more information about Gods and Worshippers in the Viking and Germanic world
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Gods
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The main body of the book divides into two parts:
- Part 1 considers the realities of pagan worship, including temples, priests and sacred groves, sacrifice and law, and suggests that religion was so intimately intertwined with other aspects of pre-Christian society that it is impossible to distinguish between religious and secular institutions.
- Part 2 looks at possible realities behind myths of Valkyries, Norns and Odin the wanderer, suggesting that these tales reflect real-life societies of initiates, which operated in parallel to mainstream society, according to their own distinctive morality and laws.
This book suggests that human sacrifices were made for legal as well as religious purposes, in a world where secular chieftains operated as priests. But this was not a theocracy, since these priests represented their people to the gods and not vice versa. Ewing also suggests that Norns and Valkyries really existed as part of a parallel society of religious initiates, which also included one-eyed Odin figures who could be venerated as the god himself.
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