What I Learned About Sweden

My father emigrated from Sweden in 1913. He died when I was only 7 years old, so I know very little about him. During the summer of 1998 my wife and I traveled to Sweden, and through the kindness of relatives we were able to visit the small subsistence farm in Smaland where my father was born, and the cemetery where my grandparents were buried. My cousins knew only that my father, his brother and sister had gone to America before 1920. Upon returning home I decided to learn about my father’s homeland. I wrote the following essay as part of a series I was contributing to a local newspaper.

The Nordic gods held court at Svitiod (Old Uppsala) in ancient Thule, where a temple sheathed in wooden “dragon scales” and entwined in carved serpents housed idols of Odin, Thor, and Frej. Today, their sacred names stripped of pagan trappings are more familiar to us as days of the week: Wednesday (Onsdag-Odinsday), Thursday (Torsdag) and Friday (Fredag). In a sacred grove near the temple sacrificial offerings, “seven males of every species from man to the lowly cat,” hung from the tree branches.

About 470 years after Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, a humble missionary named Ansgar, a Frankish monk from Hamburg, Germany, came to what then was Sweden’s first large trading center, Birka, on the island of Bjoko in Lake Malar, an outpost predecessor to Stockholm. Ansgar set up a church, made a few conversions and then returned to Hamburg, where he soon was made a Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church.

Some years later, another missionary, Bishop Unni, also of Hamburg, brought his cross, mitre, crosier and keys to God’s kingdom to Birka and was summarily murdered for his trouble. 

For the next three centuries Christianity advanced somewhat awkwardly, sometimes violently, convert by convert into the legendary Realm of the Sveas.

The wandering Swedes (Sveas and Gotar, or Goths) of southeastern Sweden, were known as Varangians. Some of them had already paddled and portaged their way through Germany and western Russia. (Later, their descendants are identified in history as the Visigoths and Ostrogoths.) Drawn southward by mythical tales of a rich city known as “Miklagrad,” Varangians reached the Byzantine Empire capital, Constantinople. Upon arriving they threatened to destroy the city unless paid a generous ransom of gold. Viking Berserkers of southwestern Sweden and Denmark pillaged and burned Catholic churches in England, Ireland and France. Norwegian Viking longships ranged the North Atlantic, and settlements were established on Greenland and Iceland. A group of adventurous Norsemen led by Leif Eriksson and Thofinn Karlsefni spent three winters on the North American continent.

Early in the eleventh century, Norway, Denmark and Sweden for a time divided into separate kingdoms. It was near the end of that century, said the revered Swedish historian and epic novelist Vilhem Moberg, “The final struggle between heathendom and Christianity took place . . . The Christians pulled down the heathen temples and burned the wooden images. Just before the end of the century the temples of the gods of Uppsala, the citadel of heathendom, were overthrown. At long last the struggle had been decided.”

The Norwegian King Sigurd Jorsafalar in 1123 brought Christian teaching to an area of south central Sweden known as Smaland. Here existed the last refuge of the Norse gods. A legendary St. Sigfrid of Varead, Smaland, is said to have baptized the first Swedish Christian King, Olof Skotkonung. King Olof united the Sver and Gotar in one kingdom. He installed a missionary bishop at Skara, but also allowed Norse paganism equal status with Christianity.

One hundred years later, a successor to the Swedish crown, Erik Jedvarsson (later to become the patron saint of Sweden) put aside the old gods and promised to Christianize his subjects with “sword and word.”

Yet, five hundred years later Odin under the fictitious guise of “The Other” was still worshiped in secret according to the ancient Asa doctrine by Smaland peasants. Smalanders retained the belief that blind fate, an inescapable predestination was supreme over gods and men.

“The Smalanders were the last Swedes to become Christians,” wrote Moberg, a Smalander by birth, “and perhaps this is why heathendom has so long retained its grip on them. At their three great annual festivals, Christmas, Easter and Midsummer, the whole Swedish people still celebrate many old Asa customs, Magical in origin, they are relics of our forefathers’ nature worship.  But in the end, although it took three hundred years, the ‘White Christ’ overcame them. But in the depths of the folk-psyche notions of their power have survived right up to our own time.”

The Skanninge Assembly of 1248 confirmed the power of the Roman Church throughout the Swedish kingdom.

