En kapitalistisk anda : kulturella förändringar i 1100-talets Danmark.

The Early Middle Ages, comprising the period ca. 1000-1250, is usually described as a dynamic and eventful time, when many spheres of society underwent radical changes. The aim of this dissertation is to link these processes together in an overall holistic description of medieval society. The intention is thus to provide a "total historical" account of early medieval Denmark by means of a broad interdisciplinary study. Great emphasis is placed on identifying and describing the more crucial changes in Danish society. Other important questions requiring answers are when these changes took place, who initiated them, and who they affected. It is also important to clarify the causes underlying the changes. I argue a thesis involving an overall causal explanation. This is based on the claim that a general economization of social life took place in the Early Middle Ages. By this is meant a widespread aspiration to handle the available assets and resources in a systematic way. A direct consequence of economization was an incipient capitalization. This development was based on the emergence of a capitalist spirit which influenced the way people thought and acted, and which was expressed in both spiritual and material culture.

In the dissertation these cultural changes are described in four empirically based case studies. In the chapter "A new earthly order: Homo oeconomicus and the economized landscape" it is the changes in agrarian production that are in focus. The chapter "When the town became a town: The emergence of an urban identity" deals with the towns and the urban population. The chapter "The power and the glory: The economization of political and ideological power" deals with changes in political and ideological power. Finally, the chapter "The holy scriptures: Latin and the artificial memory" deals with the emergence of a Latin written culture in Denmark in the Early Middle Ages.

The results of the case studies show that the period ca. 1075-1150 was an introductory phase of change, whereas the period ca. 1150-1250 was the time when the changes had a broader impact on society. A particularly dynamic period came in 1150-1250. A common feature that the changes show is an increased degree of individualization, privatization, and commercialization. Since economic life did not constitute an independent ideology, being instead "embedded" in a general Christian mentality, it is therefore not relevant to view the changes as the result of an emergent capitalist social system. Yet the early medieval period was full of capitalistic actions which were steered by a new form of rational economic thinking, capitalism as an economic strategy. It is therfore possible to regard this development as the emergence of a specific capitalist spirit in twelfth-century Denmark.