Talk:Freedom of religion in Norway

Freedom of religion in Norway has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: April 3, 2020. (Reviewed version).

A fact from Freedom of religion in Norway appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 1 May 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that sympathetic accounts of Norway's first Christian kings include descriptions of them committing gruesome torture against pagans, but non-sympathetic accounts do not?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/May. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Freedom of religion in Norway.

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Religion Low‑importance

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GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Freedom of religion in Norway/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: No Great Shaker (talk · contribs) 02:37, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Review

I'll start this one. Hope to provide some feedback soon. No Great Shaker (talk) 02:37, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Basic GA criteria

Well written: the prose is clear and concise.
Well written: the spelling and grammar are correct.
Complies with the MOS guidelines for lead sections.
Complies with the MOS guidelines for article structure and layout.
Complies with the MOS guidelines for words to watch (e.g., "awesome" and "stunning").
Complies with the MOS guidelines for writing about fiction – not applicable.
Complies with the MOS guidelines for list incorporation – not applicable.
Complies with the MOS guidelines for use of quotations – not applicable.
All statements are verifiable with inline citations provided.
All inline citations are from reliable sources, etc.
Contains a list of all references in accordance with the layout style guideline.
No original research.
No copyright violations or plagiarism.
Broad in its coverage but within scope and in summary style.
Neutral.
Stable.
Illustrated, if possible.
Images are at least fair use and do not breach copyright.

For reviews, I use the above list of criteria as a benchmark and complete the variables as I go along. No Great Shaker (talk) 02:40, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

I've completed the review and made some changes to the article as I've gone through it but a number of points and questions have arisen and I'm placing the article on hold for the time being. Thanks. No Great Shaker (talk) 13:32, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No Great Shaker, thanks for your prompt feedback. I've gone ahead and implemented all but one of the concrete suggestions and left some comments as well. Let me know if there's anything more that you would like to see in the article. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 17:46, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Rosguill, thank you for the changes and comments. I'm quite happy with reify and the amendments so I will now promote this to GA. It's a very interesting read. I feel that I've learned something and, where history is concerned, that's always on my wishlist. Well done and all the best. Take good care. No Great Shaker (talk) 13:31, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No Great Shaker, thanks for taking up the review, and I'm glad that you found the article interesting! _signed,Rosguill ^talk 16:33, 3 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

The lead succeeds in summarising the article and complies with MOS:LEAD. Just a couple of points to be addressed:

first use of NGO should be non-governmental organization in full with NGO in brackets
- Done _signed,Rosguill ^talk 17:14, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
reify seems a bit extreme if meant literally – would assert be better?
- I think that this is a valid use of reify--the adoption of Christianity by Nordic kingdoms established a new source of political authority and legitimacy that allowed for a greater consolidation of power in the monarchy and the formation of a new (to the region, at least) form of power relations and statecraft. I think that "assert" would be a bit off, as it doesn't necessarily imply a paradigm shift, which is what was happening in Scandinavia at the time. On a more stylistic level, I also like that reify has the morpheme rei-, derived from Latin real and pertaining to law and kings, which is a fun bit of wordplay in context. If you're strongly opposed to "reify", I think that "consolidate" or "legitimize" would be preferable to "assert". _signed,Rosguill ^talk 17:14, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Demographics

It struck me that the content of this section has been lifted from the given source but, having checked WP:COPYOTHERS, I'm happy that the source is public domain and that it is in order to include extracts in the narrative.

In the first paragraph here, the various religions and the HEF account for about 90% of the population. According to Irreligion in Norway, there are a substantial number of non-believers in the country so do these people make up the remaining 10%?

