Sigh.

“Religionsvitskap” is properly called “Religious science” or “science of religion” in English, or “Religionvissenschaft” with a German loan-term, but commonly dubbed “Religious history” despite it being misleading. In Norway, UiO teaches religionshistorie, and UiB religionsvitskap, but UiB themselves translates it to “religious history” on their English pages because it is a much more common term in the English language.

The basic difference is just one of approach -religious history is slightly more attuned to following the developments of particular religions or religious concepts etc, while science of religion is more analytical. I guess you could roughly equate it to the difference between history and sociology, maybe. In practice, though, they’re one and the same in just about every way.

To further muddle the matter, there is a long-standing tradition in the USA of having religious history and theology be the same faculties and even taught by the same professors - something that is obviously more or less gone from the much more secular Western Europe. So in the US, “theology” often appears as a third term almost interchangeable with the other two, whereas it in Europe obviously is another thing entirely.

I might have been unlucky, I suppose, but… I don’t really care about layers of dirt and the evolution of axe-heads and the patterns of vases and the use of metal detectors and professors walking in formations across meadows.

Archeeology? My gods, man, I’ve attended a couple of archaeology-lectures, and the one thing they had in common was a total lack of anything resembling fun.