Religion in Sweden

Historical Norse religion

Gamla Uppsala, the centre of worship in Sweden until the temple was destroyed in the late 11th century.

Before the 11th century, Swedes practised Norse religion, worshipping a variety of Germanic deities. An important religious centre was the Temple at Uppsala. The shape and location of this temple is sparsely documented, but it is referenced in the Norse sagas and Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, and is also described by Adam of Bremen. It was probably destroyed by King Ingold I in 1087 during the last known battle between the pagans and the Christians.

While Norse religion was officially abandoned with the Christianization of Scandinavia, belief in many spirits of Norse mythology such as tomtar, trolls, elves and dwarves lived on for a long time in Scandinavian folklore.

9th–12th century: Conversion to Catholicism

The historical Vadstena Abbey of the Catholic order of the Bridgettines, founded by Bridget of Sweden.

The oldest evidence of Christian burial sites in Sweden are dated to the 6th century, but they are very few in number. The earliest documented campaign to Christianise the Swedes was made by the monk Ansgar (801–865). Making his first visit to Birka in 828–829, he was granted permission to build a church. In 831, he returned home and became Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, with responsibility for Christianity in the north. Around 850, he came back to Birka, where the original congregation had been shattered. Ansgar tried to reestablish it, but it only lasted a few years.

Christianity first gained a hold in Västergötland, probably due to mercantile ties to the Christian Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England. Remnants of a 9th-century church building has recently been excavated in Varnhem. The diocese of Skara, which is the oldest diocese in Sweden, emerged under the Archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen, in the late 10th century. According to Adam of Bremen, the Christian king Olof Skötkonung, who ruled from c. 995 to c. 1022 was forced to limit Christian activities to the western province. When King Stenkil ascended to the throne in 1060 Christianity was firmly established throughout most of Sweden, although the people of Uppland, and probably Sodermanland, resisted the new religion.

The last king adhering to the old religion was Blot-Sweyn, who reigned 1084–1087. A handful of local saints (canonized on diocesan level before the centralized process became normative in 1170–1200), folk saints and clerics were allegedly martyred as late as the 1120s, most of them in Sodermanland and Uppland. Under the reign of Eric the Saint (1150–1160) Christianity became an ideological factor of the state, and the First Swedish Crusade took place; it was a military expedition aimed at converting the Finns to Christianity and conquering Finland as Swedish territory. (However, no archeological data or written sources seem to support the legend. The diocese and bishop of Finland are not listed among their Swedish counterparts before the 1250s). A national church of Sweden was not organized until 1164, when the first archbishop of Uppsala received his pallium from the archbishop of Lund.

Pre-Reformation Swedish Catholic religious leaders — including Bridget of Sweden, founder of the continuously functioning Catholic Vadstena Abbey — continue to be held in high regard by the population as a whole. Her nunnery at Vadstena is one of Sweden's pre-eminent tourist attractions.

16th century: Protestant Reformation; conversion to Lutheranism

Ruins of Alvastra Monastery in Ödeshög. Various ruined medieval Catholic monasteries such as this one stand as testimonies of the appropriation of Catholic properties by the Swedish state during the Protestant Reformation.

Shortly after Gustav Vasa was elected king in 1523, he asked the Pope to confirm Johannes Magnus as Archbishop of Sweden, replacing Gustav Trolle, who had supported the Danish king Christian II and was convicted for treason. When the Pope refused, Gustav Vasa — he himself a proponent of a "Renaissance Biblical Humanism" — started to promote the Swedish Lutheran reformers Olaus, Laurentius Petri, and Laurentius Andreae. Gustav Trolle was eventually forced into exile, and soon all ecclesiastical property was transferred to the Crown. In 1531, Laurentius Petri was appointed by the Crown to become the first Lutheran primate of Sweden, and was ordained by five Catholic bishops without papal assent. The ties with Rome were irreversibly cut in 1536, when Canon Law was abolished.

Originally, no changes were made to official church doctrine, and the episcopal organization was retained. Gradually, in spite of popular protests against the introduction of "Luthery", teachings were aligned with continental Lutheranism. Calvinism was, otherwise, refuted as heresy at the synod of Stockholm in 1565. In order to appease the Holy See, king John III of Sweden, one of Gustav Vasa's sons, took measures to bring the Church of Sweden to a theological position influenced by George Cassander, but, in the heat of controversy, such a compromise position did not achieve its intent of reunion. However, after his death, his brother, Duke Charles, summoned the Uppsala Synod in 1593, which declared the Holy Scriptures the sole guideline for faith, with four documents accepted as faithful and authoritative explanations of it: the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the unaltered Augsburg Confession of 1530.^[4] The Uppsala Synod also reinstated The Swedish Church Ordinance of 1572, which remained in use until 1686.

