ABSTRACT
This chapter uses Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “circuits of legitimation,” which refers to ways in which elites have their power legitimated through consecration by various kinds of experts in the accumulation and exercise of cultural capital, to analyze transformations over time in how Norway’s kings received and sought charismatic legitimation, i.e., affirmations that their authority derived from possession of supernatural powers and/or divine approbation. The chief cultural agents available to offer consecratory services to kings were skalds or poets, and Christian priests. The chapter begins by discussing how heathen skalds offered charismatic legitimation to kings while also claiming inspiration for their legitimating discourse. It then traces several stages in the ecclesiastical glorification of kings, from the time of Norway’s first bishops to the establishment of an archiepiscopal see and the consecration of Magnus Erlingsson in the mid-twelfth century, along with the related development of Christian devotional poetry. The concluding sections focus on a shift to self-consecration and an emphasis on hereditary charisma by Sverre Sigurdsson and his dynasty, and the attempts by members of Iceland’s Sturlungar family in the thirteenth century to adapt or even to restore the pre-Christian circuit of legitimacy that once had linked poets, kings, and divinity.
