After the comments I have had so far, I feel I perhaps ought to clarify a
couple of points:
I did not mean to imply that transition rites are inherently pagan, as far
as I am concerned they are part of all religions, including Christianity.
My curiousity about this particular 'problem' stems from my training as an
archaeologist, and thus, to a certain degree, as an anthropologist. As
such, I am used to thinking of rituals as important for social cohesion as
well as for establishing and maintaining social power.
And one of the points emphasized about the conversion to Christianity, has
always been that the control and conduct of rituals was removed from the
private individuals and became the monopoly of the church. This certainly
also seemed to be the case with traditional Christianity as I read about it
and saw it in Norway.
Now, however, I have begun wondering whether this wasn't a much later
development, and whether people weren't, in fact, initially left to conduct
their private rituals (births, marriages, burials etc.) themselves, just as
they had done in pagan times. As these are the sort of rituals most people
encounter and participate in regularly, it seems to me that large parts of
people's ritual experiences remained under their own control, even after the
introduction of Christianity.
Why was this, and when and why did it eventually change?
Ingegerd H.
Dr. Ingegerd Holand
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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