The move put Charles at odds with the heir to the throne, his nephew Sigismund, who was raised in the Catholic faith. Although Sigismund promised to uphold Lutheranism, Duke Charles's aspirations to power led to the War against Sigismund, a power struggle that was effectively decided at the Battle of Stångebro in 1598, in favour of Charles and Protestantism.

During the era following the Protestant Reformation, usually known as the period of Lutheran Orthodoxy, small groups of non-Lutherans, especially Calvinist Dutchmen, the Moravian Church and Walloon immigrants from the Southern Netherlands, played a significant role in trade and industry, and were quietly tolerated as long as they kept a low profile.

17th–18th century: Conversion of the Sami and freedom for Christian minorities

The Sami, who originally had their own shamanistic religion, were converted to Lutheranism by Swedish missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries. Citizens of foreign nations, mainly Russians, were granted freedom to practice Eastern Orthodox Christianity since the Treaty of Stolbovo in 1617. Anglican and Calvinist foreigners were granted freedom to practice their religions in Stockholm (1741) and Gothenburg (1747). Similar liberties were granted Catholics in 1781, and an apostolic vicar was sent to Sweden in 1783.

18th–19th century: Crackdown on Pietism and enforcement of Lutheranism

In order to curb Pietism several royal decrees and parliament acts were issued in the 18th century; they forbade Swedish citizens to practice any religion besides mandatory Lutheran Sunday mass and daily family devotions. Without the presence of a Lutheran clergyman public religious gatherings were forbidden. It remained illegal until 1860 for Lutheran Swedes to convert to another confession or religion.

19th–20th century: Liberalisation of all religions

In 1860 it became legal to leave the Church of Sweden for the purpose of becoming a member of another officially recognised religious denomination. From 1951, it became legal to leave the church, without providing any reason. From 1951 to 1977 all religious institutions could only be established with the permission of the Crown.

Buddhism

Buddharama Temple in Torsby.

In 2014, there were 4,812 formal affiliated Buddhists in Sweden, comprising the 0.05% of the total population. A 2016 survey by Ipsos based on 500 working-age, internet connected Swedes, found that 1% of the respondents declared to be Buddhists.^[7]

Christianity

Side view of Uppsala Cathedral, the headquarters of the Church of Sweden.

Catholic Church of Christ the King in Göteborg.

A Jehovah's kingdom hall in Kristinehamn.

In 2015 there were 6,886,501 formal affiliated Christians in Sweden, comprising 69.9% of the total population.^[1][2][9]

Survey results are various, for example, according to a 2016 Ipsos survey, only 32% of the approximately 500 working-age, internet connected participants claimed to belong to Christianity, and among them 24% belong to Protestantism, 4% to Catholicism, 3% to Orthodox Christianity and 1% to the Jehovah's Witnesses.^[7] Despite this, the Pew Research Center found in Spring 2016 that 66.7% out of a sample of 1,000 Swedes claimed to be Christians.^[11]

Germanic Heathenism

Members of Forn Sed Sweden holding a sacrifice.

Germanic Heathenry, the contemporary continuation of ancient Germanic religion, is represented by various organizations, including the Nordic Society of the Ese (Nordiska Asa-samfundet), the Swedish Forn Sed Assembly (Samfundet Forn Sed Sverige) and the Community for Nordic Faith (Samfälligheten för Nordisk Sed). The Nordic Society of the Ese, despite being the most recently founded amongst the three (it was founded in 2013), has quickly grown to become the largest Heathen organization in Sweden.^[16]

Islam

Stockholm Mosque.

Islam entered Sweden primarily through immigration from countries with large Muslim populations (such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey, Iraq, Morocco, Iran, and Somalia ) in the late 20th century. The Baltic Tatars were the first Muslim group in modern Sweden.

In 2009 it was estimated that there were 450,000 to 500,000 Muslims in Sweden, around 5% of the total population,^[17] while there were only 139,759 formally affiliated Muslims in 2015.^[1] As of 2016, 3% of the working-age, internet connected population of Sweden claimed to be believers in Islam.^[7]

Judaism

Malmö Synagogue.

The Official Council of Swedish Jewish Communities estimates about 20,000 ethnic Jews in Sweden by halakhic criteria.^[18] Of them, about 8,302 were members of a Jewish religious congregation in 2015.^[1]

Stockholm has the largest community and boasts a primary school, a kindergarten, a library, a bi-monthly publication (Judisk Krönika) and a weekly Jewish radio program. Other cities like Malmö, Gothenburg, Borås, Helsingborg, Lund, and Uppsala have Jewish communities as well. Synagogues can be found in Stockholm (which has two Orthodox and one Conservative synagogue), Göteborg (one Orthodox and one Conservative synagogue), Malmö (one Orthodox synagogue), and in Norrköping (although the Norrköping community is too small to perform regular services).