Traditional Viking democracy (from which we have inherited “bylaws” -- byalag-village law --  and that representative of the people in local assemblies known as an “alderman”) so long the heart and soul of village life began to give way to a modified form of European feudalism under King Magnus Ladulas around 1280. (The succession of the early Swedish kings, by the way, was not hereditary but by election.) Magnus inducted landed “nobility” into the Order of Knighthood, These feudal lords would compete with bishops and kings for a share of government power.

Catholic monasteries and convents were widespread in Sweden during the fourteenth century. Ecclesiastical parishes encompassed scattered rural villages. The Roman Catholic Church canonized St. Bridgitta of Vadstena in 1391. Bridgitta’s bones were interred with those of other saints in her church at Vadstena, and are venerated today by Catholic pilgrims.

Early in the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III had declared “Ecclesiastical liberty is nowhere better preserved then where the Roman church has full power in temporal as well as spiritual matters.” The tide of Catholicism had washed across Europe and left in its wake the Holy Roman Empire, a confederation of “more than 300 Church- and family-controlled units and free cities, often at odds with each other and obedient to the emperor when convenient.” The obedience of the Empire’s inhabitants was divided among feudal princes, dukes, counts, archbishops and city governments. The Emperor was little more than a figurehead sanctioned by Rome. As the sweeping flood of clerical power ebbed during the next three centuries, there appeared the golden light of the Renaissance. Humanism began to challenge religious dogma; a revival of ancient knowledge, classical literature and art, and a critical scholasticism spread by printed books threatened to undermine the Papacy.

Martin Luther, a German monk and professor of theology, criticized the Roman Church for what he believed to be abuses of its religious authority. He was excommunicated in 1521, but, protected by Frederick the Wise, Prince of Saxony, Luther continued to express his religious ideas and attracted a following. Luther’s teachings became known as Lutheranism, and led to the formation of the Lutheran Church. Luther’s teaching shifted the focus of religious life away from the ecclesiastical authority and sacramental traditions of the Roman Church to a family centered congregation. Luther proclaimed a direct spiritual relationship between God and believers who are redeemed through Christ. The “Reformation” of Martin Luther began a religious movement known as Protestantism.

The Reformation arrived in Sweden by the middle sixteenth century. Evangelical Lutheranism became the state religion around 1540. King Gustav I Vasa (1521-1560) founded the Swedish State Church, confiscated Roman Church property, and stripped the parish churches of their ornaments and religious furnishings. What had been church real estate became crown property. Some Medieval Romanesque and Gothic churches with statues and paintings remained, and have been restored, but renovations of many old churches incorporated Italian Baroque and Rococo art and architectural styles.

As Moberg said, by the 12th century all Swedes had been baptized, but it was not until four hundred years later did they realize they had been baptized into the wrong church.

“The struggle between heathendom and Christianity lasted for three hundred years. The armed struggle between Catholics and Protestants lasted for thirty, out of which the Swedes took part for eighteen. Several thousands of Swedish soldiers sacrificed their lives in the Thirty Years War, or else came home again as invalids to spend the rest of their days in the Vadstena hospital for invalided soldiers.

“No doctrines cost so much human life as doctrines of salvation. Yet history teaches us that humanity cannot do without them.”

The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) began as a civil war between Roman Catholics and Protestants in the German states; it finally became a general struggle for territory and political power involving most of the European nations. The Swedish King, Gustav II Adolf (1611-1632), “the Lion of the North,” motivated by ambition for his native country, and to support Protestantism entered the war in 1630 by invading Germany with 13,000 soldiers. He hoped to unite all the Protestant countries into one kingdom. Two years later, near Leipzig, Gustav Adolf was killed while fighting the Catholic Imperialist army. In 1634 the Swedish army was destroyed in battle at Nordlingen. By the end of the war, Germany lay in ruins and would not recover for almost two hundred years. Thousands of Europeans fled to the New World with the hope of a better life.

As priests of a state church Lutheran clergymen were given the responsibility of recording every birth, death, and marriage, the names of those who left the parish and those that moved into it. The parish census even included names of residents who never came to church. Within various church archives are detailed records of parish members. The parish priest kept reports or household examinations, which contained much personal information about families. A few of these reports are dated as early as the 1620s, but the majority begin about 1750.

The churches remain in Sweden as a testament to the faithful, and as a vast repository of Swedish history. Although no longer well attended the churches are kept in good repair, are always open -- are never locked -- and are much a part of the cultural life of the people. 

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