Some more points for consideration:

the Norwegian Humanist Association (Human-Etisk Forbund) is generally known as the HEF
two redlinks – any chance of these turning blue in the near future?
- Reviewing the source again, the remaining 10% of the population would comprise people that do not profess any allegiance to a religious or life-stance organization. I don't know that this necessarily means that they are non-believers, just that they don't belong to an organization. I'm not sure it's worth including an abbreviation for the HEF, since it's only mentioned by name one more time in the article, much farther down the page. I don't personally have any plans to develop articles for the redlinks, but based on their treatment in the sources I was using I'm fairly confident that they meet notability guidelines. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 17:21, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Unification and Christianisation

A couple of points arose here which I've resolved:

three instances of same spelling mistake (Christanization) – all corrected
Haakon the Good was later than said and the sentence flow is improved by inserting his dates in brackets

Medieval Norway

corrected instances of Haakon being mis-spelt Hakan
linked Magnus VI

Protestant Reformation

does citation #38 cover the second sentence as well as the third?
link needed to Christian II
the sentence beginning "When Frederick died and..." needs to be revised (or completed if a clause is missing)
sentence beginning "Christian III triumphed..." would be better if split in two to avoid the "and... and..." construction (suggest full stop after exile)
- For the issue with #38, I assume you mean first and second, given that #38 was cited at the end of the second sentence? I double checked it and confirmed that it does not. From looking through the edit history, I was able to find that the first sentence should be cited to the Derry source (then #39, cited at the end of the paragraph). I've added a citation with the correct page numbers for this claim. I've gone ahead and addressed the other three issues identified here. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 17:37, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Independence, etc.

need a link to Norwegian krone at first instance of NOK
"as an indigenous to Norway" – word (e.g., people, religion) missing or a typo?
Done _signed,Rosguill ^talk 17:38, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

General points

there is inconsistency in citation style ranging from Førsund (2012) pp. 88–91 to Derry pp.84-89 to Stenersen: 74
citation #32 is little more than a bare URL and has not been translated for English readers.

Done, although it's not impossible that I missed an irregular citation out there somewhere. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 17:45, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:32, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(

Comment or view
Article history

)

~~... that sympathetic accounts of Norway's first Christian kings include descriptions of them committing gruesome torture against pagans, but non-sympathetic accounts do not?~~ Snorri’s portrayals of Olaf’s acts of religious violence serve to both praise the king’s piety and his uncompromising Viking spirit. Yet I do believe that the Konungasögur and Íslendingasögur can be considered to preserve something of eleventh-century societal attitudes to punitive mutilation, but only when examined alongside sources outside of the saga tradition. For, while chronicle histories such as those of Adam of Bremen and Saxo Grammaticus do not record any tortures ordered by Olaf, this silence is of note. Both chronicles are hostile to Olaf’s kingship, yet neither chronicler considers acts of mutilation to be deeds that would augment their negative portrayals of the Norwegian king. Indeed, where recorded, Olaf’s deeds of punitive mutilation were designed to assist the spread of Christianity and thus attracted no direct censure. [1]

Reviewed: Cimicidae

Improved to Good Article status by Rosguill (talk). Self-nominated at 16:58, 3 April 2020 (UTC).[reply]

@Rosguill: Hi, here's my review. Great job on this article, there is just one outstanding issue regarding the hook. epicgenius (talk) 01:02, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

Adequate sourcing:
Neutral:
Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing: - Yes; I was concerned about this source, but it is in the public domain, so that is the only concern I had.

Hook eligibility:

Cited:
Interesting:
Other problems: - The page Freedom of religion in Norway needs to be linked somewhere in bold in the proposed hook. I don't know where that is supposed to go, or else I would've done it myself.

QPQ: Done.

Overall: epicgenius (talk) 01:02, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Epicgenius, whoops, I suppose that's important. Assuming that piping is ok, how about:

ALT0a: ... that sympathetic accounts of Norway's first Christian kings include descriptions of them committing gruesome torture against pagans, but non-sympathetic accounts do not?

_signed,Rosguill ^talk 01:22, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

All right.

With the revision to the hook done, I think the alternate hook is good to go now. epicgenius (talk) 02:13, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]