ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the key features of traditional understanding of State– Church relations, based on the deep historical intertwinement of State, law and Christianity. Grace Davie's concepts of 'believing without belonging' and 'vicarious religion' came to the analytical centre of understanding how religion functions in the Nordic countries. Christianity as a missionary movement reached the region in the middle of the first millennium from West and East mingling with Viking traditions into some sort of independent equality and religious pluralism. The Lutheran Reformation had a huge influence in the Nordic countries. It had four different dimensions: external break with the international Church structure and Canon law; internal change of theological understanding; and a change in the understanding of law, from religious natural law concepts to the law as secular. This also includes: internal change in the structure of the newly-established Lutheran national Churches.
