O paganismo escandinavo entre a percepção e a imaginação

A Vita Anskarii de Rimbert e as Gesta Hammaburgensis de Adam de Bremen.

Abstract

When dealing with the religious culture of northern Europe in the High Medieval Ages we are faced with some particularities regarding the textual nature of the available sources. They were all produced by foreigners in contact with Scandinavian culture, rather than Scandinavians themselves. Thus, the central documents for our knowledge of the Scandinavian religious practices are "problematic" when considering the object of such investigations. In this paper, I propose a comparative study between two narratives, composed at different times and from fundamentally different points of view regarding the Scandinavian paganism. On the one hand the Vita Anskarii, composed by Rimbert at the end of the ninth century, and on the other the Gesta Hammaburgensis, written by Adam of Bremen in the second half of XI. I will focus on the authors’ reports on Scandinavian paganism. The main concern of the analysis will be the relation between perception and imagination of the pagan element in these authors’ works.