This chapter explains the treatment of mentality with respect to the monarchy and the church that were built up in Scandinavia in the high Middle Ages. In this way, it becomes possible to treat mentality in close connection with ideology. A main theme in most surveys of the Scandinavian countries until around 1300 is the growth of the state. The mental aspect of this development is illustrated clearly in The King's Mirror. The conflict between the old and the new attitude to a central authority emerges clearly from The King's Mirror. An important symbolic expression of the new ideology was royal unction and coronation which introduced in Norway, Denmark and Sweden in the 11th and 12th centuries. Courtly culture was an important medium of the far-reaching changes as a result of the victory of the state. The chapter also discusses the importance of Christianity, oral and visual preaching, and Christianity as a religion for the laity and the nobility.

The Roman empire of the fourth and early fifth centuries remained, as it had always been, city-based, with political, religious and aristocratic life revolving around the civitates and around major capitals. Although their importance remained unchanged, the cities of the late empire differed in several obvious ways from the cities of the earlier Roman world. The three changes, in the political, military and religious role of the cities had a marked effect on the politics of city life and on the way that the aristocracy played out its role within the cities. The fourth to sixth centuries saw the decline of the centuries-old ideal of the classical city governing the patterns of local political life and spending. These centuries also saw the gradual emergence of a 'new' city, playing an important part within the overall administrative, financial and military structures of church and state, and increasingly focused on a Christian ideology of saints and their churches.