Gods of Trondheim 

In this village, students work in teams to explore Trondheim’s diverse religious landscape. Each team selects one religious community, for example, a mosque, a Buddhist center, a church, or a neo-pagan group.

You will:

• conduct fieldwork and interviews with community members,
• observe religious practices, spaces, and rituals,
• reflect on your own assumptions, and
• present your findings in a creative product (poster, podcast, video, booklet, interactive software, etc.).

At the end of the course, all products will come together in a public exhibition at the Institute for Philosophy and Religious Studies (IFR).

About the village

Trondheim is home to a wide variety of religious communities: different Christian churches, Jewish and Muslim groups, multiple forms of Buddhism and Hinduism, neo-pagan and Old Norse revivals, and traditional forms of belief. Not to be forgotten is also a high degree of individual/private religiosity (often referred to as “spirituality”) that is not organized in institutional communities. Religion is thus a key dimension of the city’s cultural diversity. Exploring it requires respect and intercultural sensitivity—but also critical reflection on one’s own assumptions and prejudices. By engaging directly with religious actors and groups, students will learn how religion functions both locally and globally.

Learning goals

The village has two main objectives:

1. Mapping Trondheim’s religious communities.
2. Approach religions as social and cultural phenomena.

Guiding questions include:

• How do religions foster community building, integration, or a sense of home?
• How do they provide ethical orientation?
• When and how do they generate boundaries, dissonance, or prejudice?
• What visions of the good life do they offer — individually and collectively?
• How do they imagine a better society, a transformed world, or a “kingdom to come”?

Skills you will acquire

Students from all disciplines are welcome. No prior competences are required.

During the course, you will learn and practice:

• adopting a respectful but critical “outsider” approach to religion,
• intercultural communication,
• interview techniques,
• participant observation.

Broader perspective

When we look at modern media and public discourse, we often get the impression that the gods are dead—killed by the advance of modern science and buried by egalitarian societies that reject the paternal authority of religious institutions and leaders. Even among sociologists and historians, religion is frequently neglected and assigned only a marginal role. For many, it seems to be a “thing of the past,” or at least something destined to fade away.

In contrast, religions are omnipresent across the globe and remain crucial forces in contemporary life. As philosopher of religion Philip Clayton observes, “religion and science are arguably the two most powerful social forces in the world today.” Religions can cause conflicts and even terrorism; they influence policies, promote chauvinism, intolerance, and prejudice, and sometimes fuel discrimination and violence. Yet they also help people and stabilize societies. They sustain personal and collective identities, preserve cultural coherence, and provide ethical orientation. Migrants may turn to religion to create a sense of home in new surroundings and to build bridges to their host cultures. Religions can also encourage personal growth, call for social change, and raise critical voices against consumerism and superficiality.

In this village, we encounter Trondheim as a mirror—or better: an emplacement—of these global dynamics. The Gods of Trondheim are not dead, but the protagonists of living traditions that continue to shape the diversity of meanings, values, practices, and aesthetics in our city and in the world.

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