In 15th century Sweden did villages in those times have holy communions or special occasional gathering ceremonies?

by Educational_Ad_3757

I’m writing a script for a Swedish medieval movie, which is based in 15th century Sweden.

y_sengaku

Tl; dr: Unless your villages located in the extreme frontier zone like Lapland, their parish life would largely follow as prescribed in medieval canon law books as elsewhere in Latin West, including the Mass.

Late 15th century Swedish local church apparently succeeded in re-building their authority as a local center of piety after the middle-14th century crisis (mainly) caused by the Black Death. Painters like Albertus Pictor (whose work, Death playing Chess is featured in Bergman's The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet)) were commissioned to decorate many local churches, and their wealth was strengthened by the increasing number of donations from lay people. Liturgical books from a few bishopric of medieval Sweden was also printed and circulated. Guilds with religious characteristics and/or confraternities also got popular as elsewhere in Late Medieval Europe, but a few of such communities' patrons were certainly specific to the Scandinavians, such as St. Cnut of Denmark and St. Olaf of Norway (Nilsson in Berntson, Nilsson & Wejryd 2012: 78-83).

Anyway, I suppose you at least live in Sweden or have one or more Swedish friends who can help you with their linguistic competence in Swedish. It would be a bit difficult to find almost any relevant literature in English, at least online. [Beskow 1999] (see the reference below) summarizes the daily life in the local parish from the morning to the night, so it would be easy to make use of for the fiction like your movie's script if you or your friend can read Swedish.

The following list of previous posts of mine might be of interest to you, but don't expect too much.

Recommended Literature:

  • Berntson, Martin, Bertil Nilsson & Cecilia Wejryd. Kyrka i Sverige: Introduktion till Svensk Kyrkohistoria. Skellefteå: Artos, 2012. (in Swedish)
  • Beskow, Per. "Gudstänstliv i en medeltida kyrka." i: Sveriges kyrkohistoria, ii: Hög- och senmedeltid, red. Sven-Erik Pernler, ss. 233-40. Stockholm: Verbum, 1999. (in Swedish).
  • Härdelin, Alf. Världen som yta och fönster. Stockholm: Sällskapet Runica et Mediævalia, 2005.

(Edited): fixes typo.

y_sengaku

As for online resource of the church life in medieval Sweden, you can also check the following site (in Swedish, sorry): https://stockholmslansmuseum.se/utstallningar/medeltida-kyrkor/

I find some jargons in medieval church architectures really awful in google translation, though.....

If you can "borrow" this collection of essays to check (Sven) Helander's article in English, you will be able to read something useful on medieval liturgy practiced in medieval Sweden by yourself (Helander is a specialist of medieval liturgy in Swedish dioceses) : https://archive.org/details/liturgyofmedieva0000unse/

EdHistory101

Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your creative project, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring novelists and the like, based on past experience: some people working on creative projects have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.

Additionally, as amazing as our flair panel is, we should also point out that /r/AskHistorians is not a professional historical consultation service. If you're asking a question here because you need vital research for a future commercial product such as a historical novel, you may be better off engaging a historical consultant at a fair hourly rate to answer these questions for you. We don't know what the going rate for consultancy work would be in your locality, but it may be worth looking into that if you have in-depth or highly plot-reliant questions for this project. Some /r/AskHistorians flairs could be receptive to working as a consultant in this way. However, if you wish for a flair here to do this work for you, you will need to organize this with them yourselves.

For more general advice about doing research to inform a creative project, please check out our Monday Methods post on the subject.