This is a wide-ranging interdisciplinary study that skilfully combines the history of literature, the history of religion and the history of Scandinavia in order to examine a series of related developments. The first is the theological development of the concepts of damnation and salvation in the newly converted countries of Iceland and Norway; the second is the literary development of these concepts in skaldic poetry, the sagas of Icelanders, the kings’ sagas, the short narratives known as thættir and the contemporary sagas; and the third is the historical development of social practices relating to these concepts, practices that soon acquired political as well as religious meaning. Informed by extensive, up-to-date knowledge of the sources and the scholarship, Haki Antonsson's insights and conclusions are important and persuasive.

The material is organised in a clever triple chronology, so that not only are texts and socio-political practices analysed in chronological order, but the aspects of damnation and salvation that are examined over the course of the volume are chosen so as to reflect an individual's journey to salvation. After an introduction that sets out the methodology of identifying recurring patterns of thought and expression, the first chapter considers how people were persuaded of the necessity of confession and penance; the second chapter examines the development of ideas about how salvation may be obtained; the third and fourth chapters investigate cases in which an individual's journey to salvation is disrupted by betrayal or outlawry; the fifth chapter shows how theological concepts are represented as being manifested in the visible world; the sixth chapter discusses the hour of death; and the seventh chapter, which serves as the conclusion, appropriately treats ‘Last things and judgement day’.

One achievement of this study is its contribution to the understanding of how saga authors used the Old Testament as a model for early Scandinavian history, seen as divided by the conversion into pre-Christian and Christian eras. Because this Augustinian view of history is implicit, there has been some modern resistance to recognising it except in very clear cases, as when Floki sends out ravens to find land in the manner of Noah. Haki Antonsson's convincing identifications of parallels with Ahab, Saul and the Israelites considerably strengthen the argument for the Norse typology. Even more important is his exploration of how Christian concerns with salvation enter the political sphere. Modern scholarship has an unfortunate tendency to separate its medieval subject into religious and secular spheres, and combined with a long-standing preference for the sagas of Icelanders, which largely take place away from the Christian world, this has distorted our understanding of medieval Scandinavia. A simple reading of the sagas will not inform us that many twelfth-century chieftains also entered the clergy, nor will it illustrate the twelfth- and thirteenth-century phenomenon of the staðir (privately owned church centres that become channels of communication serving the interests of their wealthy, powerful lay owners). In addition to discussing the many ways in which religious practices such as penance could overlap with secular practices such as feuding and dispute resolution, Haki Antonsson emphasises how these religious practices were public ones: ‘[F]or powerful men penance was not a private matter’ (p. 30). This is an extremely important insight, because the public nature of the matter was manifested in historical behaviour, was represented in sagas and was one reason why sagas were written in the first place, namely, to shape how people would perceive a powerful man's fate in the hereafter (p. 33). Another important insight is the role of the audience, for the readers of the sagas had to ‘interpret the penitent's frame of mind by observing his words and gestures’ (p. 49). Ethical reading of Old Norse literature has been argued elsewhere, but as a means of benefitting the reader, who was to emulate the good examples and avoid the bad. As Haki Antonsson repeatedly shows, the concern of the living for the salvation of the dead could change the fate of the soul in the afterlife, and particular sagas could work for the salvation of family members, political allies and Norwegian kings recent and long-dead alike. Yet another important insight is that the purgatorial state extended the individual's saga into the afterlife (p. 50). Sagas are often biographical in form, following a protagonist from birth to death, but the usual analytical assumption is that the protagonist's story is ended with his or her death. Any ‘afterlife’ is a question of their reputation, or the social significance of the subsequent resolution of the dispute that led to their death, or the literary significance of the contrast between the deceased and some surviving relatives. In showing how and why Old Norse literature is concerned with salvation and damnation, Haki Antonsson has opened up a new and necessary way of reading these works.

In a work of scholarly achievement that will be of interest to specialists and students of Old Norse literature, Scandinavian history and medieval Christianity, it is regrettable that the proof-reading was less than adequate. Cross-references were never filled in and appear as ‘00’; names are rendered inconsistently, even on the same page (e.g. ‘Harold’ and ‘Harald’, ‘Jǫrundr’ and ‘Jörundr’); and there are typographical errors in English, Icelandic and Old Norse. It is also wholly understandable that the author makes use of available translations, especially those of obscure and difficult texts, rather than translating them all himself, but the translations seem to have been slotted in fairly mechanically, when some judicious modification would have strengthened the arguments. For example, after discussing examples of male and female donations paying for masses for the dead, a church document is quoted that contains the phrases ‘all those men who have donated their riches … all those men who have given their alms’ (p. 13). ‘Men’ is not an incorrect translation of the Old Norse menn, but it can also be translated as ‘people’, which would better fit the mixed gender of the donors. But these are minor points, and the volume overall is an extremely valuable contribution to scholarship.