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“The pen fell from my hand when I was in my eighty-sixth year.” Revisiting the work of Martin P. Nilsson

Edited by Jenny Wallensten & Gunnel Ekroth
https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24

2017 marked the 50th anniversary of both the death of Martin P. Nilsson, the eminent Swedish scholar of ancient Greek religion, and the publication of the third edition of his monumental Geschichte der griechischen Religion. Nilsson’s scholarly output was huge, with a production of around 20 items annually, and he touched upon most aspects of the study of ancient Greek religion, be it in a book or an article, in a footnote or an in-depth argument. This volume constitutes a re-reading of Nilsson in the light of new ancient evidence, and modern methods and theoretical approaches.

Five leading researchers in this field of religion revisit major works of Nilsson’s oeuvre—Geschichte der griechischen Religion, vols 1 and 2 (Jon Mikalson and Eftychia Stavrianopoulou), Greek folk religion (Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge), Minoan-Mycenaean religion (Matthew Haysom) and Greek piety (Michael D. Konaris)—in order to explore whether his works today are mainly touched upon with just the usual obligatory references or if they still have an active impact on contemporary discourses. Hopefully, this undertaking will stimulate others to explore the vast landscape of Nilsson’s work in the future.

Chapter abstracts and author affiliations listed below.

Contents

Initial remarks
By Jenny Wallensten & Gunnel Ekroth, pp. 9–14, https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24-02

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Science, evergreen. An introduction
By Jesper Svenbro, pp. 15–22, https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24-03

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Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion vol. 1
By Jon Mikalson, pp. 23–37, https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24-04

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Hellenistic religion(s). Revisiting Martin P. Nilsson’s Geschichte der griechischen Religion vol. 2. Die hellenistische und römische Zeit
By Eftychia Stavrianopoulou, pp. 39–65, https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24-05

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To be or not to be … “popular”. Martin P. Nilsson’s Greek folk religion, its context, and its modern echoes
By Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge, pp. 67–85, https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24-06

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Nilsson in the Bronze Age. The place of prehistory in the history of Greek religion. Martin P. Nilsson’s Minoan-Mycenaean religion
By Matthew Haysom, pp. 87–120, https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24-07

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A history of changing religious attitudes in Greek antiquity. Martin P. Nilsson’s Greek piety
By Michael D. Konaris, pp. 121–154, https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24-08

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Index
pp. 155–158, https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24-09

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Bibliographical information

Jenny Wallensten & Gunnel Ekroth, eds, “The pen fell from my hand when I was in my eighty-sixth year.” Revisiting the work of Martin P. Nilsson  (Skrifter utgivna av Svenska institutet i Athen, 8°, 24), Stockholm 2024. ISSN 0081-9921. ISBN 978-91-7916-070-8. Hardcover: 168 pages. https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24

Chapter abstracts

Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion vol. 1

By Jon Mikalson (University of Virginia), pp. 23–37, https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24-04

I briefly trace the origins of Martin P. Nilsson’s Geschichte der griechischen Religion from his lectures in Swedish at the University of Uppsala in 1920, ‘On the history of Greek religion’, through some interesting twists and turns to the publication of volume 1 in 1941 when he was 67 years old, to the publication of the third edition in the year of his death, 1967. After some comments on how Nilsson himself conceived of the book, I outline briefly its structure and topics. Central is a discussion of some leading ideas and themes of the book, and how they were received then and how they stand up today. I close with some examples of scholars’ use of the Geschichte today and with some personal reflections on the book’s early and deep influence on my own work on Greek religion.

Hellenistic religion(s). Revisiting Martin P. Nilsson’s Geschichte der griechischen Religion vol. 2. Die hellenistische und römische Zeit

By Eftychia Stavrianopoulou (University of Heidelberg), pp. 39–65, https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24-05

This paper seeks to assess the significance of Martin P. Nilsson’s Geschichte der griechischen Religion vol. 2. Die hellenistische und römische Zeit (1950, 19612) which, after 70 years, is still the only monograph on Hellenistic religion. In a first step, I will outline Nilsson’s holistic narrative of the history of religion in that period by putting an emphasis on his methodological premises. In a second step, I will use case examples to analyse some of the difficulties that modern scholarship still faces in accounting for religious changes and in the search for defining what Hellenistic religion is.

To be or not to be … “popular”. Martin P. Nilsson’s Greek folk religion, its context, and its modern echoes

By Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge (Collège de France), pp. 67–85, https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24-06

Martin P. Nilsson’s book Greek popular religion was published in 1940 and republished in 1961 with the slightly modified title of Greek folk religion. This work was deeply rooted in the conviction that many parts of Archaic and Classical Greece, outside the leading urban centres, were still in what Nilsson called “a backward state”. These places were supposed to preserve the way of life that had been common in earlier times, when Greeks were mainly peasants, not very advanced and culturally primitive. According to Nilsson, the simple religion of unlettered peasants was the most persistent form of Greek religion and at the core of what he called “popular” or “folk” religion. After placing this paradigm in the scientific context of its emergence, the present paper examines the paradoxes of Nilsson’s interpretive model and compares his dichotomous view of “popular” vs “high” religion to some current approaches in the study of ancient Greek religion.

Nilsson in the Bronze Age. The place of prehistory in the history of Greek religion. Martin P. Nilsson’s Minoan-Mycenaean religion

By Matthew Haysom (Newcastle University), pp. 87–120, https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24-07

This paper discusses Martin P. Nilsson’s contribution to scholarship on religion during the Bronze and Iron Age of Greece. Nilsson’s critical method made him outstanding amongst contemporary scholars of prehistoric religion. But he had a much smaller dataset than that available to scholars today. This paper situates his work in the historiography of the subject in three ways. First, it summarizes his reconstruction of Bronze Age Aegean religion and its continuity into the Classical period. Second, it compares his work with that of other scholars of his time in order to gauge the nature of his distinctive contribution. Third, it examines how some of his key arguments have fared in the time since they were made.

A history of changing religious attitudes in Greek antiquity. Martin P. Nilsson’s Greek piety

By Michael D. Konaris (Academy of Athens), pp. 121–153, https://doi.org/10.30549/actaath-8-24-08

In Greek piety (1948) Martin P. Nilsson put forward a concise history of religious attitudes in Greece from the Archaic age to the triumph of Christianity, distilling the conclusions he had reached about the principal religious changes and their causes after nearly half a century of studying Greek religion. My chapter examines the main themes and developments in Nilsson’s portrayal of Greek religious history such as the conflicts between collective and individualistic religion and rationalism and mysticism, the alleged decline of traditional Greek religion, the increasing appeal of “Oriental” religious ideas, and finally the victory of Christianity, and how Nilsson accounted for them. Attention is given to how Nilsson attempted to explain religious changes in the ancient world by linking them to wider contemporary historical, social and cultural phenomena but also to the parallels he drew between conditions in ancient and modern times and the part played by scientific racism and anti-Eastern bias in his work.