Christianity had a profound impact on many spheres of early medieval life. It legitimised the centralisation of power relations, helped to develop the idea of unquestioned dynastic succession, and facilitated the integration of large and culturally differentiated territories. Elites could find support for their rule in trans-regional and trans-ethnic norms. Christianity pacified social tensions making the extraction of surplus easier, and it regulated the daily life of all people with new prescriptions on diet, labour and rites of transition.

Considering the fundamental transformation of ideology, social structure, power organisation and geopolitical relations that resulted from the conversion it is necessary to ask why Christianity expanded so rapidly with relative ease over vast areas of Central and North Europe around the year 1000. To answer such a question one has to look at Christianity with the eyes of the pagans or, rather, the pagan élites who played a decisive role in the process of conversion. Achange of the religion itself was not their priority because their strategy was directed, first of all, at political and economic goals. Estimating short-term advantages they chose various strategies when faced with expanding Christianity. Some tried to actively oppose the ‘inevitable’, others remained indifferent, while others eagerly welcomed the new ‘civilisation’. Usually, it is the last group only that was well recorded and memorised.

Written sources are not of much help to understand these attitudes because they were usually composed by people who represented the viewpoint of expanding Christianity. For them the conversion was an obvious process of accepting the Revealed Truth by uncivilised barbarians. Archaeological evidence is less useful than it might be because the chronology of the transition period is underdeveloped and the interpretation of data causes serious methodological problems.

One strategy open to us is a theoretical analysis whereby anthropological concepts of social power and the role of ideology in attaining, sustaining and reinforcing privileged positions are applied to early medieval societies.

Religious beliefs belong to the most private sphere of every human being. At the same time, however, they have important social meaning as an element of group identity and the main constituent of ideological systems. There are many ways of looking at past and contemporary religions, many systems for classifying and studying them.