Research group The research group around NordPoW consists of researchers with backgrounds in the history of ideas, church history, history, sociology of religion, archaeology and digital humanities.
This research group has two aims. One is to gradually build a database and a map visualization of all Nordic churches and prayer houses. The map is intended to function as a research infrastructure for research concerning the religious geography of the Nordics, that is, to support research that is interested in patterns in the Nordic religious landscape – locally and across national borders. Although the map focuses primarily on religious patterns, based on a Protestant tradition, the idea is that the underlying database (built according to the so-called FAIR principles) should be able to be combined with other data, such as demographic data, voting patterns or others.
The second aim is to conduct research concerning religious geography and related topics based on the map and database.
The map has been built in collaboration with, and supported by, Humlab and the Swedish national research infrastructure InfraVis.
NordPoW-kartan [map]: https://nordpow.humlab.umu.se/
DigiBön-kartan [map]: https://digibon.humlab.umu.se/
Gelfgren, S. (2025). ‘Byn är indelad i en ogudaktig och en andlig halva’: Västerbottnisk väckelse och sekularisering. In Utbildning och religion i historiska perspektiv: Vänbok till Daniel Lindmark, 104–127.
Weinkauf, T., Romero, M., Besançon, L., Ahlstedt, J., Berendt, F., Billger, M., … Ynnerman, A. (2025). InfraVis: The Swedish research infrastructure for visualization support. VisGap : The Gap between Visualization Research and Visualization Software. Presented at the 27th EG Conference on Visualization (VisGap2025), Luxembourg, June 2-6, 2025. https://doi.org/10.2312/visgap.20251157
Tjomsland, A., Gelfgren, S., Ejstrud, B., & Dahlbacka, J. (2024). Revealing the revivals: Towards a common Nordic framework for digital mapping of places of worship. Nordic Journal of Religion and Society, 37(2), 106–122. https://doi.org/10.18261/njrs.37.2.3
Gelfgren, S. (2023). Att kartlägga bönhusen i Luleå stift – en inblick i stiftets kyrkohistoria. In Där möten äger rum: Om bönhusen i övre Norrland (pp. 27–64).
Gelfgren, S. (2022). Bönhusen i Luleå stift. Skelleftebygden, (2), 12–13.
Drakman, A., & Gelfgren, S. (2022). How to combine close and distant reading within the history of science and ideas : Two examples from ongoing research. Lychnos, 85–108. https://doi.org/10.48202/24128
Gelfgren, S. (2021). DigiBön - kartlägger Luleåstifts bönhus. Vårt budskap, 94(3), 7.
