For Whom the Bell Tolls

Abstract

Time perception has important consequences for how human activity is structured. The question of how time perception has shifted in history could therefore be of certain importance in archaeological interpretation. This article is an attempt to analyze the construction of time in early- and high-medieval lreland and Scandinavia. The bell and the sound of the bell related to a theological concept in Christian ideology which referred to time. The bell was to become an utensil of power in the process of christianization. With help of the bell, the church partly abolished the subjectivity in the perception of time. When the bell rang it thereby dictated a common sense of time. We could therefore perhaps assume that a conceptual polemic concerning time has been one of the reasons for conflicts in medieval Ireland and Scandinavia.