The Power of Imagination: The Christianitas and the Pagan North during Conversion to Christianity (800-1200)

Abstract

With the introduction of Christian conversions, non-Christian north ern and eastern Europe were conceived of as a unified North from the ninth century onwards, as aquilo. This notion of an alien North retained its hold over contemporary historiography, even after the completion of the missions in the twelfth century. The political, cultural, ethnic and linguistic otherness of the north-east continued to foster associations of the North as the kingdom of the devil, regardless of the fact that the regions beyond the Elbe had converted to Christianity. The so-called North in northern and eastern Europe thus provided an image of the alien for old Europe for more than a millennium.