more information about Gods and Worshippers in the Viking and Germanic world
 

Introduction

The names of the Germanic gods are spoken every day. Although Saturday takes its name from the Roman Saturn, and Sunday and Monday honour the sun and moon, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday preserve the names of the gods of the Germanic world.

Whilst today most people think of the gods behind these names as Viking gods, they were also the gods of the Anglo-Saxons, of the Franks and Frisians, Ostrogoths and Visigoths, Alamanni and Langobards, and of all the peoples descended from the tribal grouping known to the Romans as Germania, and their story stretches back into prehistory. In this book, I want to look at the religions of all these peoples, and the other myriad tribes of the Germanic diaspora, from their earliest description by Roman writers until the conversion of Scandinavia to Christianity more than 1000 years later.

I don’t mean to argue that the entire Germanic and Scandinavian peoples practised a single universal religion. Clearly, the religion of Roman Germania cannot have been identical with the religion of Viking Scandinavia. It is in the nature of pre-Christian religion that no definition can be narrow enough to include only a single unified expression of the religion. It is no longer sensible to consider even the religion of Viking Scandinavia as a homogenous whole. Place name studies and other disciplines have revealed important variations between local religious identities.

Any attempt to understand pre-Christian religion presupposes a degree of coherence and consistency which is not necessarily inherent in the complex of worldviews we are attempting to describe. This religion was not prescriptive, had no tenets, no creed, no overarching organisation. To understand the nature of pre-Christian religion, we should think instead in terms of individual worshippers, family traditions and regional cults within a broadly consistent framework. It is preferable to see pre-Christian religion as a system of interlocking and closely interrelated religious worldviews and practices rather than as one indivisible religion.

Over the thousand or more years and the many thousands of square miles which are included in this book, there will have been many variations in the nature of the religion, but what is more remarkable is the number of correspondences which can be identified. To some extent, this continuity is not peculiar to the Germanic and Scandinavian religions, but extends to other religions which we might label with a different cultural or ethnic identity. However, for the purposes of this book, I have limited my field to religious traditions which seem to be firmly rooted among peoples of Germanic origin. These cultures and religions are demonstrably related, and very often they can illuminate each other in important ways.

There is admittedly a heavy bias in this book towards Scandinavian religion of the Viking Age, which is largely unavoidable. In most areas of research, the evidence from Scandinavia is significantly better than that from England or from continental Europe. Nonetheless, many of the traditions which we can identify in Scandinavia can be recognised in brief glimpses of religious practice from other parts of the Germanic world. In such cases, whilst it would be wrong to pretend that these religious practices were necessarily identical, it would be equally ridiculous to deny that they might well have been very much alike.

Written evidence comes in various forms. There are descriptions by contemporary observers, most often by Romans or Arabs, sometimes by Christian Europeans too; there are accounts by later historians, where mythology is often mixed up with genuine history; there are Christian law codes, penitentials and decrees forbidding pagan practices; and there are Icelandic sagas, a word which covers a wide range of literature, from serious attempts at historical accounts (allowing for a certain degree of artistic license) through legendary histories to deliberate fictions. The sagas date mainly from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but they often appear to preserve valuable information about pre-Christian times, which can sometimes be verified by a comparison with independent sources. All these written sources might include, perhaps inevitably include, a degree of colour or bias which might distort the picture they present. However, carefully handled and used in conjunction with other sources, they often reveal rather more than is immediately apparent.

A special place is given to poetry, since many surviving poems were originally composed within a pre-Christian context, though often they are difficult to date with any degree of certainty. Early poems were usually passed on for hundreds of years by word of mouth before being written down, and over this time changes might have occurred. However, these poems remain an important source as, beyond a few brief inscriptions, they are as close as we can come to the authentic voice of the pre-Christian world.

As well as the written evidence we have archaeological evidence, which has the virtue of being (usually, at least) an unbiased witness to real events. Unfortunately however, it is often impossible to interpret archaeology without reference to the more fickle historical sources.

A third area of evidence, which I have drawn on from time to time, is found in traditional customs from modern times. It is important to stress that not all traditional customs necessarily reflect pre-Christian religious practices. Nonetheless, there is sometimes a clear trail of evidence linking modern customs with earlier times; some customs are similar to known pre-Christian practices and some were denounced as pagan by early Christian reformers.

Unlike the written traditions of the Germanic world as a whole, through the literature of medieval Iceland, Scandinavian tradition has left us what Johannes Brøndsted called ‘a splendid and highly-coloured picture of the old religion ...’. The picture Brøndsted had in mind was in fact largely a picture of Scandinavian mythology, and when we read these myths it is easy to fall under their spell and mistake them for the real essence of the religion. However, the myths were only ever a part of the whole religion. The religious life of Viking Scandinavia also included rituals, prayers, holy sites, priests and seers. Beyond these things, as an expression of a particular outlook or worldview, it was a part of the lived reality of the entire population.

It has often been remarked that the Icelanders have traditionally looked back on their conversion to Christianity not as a ‘change of faith’ but as a ‘change of practice’. Yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to the minutiae of pre-Christian religious practice. This is despite the fact that, without any coherent religious authority, without any consistent attempt to define the religion in philosophical terms, it is only in its practice that we can begin to define what pre-Christian religion actually was, or see how the pre-Christian world really worked.

So, this book is not a retelling of the myths, nor a search for Indo-European roots or circumpolar analogues. It is not an exhaustive exploration of archaeology, of Latin, Arab or vernacular literatures, or of historical or traditional lore. Neither is it an attempt to define the boundaries of Germanic pre-Christian religion, or to trace the influences and exchanges between various ethnically-defined religions. And although it synthesises evidence from all these sources, that is not its primary purpose. Rather it is, or is intended as, a vivid sketch of the overall nature and main features of Germanic religion. It looks at religion as it was practised, as it was manifested in society, as what Mauss called a ‘total cultural phenomenon’, not as a mythology or as a collection of rituals, but as a functional aspect of pre-Christian society and as a forum for that society’s relationship with the divine. By addressing questions which have remained not only unanswered, but also unasked, I hope to provide a fresh perspective on all aspects of the pre-Christian world.

The picture of pre-Christian Germanic religion which emerges when one looks at overall patterns and practices rather than at specific gods and myths is recognisably equivalent to that described by Martin of Braga in sixth-century Spain, and also to that which has been described in studies of religion in the early Celtic world. Similarities can also be seen with Hinduism, in historical and contemporary forms, and with other traditional religions of the world.

There are no big explanations in Germanic religion, rather it takes the world as we find it and works with it, recognising it as a complex pattern of powers which are respected, honoured, propitiated or even cajoled. It is in this relationship between powers and people that the religion exists, and though it takes many forms it is fundamentally one of respect, honour and worship – a relationship between gods and worshippers.