When we talk about religion today, it is often presented as a matter of intangibles like “sin”, “halal”, or “nirvāṇa”. In the same way, changing from one religion to another is usually seen as an internal, personal transformation, not a shift in material circumstances. This has led most academic studies of religious change to focus on the anthropocentric: human action and belief.

This interdisciplinary research project is therefore investigating the overlooked non-human, material aspects of religious change. It focuses on long-term, gradual changes to religion across whole societies (so-called ‘inculturative’ conversion), examining in two early-Medieval European cases: the Romanisation of British culture in the Roman province of Britannia (c. 43-410 CE), and the Christianisation of pre-Christian Nordic religions (so-called ‘Viking’ paganism) in Scandinavia (c. 700-1100 CE).

Our goal is to better understand how material objects – idols, jewellery, costumes, musical instruments, and even animals, all so-called ‘ritual props’ – were used in religious ritual during periods of religious change. We’re particularly interested in how the use of such props may have affected the cognitive load of religious practitioners, making them more or less able to experience religion on a personal level. Along the way, we’re hoping to gather and make accessible as much possible information about religious artefacts in the societies we’re studying, hopefully via an online collection.

The project is generously funded by the Division of Science and Innovation at the University of Iceland via a Nýdoktorastyrkir Háskóla Íslands grant, running from 2019 until 2022.