The Pagan Earl

This monograph comprises a close investigation of the use of ‘pagan’ concepts by the authors and redactors of medieval Norwegian royal history, the vernacular and Latin works commonly called kings sagas. The work is structured as a biography of Hákon jarl Sigurðarson, who is portrayed as a staunch pagan, with the various chapters departing from some incident in Hákon’s biography to consider one of the major categories of pre-Christian religion posited by scholars. These range from divine and sacred kinship through ritual, sacrifice, and temples, to myth and fate, and by the end, effectively all the significant categories have been treated. The various chapters show how authors and redactors put the relevant religious concepts to ideological service, primarily relating to notions of the extent to which kingship should be centralized.