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Sweden is considered one of the world's most secular nations, with a high proportion of irreligious people. [9] Phil Zuckerman, an associate professor of Sociology at Pitzer College, [10] writes that several academic sources have in recent years placed atheism rates in Sweden between 46% and 85%, with one source reporting that only 17% of respondents self-identified as "atheist". [11]
In 2017, the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Survey found that 59.9% of the Swedes regarded themselves as Christians, with 48.7% belonging to the Church of Sweden, 9.5% were Unaffiliated Christians, 0.7% were Pentecostal Protestants, 0.4% were Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox and the Congregationalist were 0.3% each. Unaffiliated people ...
The conversion to Christianity of the Scandinavian people required more time, since it took additional efforts to establish a network of churches. The earliest signs of Christianization were in the 830s with Ansgar's construction of churches in Birka and Hedeby. [1] The conversion of Scandinavian kings occurred over the period 960–1020. [1]
Swedish culture is an offshoot of the Norse culture which dominated southern Scandinavia in prehistory.Sweden was the last of the Scandinavian countries to be Christianised, with pagan resistance apparently strongest in Svealand, where Uppsala was an old and important ritual site as evidenced by the tales of Uppsala temple.
Great heathen sacrifices were held there at that time, and for a long while Frey had been the god who was worshipped most there – and so much power had been gained by Frey's statue that the devil used to speak to people out of the mouth of the idol, and a young and beautiful woman had been obtained to serve Frey.
The female form of Elves may have originated from the female deities called Dís (singular) and Díser (plural) found in pre-Christian Scandinavian religion. They were very powerful spirits closely linked to the seid magic. Even today the word "dis" is a synonym for mist or very light rain in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish.
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In the first half of the 17th-century, churches were built in Sápmi by the order of king Charles IX of Sweden, and the Sámi people were compelled to subject themselves to the law of Sweden by attending them. [4] They were however silently allowed to practice Sámi shamanism in private until the second half of the 17th-century, when Swedish ...