Birthday Wish. Book Release： Dauntless

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

148.12

Word count

1,234

Sentence count

69

Harmful content

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The story of Sweden's Christianization begins in Birka, a prosperous trading town a few miles west of Stockholm. And if you wonder why the story begins here, almost 200 years before Sweden became Christian, it's because it was here that the Frankish missionary Ansgar first landed during the 800s. He did create a church that was active for a few years, but ultimately it was abandoned, and it would be another 200 years until Sweden began its Christianization process.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The story of Sweden's christianization begins here in Birka, a few miles west of Stockholm.
00:00:26.860 Birka was a prosperous trading town during the 700s up till the late 900s.
00:00:32.860 From here came wares from all over Europe, including Russia, and even from destinations further away.
00:00:38.860 As I mentioned in the previous video, silk from Sogdiana in China has been found in Uppsala,
00:00:44.860 and Birka was indeed well situated geographically speaking to bring wares to Uppsala.
00:00:50.860 Birka was the principal trading town in Svealand, whereas Uppsala was the religious and civic center.
00:00:56.860 The most important exports from Birka, and thus Svealand, Sweden in general, were iron and furs.
00:01:03.860 From the countries across the Baltic Sea came fine goods such as honey, beeswax, and linens.
00:01:09.860 And the import of linen garments from the Baltic is a fine tradition that I endeavor to reignite.
00:01:15.860 And a large and important part of the imports that came into Birka came from the powerful Frankish Empire to the south.
00:01:21.860 Understanding Europe during the 800s is to a large part understanding the Frankish Empire.
00:01:26.860 As I mentioned in the last video, the Great Germanic Migration Era had created numerous new kingdoms all over Europe.
00:01:33.860 The most powerful kingdom, or rather empire, would become the Frankish one.
00:01:38.860 The Frankish Empire, at the height of its power, encompassed large parts of France and Germany,
00:01:44.860 and even more lands, as can be seen by this map.
00:01:47.860 The reason for discussing the Frankish Empire when talking about Sweden's Christianization
00:01:52.860 is because the influence of Christianity came from two major sources.
00:01:57.860 The British one and the Frankish one. 0.95
00:02:00.860 And if you wonder why the story begins here in Birka, almost 200 years before Sweden became Christian,
00:02:06.860 it's because it was here the Frankish missionary Ansgar first landed during the 800s.
00:02:12.860 He did create a church that was active for a few years, but ultimately it was abandoned,
00:02:18.860 and it would be another 200 years until Sweden began its Christianization process.
00:02:23.860 Although Sweden didn't become Christian overnight, it was a gradual process over the entire Middle Ages.
00:02:28.860 And many pagan beliefs, just as in most of Europe, clinged on and took the shape of Catholic holidays, for example.
00:02:35.860 So, even though Ansgar failed to bring Christianity to Sweden, Sweden became Christian eventually.
00:02:45.860 And the question is, how did Sweden become Christian? Why did Sweden become Christian?
00:02:51.860 And it's actually a matter more of politics rather than spirituality.
00:02:57.860 As the Viking Age draw to its conclusion, if you will, the Vikings or the Scandinavians got tighter connections to England and Germany and great empires of the continent.
00:03:11.860 The Vikings also realized that the Christian kingdoms were quite powerful indeed.
00:03:17.860 So, one could argue that it's actually the powerful aspect of Christianity that was appealing to the Vikings here in Sweden, for example.
00:03:27.860 And a difference between how the various Nordic countries become Christian differs a bit.
00:03:32.860 So, in Norway you had a quite brutal king, Olav, who took the sword to anyone who didn't want to become Christian, basically.
00:03:40.860 And if we're talking about Christianity as a state religion, it is a better option for a ruler, for a centralized king than paganism is.
00:03:51.860 Just based upon the teachings of Christianity versus paganism.
