ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the development of towns and town planning in Nordic countries as expressions of political and economic power and also the power of ecclesiastical organizations in Scandinavia in the light of historic town atlases. The main problem in analysing the relationship between town plans and economic, political and ecclesiastical factors lies in the lack of source materials. Scandinavian towns were quite small: the maximum population was a few thousand people. In 822 Archbishop Ebo of Reims received a mandate from the pope to work as a legate in all of the Scandinavian countries in order to convert Nordic people to Christianity. There was also competition between the ecclesiastical power of the churches and the strengthening political power of the kings. Falun provides an example of the difficulties in identifying connections between economic factors and the birth of a town.
