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Conclusion
The picture of pre-Christian society drawn here makes quite a different impression from previous assumptions about the function of religion within society. In the first part of this book, I have described a society where religion is so intertwined with the structures of society that it often appears to be impossible to separate the sacred from the secular. This is not to say that secular affairs are dominated by religious considerations or vice versa, but that there is no apparent distinction drawn between spheres which we regard as utterly different.
This first section draws on previous scholarship as well as on a direct reading of primary sources. As such, whilst it certainly includes many new ideas, these tend to be broadly consistent with current thinking about the nature of pre-Christian religion and society. However, the interrelationship between secular and religious worlds has previously been understood in terms of the dominance of one over the other. In particular, it has been argued that laws and legal institutions in pre-Christian society were essentially religious in nature.
In contrast, I have tried to present a coherent picture of a society dominated by powerful landowners, who sponsor religious festivities on their own estates, which double as community festivals, and which consolidate their secular power while gaining them religious prestige. As sponsors and patrons of the sacrificial feast (supplying the animal which is offered to the gods), these men are representatives of the people to the gods, it is they who drink the toasts in honour of the gods, they share their feasting halls with images of the gods, and they are given the title of ‘priests’. However, their power is essentially secular, and can be lost and won through conquest or even sold for money. Just as they unite secular and religious roles, the religious gatherings over which these men preside are also secular gatherings where local disputes can be settled.
In the second part of the book, I introduce the notion of another rather different manifestation of priestly power. It is this second part which is likely to be considered the most challenging in relation to contemporary scholarship on the subject. In this section I propose the existence of several distinct but interrelated magico-religious societies, which operated in parallel to mainstream pre-Christian society according to their own laws and customs. The religious authority which these people possess contrasts with their apparent lack of secular authority and prestige, but they occupy the space between the ordinary world and the divine. They represent a very different sort of priesthood to the secular chieftains, one which is based primarily on religious awe and a perception of magical or religious power. Clearly, the two societies did not operate entirely independently, and I have offered some suggestions for how they might have interacted, but it is not my purpose here to explore such interaction in detail, simply to present the evidence for the existence of this parallel society.
Some readers might find the idea of magico-religious cults operating within the pre-Christian world rather fanciful. All the more so, since some of these supposed societies have previously been assumed to have been otherworldly beings. However, I would caution against allowing personal preconceptions based in our modern society from colouring our judgement about what might have been likely in past societies. Similar cultic societies have existed in very many cultures past and present, and there is no inherent reason to assume that pre-Christian Scandinavian and Germanic culture was more like our own than it was like these other more ‘exotic’ cultures.
Furthermore, if this thesis is to be rejected, it should be in favour of another model which can provide better explanations for the many phenomena which it explains. At present, there is no such alternative explanation even for the social context of the travelling seiðr-worker, let alone for the many other loose ends which I have tied off, such as the multitude of norns who visit newborn children, or the proliferation of earthly valkyries, or the many names which Odin has taken since he ‘went among the people’ (Grímnismál, st.48).
If the ideas proposed here are accepted, they have profound implications for our understanding of the pre-Christian religious mentality, and of the nature of pre-Christian society as a whole.
The picture of pre-Christian society drawn here makes quite a different impression from previous assumptions about the function of religion within society. In the first part of this book, I have described a society where religion is so intertwined with the structures of society that it often appears to be impossible to separate the sacred from the secular. This is not to say that secular affairs are dominated by religious considerations or vice versa, but that there is no apparent distinction drawn between spheres which we regard as utterly different.
This first section draws on previous scholarship as well as on a direct reading of primary sources. As such, whilst it certainly includes many new ideas, these tend to be broadly consistent with current thinking about the nature of pre-Christian religion and society. However, the interrelationship between secular and religious worlds has previously been understood in terms of the dominance of one over the other. In particular, it has been argued that laws and legal institutions in pre-Christian society were essentially religious in nature.
In contrast, I have tried to present a coherent picture of a society dominated by powerful landowners, who sponsor religious festivities on their own estates, which double as community festivals, and which consolidate their secular power while gaining them religious prestige. As sponsors and patrons of the sacrificial feast (supplying the animal which is offered to the gods), these men are representatives of the people to the gods, it is they who drink the toasts in honour of the gods, they share their feasting halls with images of the gods, and they are given the title of ‘priests’. However, their power is essentially secular, and can be lost and won through conquest or even sold for money. Just as they unite secular and religious roles, the religious gatherings over which these men preside are also secular gatherings where local disputes can be settled.
In the second part of the book, I introduce the notion of another rather different manifestation of priestly power. It is this second part which is likely to be considered the most challenging in relation to contemporary scholarship on the subject. In this section I propose the existence of several distinct but interrelated magico-religious societies, which operated in parallel to mainstream pre-Christian society according to their own laws and customs. The religious authority which these people possess contrasts with their apparent lack of secular authority and prestige, but they occupy the space between the ordinary world and the divine. They represent a very different sort of priesthood to the secular chieftains, one which is based primarily on religious awe and a perception of magical or religious power. Clearly, the two societies did not operate entirely independently, and I have offered some suggestions for how they might have interacted, but it is not my purpose here to explore such interaction in detail, simply to present the evidence for the existence of this parallel society.
Some readers might find the idea of magico-religious cults operating within the pre-Christian world rather fanciful. All the more so, since some of these supposed societies have previously been assumed to have been otherworldly beings. However, I would caution against allowing personal preconceptions based in our modern society from colouring our judgement about what might have been likely in past societies. Similar cultic societies have existed in very many cultures past and present, and there is no inherent reason to assume that pre-Christian Scandinavian and Germanic culture was more like our own than it was like these other more ‘exotic’ cultures.
Furthermore, if this thesis is to be rejected, it should be in favour of another model which can provide better explanations for the many phenomena which it explains. At present, there is no such alternative explanation even for the social context of the travelling seiðr-worker, let alone for the many other loose ends which I have tied off, such as the multitude of norns who visit newborn children, or the proliferation of earthly valkyries, or the many names which Odin has taken since he ‘went among the people’ (Grímnismál, st.48).
If the ideas proposed here are accepted, they have profound implications for our understanding of the pre-Christian religious mentality, and of the nature of pre-Christian society as a whole.
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