At the end of the Viking Age the establishment of three separate Nordic kingdoms hardly seemed a self-evident course of future events. The prospect of direct Danish rule over most of southern Scandinavia, combined with an indirect overlordship of other parts of the region, must have appeared at least as likely. Yet, in the course of the early Middle Ages the kingdoms of Norway and Sweden came to comprise most of their later territories on the Scandinavian peninsula and developed far enough for their survival to be secured. During the same period Christianity was firmly established in all Scandinavian-speaking communities and its Church reached the organisational stage where bishops ruled territorial bishoprics from permanent sees with cathedrals, monastic institutions were firmly established, and payment of tithe was being introduced. From the beginning of the twelfth century the Nordic churches were also organised as a separate church province under the supremacy of the archbishop of Lund (Part II).

All this does not mean that the political and ecclesiastical situation was stable at the onset of the high Middle Ages in the mid-twelfth century. The three kingdoms lacked centralised systems of government and their unity was seriously threatened by dynastic rivalry and succession disputes. In Iceland the original distribution of power among numerous chieftains within an all-embracing community of laws was in the process of being disrupted by the concentration of power in the hands of a small number of prominent families whose leaders ruled territorial lordships. As a separate legal entity on a smaller scale, the archipelago of Føroyar seems to have been dominated by chieftains and large landowners.