00:03:56.860 Where paganism is a bit more suited to someone who is wild, people that is wild, a bit more chaotic.
00:04:03.860 Whereas if you want to cement a kingdom, if you want to create a kingdom where everything is a bit more centralized, you have a king who is chosen by God himself.
00:04:13.860 It's easier to rule a bit more calm people, so to speak.
00:04:19.860 So, in Norway it was a bloody and dramatic affair. 1.00
00:04:23.860 In Sweden it was more or less to do with trade and connections to the continent.
00:04:30.860 So, Birka, for example, where we are, a central hub of trade.
00:04:35.860 Both east, primarily, to the Viking colonies in Russia, for example, but also to all of the Baltic.
00:04:44.860 So, Christianity was a good choice for Swedes to adapt, to get closer to the continent culturally and spiritually.
00:04:52.860 So, it was a good deal. It was a good deal to get on the winning team, so to speak.
00:04:57.860 So, the pagan world was a bit outdated.
00:05:00.860 The new, modern, powerful was on the continent and the continent was Christian. 0.78
00:05:06.860 So, it might have been the case that they looked towards England with its advanced statescraft.
00:05:11.860 They looked towards France or the Frankish kingdom or to Germany.
00:05:16.860 So, the majestic cathedrals, churches and heavy knights.
00:05:21.860 And so, that is the way to go. This white Christ is a powerful entity. 0.98
00:05:26.860 We need to adapt his ways.
00:05:28.860 And also, if we're talking about polytheism, if you have many gods, it's easier to adapt yet another god,
00:05:36.860 who is quite similar to Balder, as I mentioned in the last episode.
00:05:40.860 So, if you have this white Christ, it might be a good idea to have him on your side. 0.97
00:05:44.860 And if you already have eight or so gods or three main deities and then you want to add in another god,
00:05:50.860 whose disciples and whose kingdoms are so powerful, why take the chance to not go with that god as well?
00:05:57.860 So, that could be another aspect seen from a religious point of view, why the Swedes, Swedish Vikings adapted Christianity.
00:06:06.860 But my analysis, and I'm hardly the first one to present this, is that it was probably mostly to do with a way to get closer in terms of trade,
00:06:16.860 in terms of cultural exchange, in terms of getting to the same power level as the other kingdoms on the continent and Denmark, for example.
00:06:27.860 So, 200 years earlier, when Ansgar was here, the kingdoms of the continent in England,
00:06:33.860 they weren't as prepared to face off against the Viking raiders.
00:06:36.860 But 200 years later, as we draw up to the 11th century, they were a bit more used to it.
00:06:44.860 They had better military capacity to fight off Viking invaders.
00:06:49.860 So, Sweden, for example, had to adapt to it.
00:06:53.860 So, that could be said to be the reason for Sweden becoming Christian.
00:06:58.860 Then I'm sure there are plenty of different explanations as to why this happened.
00:07:04.860 But for a king who's out for power, it made perfect sense.
00:07:14.860 The different nations in Europe dealt with the Vikings in different manners.
00:07:19.860 A notable example is how the Frankish king dealt with the Vikings.
00:07:24.860 He invited the Normans, or the people who would become the Normans,
00:07:28.860 he invited their king Rollo and said,
00:07:31.860 you can have this land as long as you defend it against other Vikings.
00:07:35.860 Now, of course, the Normans, as most of you know, went on to even further conquests,
00:07:41.860 most primarily the throne of England in perhaps the most well-known battle of all time,
00:07:46.860 the Battle of Hastings 1066.
00:07:48.860 They also conquered Sicily and was a quite aggressive and brutal people in general.
00:07:53.860 So, a lot more can be said about the Christianization of Sweden,
00:07:58.860 but I thought to give this brief overview
00:08:01.860 and I might talk more about this in coming videos
00:08:04.860 because it is an important and interesting topic.
00:08:07.860 So, thank you for watching.
00:08:10.860 Do check out the links in the description box below
00:08:13.860 for ways to support if you like these videos
00:08:16.860 and I will see you in the next one.
00:08:18.860 I will see you in the next one.