Person

Adam of Bremen

Also called: Adam von Bremen, Adamus Bremensis

11th-century scholar of Bremen Cathedral whose history of the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen (c. 1075) describes the lands and customs of the North in its fourth book, including the temple at Uppsala

His birth date is unknown, and he is thought to have come from Meissen. In 1066 or 1067 Archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen called him to Bremen, where by 1069 he headed the cathedral school. He visited King Sweyn II of Denmark and heard much about the North, on which he drew for his Latin history of the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, written around 1075. Its fourth book describes Scandinavia, the Baltic, Iceland and Greenland, includes the first written mention of “Vinland”, and contains his account of the temple at Uppsala. He died on 12 October 1081 (or 1085).

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1 related event

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1075The Temple at Gamla Uppsala — Adam of Bremen’s Accountauthor
Around 1075 the German cleric Adam of Bremen wrote that there was a pagan temple adorned with gold at Uppsala in Sweden, housing statues of Thor, Odin and Freyr. It is the most famous account of Norse pagan worship, but Adam never visited Uppsala and wrote from hearsay.

Themes this person appears in

Norse MythologyAD 793 – 1876
From the world made of Ymir’s body through Odin’s runes, Thor’s adventures and the death of Baldr to Ragnarök and the rebirth of the world — Norse myth in story order, alongside the temple at Uppsala, the Oseberg ship, runestones, the Gosforth Cross, Snorri’s Edda, the Codex Regius and Wagner’s Ring