The Saint in the Woods: Semi-Domestic Shrines in Rural Sweden, c. 1500–1800
Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg, 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden
Religions 2019, 10(6), 386; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10060386
Received: 9 May 2019
/
Revised: 7 June 2019
/
Accepted: 8 June 2019
/
Published: 17 June 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Domestic Devotions in Medieval and Early Modern Europe)
In the seventeenth century, a common saying in parts of rural Sweden when discussing someone lacking in piety was that they went to neither church nor cross. This reflects the practice of placing shrines in the fields, along the roads and in the woods as a communal semi-domestic complement to official church space. In the remote woodland areas of Sweden, the distance between parish churches could be considerable, and many parishioners were not able to attend church on a regular, weekly basis. At these sites, parishioners could kneel and make their prayers as a complement to church service. However, they could also be used as points of contact in communicating domestic issues with the divine, with votives being left at the shrines by those hoping for deliverance from disease and difficult childbirths. In the post-reformation period, such sites were regarded with suspicion by the higher ranks of the clergy, and were often considered “idolatrous” and “superstitious”. Yet, they seem to have filled an important religious need among their laity that made it possible to interact with the divine on sites bordering the domestic and the public space of the church.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
sacred space; materiality; popular piety; lived religion; Lutheranism
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Zachrisson, T. The Saint in the Woods: Semi-Domestic Shrines in Rural Sweden, c. 1500–1800. Religions 2019, 10, 386. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10060386
AMA Style
Zachrisson T. The Saint in the Woods: Semi-Domestic Shrines in Rural Sweden, c. 1500–1800. Religions. 2019; 10(6):386. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10060386
Chicago/Turabian StyleZachrisson, Terese. 2019. "The Saint in the Woods: Semi-Domestic Shrines in Rural Sweden, c. 1500–1800" Religions 10, no. 6: 386. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10060386
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
