Scandinavian Historical Writing, 1100–1400

This chapter talks about how historical writing in Scandinavia began in the early twelfth century, clearly as the result of European influence through the conversion to Christianity. In the following period, a considerable number of works were produced in the three Scandinavian kingdoms plus Iceland, largely in connection with the formation of dynastic kingdoms. The conversion to Christianity was a stimulus to historical writing not only through the introduction of script but also because of the challenge the new religion represented to the traditional culture. Consequently, most of the new kingdoms that came into being as the result of the expansion of Western Christendom in the tenth and eleventh centuries developed their own national historiography in which the origin of the people or the dynasty was a crucial issue.