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Textual sources of pre-Christian Germanic/Norse religion
by James Mayfield (Chairman, European Heritage Library)

Print this Article    •    About the Author    •    Bibliography/Sources

This is an introduction and brief analysis of the ancient Edda texts written by Snorri Sturlusson in the 12th century. It is the major source of our knowledge regarding pre-Christian Germanic and Norse religion. Also included is an excerpt and analysis of one of the few other sources on pre-Christian Germanic religion, Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum by Adam von Bremen.

Originally codified in the 8th century, the ancient Edda texts are the foremost significant documentations of the pre-Christian, pan-Germanic culture, religion, and its mythology. Much like the Judeo-Christian Old Testament and the Muslim al-Qur'ān, the Edda were an assemblage of ancient oral legends and traditions which had permeated throughout the Germanic peoples and were likely old when Khufu's pyramids were young. They were codified and documented by Icelandic Skalds before Christianization in 34 “kenning” poems as the so-called “Elder Edda”, and were reformed to a more general style of literacy as the “Younger Edda” by lawmaker and scholar Snorri Sturlusson (1179-1241). The Edda texts reveal the foundations of the historic religious doctrines and faith of the pre-Christian Danes, Norwegians, Anglo-Saxons, Icelanders, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, and arguably also the Germanized Scots and Finns. The Edda contain a large number of myths and blatant fantasies, but, in contrast to the Holy Bible, it was not presented as canon scripture nor Holy Word, but merely the preservation of pre-Christian cultural faith and values of the Germans and their descending groups.

Early artwork depicting Odin on his 6-legged horse, Schleipnir

The spiritual, ethical, moral, and ritual standards of the Germanic peoples are conveyed in these texts by primarily following the stories and life of Woden/Wedne (Odin), the universally Germanic “Allfather” and etymological source of “Wednesday”. The stories occur in a variety of locations --supernatural or earthly -- from the hells of Niflheim to the canopy of the World Tree in Valhalla. The largely-mythological poems are effectively portrayed as sentiments of wisdom to which Vikings and Saxons adhered. It was likely that these once-divine texts were not treated as religious and monastic scripture, also largely because literacy was low. As the poetic Skalds of ancient Scandinavia viewed Odin euhemeristically as the relative father of Germanic civilizations, his ethics and rituals were recorded here to transmit and define Germanic cultural and historic identity. In the chapter Havamal (The Words of the High One), the Allfather Odin learns to control the supernatural Rune symbols, effectively setting forth the written scripture and divine symbology for all future descendants. Historically this may imply that an actual historical German or Scandinavian king developed the writing system of Runic from the 2nd century onward, when the Runic writing first began to appear throughout the Germanic world. These Runic symbols became a mainstay of Nordic ritual and social practices, establishing a hierarchy of religious institutions, including the Völva (pronounced wool-wah), equivalent of a Runic shaman or a seer. For example, the Sowil Rune (later used by the Third Reich and especially in the Schutzstaffel military divisions) would be carved into walrus ivory or wood and used in ceremonious divination to summon the defense of the blood by Tyr, the Germanic god of war. Pan-Germanic reverence and worship of this god is evident in the weekday “Tuesday” via an Anglo-Saxon spelling change of the name. In the Edda, we see the use of a ritual probably with Thörn (the “t” Rune, which became “th” in English, and later the modern letter “t”):

“I know a sixth [charm]: it will save me if a man,
cut runes on a sapling's root
with intent to harm; it turns the spell;
the hater is harmed, not I”

Odin, the High One

In German and especially Scandinavian versions of the common cultural and ethnic religion, the creation phenomenon is bizarrely unique among religions. A mighty female cow was the first-born from a dark plane of absence. This cow licked a block of ice, from which the body of Ymir was born, the grandfather of Odin. Ymir's procreation with “frost giantesses” borne of the same ice led to the birth of Odin and his two brothers, Ve and Vili. These three grandchildren then assaulted and flayed their grandfather Ymir, and from his body created the nine worlds. His blood created the waters and oceans, his hair the grass and trees, and his body the mountains and lands. Thus the worlds and its inhabitants were created. Instead of in pre-Christian Greek religion, in which a treacherous god Prometheus offered fire and knowledge to men, it was Odin himself who taught language, Runic symbols, and civilization to the Germanic peoples.

Through these Eddic tales of the Allfather, and early Germanic legends, the evolution of the Runic writing system and early Germanic symbolism can be better understood. Such symbolic veneration is akin to the development of religious oracle bones in China, which were used by early dynastic authorities to evoke purity and spirituality, often accompanied by early versions of the modern Chinese writing system that were also revered as holy like these Odinic Runes. This ritual and spiritual divination is crucial in understanding pre-Christian religious life and faith in the Germanic world, including pre-Christian Englanders, Germans, Danes, Icelanders, Norwegians, Swedes, the Dutch and Belgians, Austrians, and arguably with great similarity the Finns and Estonians.

Again in the central Havamal chapter, the Germanic faith doctrine of sacrifice and will are codified in Odin's struggle at the Well of Mimir. With the ultimate goal of achieving absolute knowledge and self-advancement, the Allfather wandered tirelessly to drink from the legendary well on his six-legged horse, Schleipnir. The giant guardian, Mimir, demanded that Odin offer a sacrifice to him and place it in the well for him to drink from its reserves. With undying will to acquire knowledge and strength, the Allfather tore out his own eye and acquired absolute brilliance. Thus, Odin is depicted as the one-eyed bearded wise man on early ancient wood and ivory artifacts throughout the Germanic world. This endless will to thrive as well as the drive for perfection and knowledge thus proliferated via the Edda throughout the Germanic cultures as far away as the Finns and Estonians, in whose Kalevala-Edda a Thor-like wise lord strove to acquire the Säämpo cure-all. Further espousing the pre-Christian sacrifice and transcendence in the Edda, the Allfather traveled to the base of the World Tree, the legandary ash or yew that supports the nine worlds and stretches to Walhalla. To gain the knowledge of the dead, the afterlife, and all the worlds, he hanged himself from one of its mythic branches for a week. This was embraced by Germanic peoples largely for the purpose of inspiring will in times of war, which was an integral ritual and blood doctrine of the Vikings and Saxons. Early Gothic and German warriors have been documented to have severed the limbs and eyes of their felled rivals in order to hang them from trees as sacrifices to Odin and Tyr, the latter of whom lost his arm in order to protect the righteous and the holy from the horrors of the Fimbul-wulf. This self-sacrifice is oddly similar to the tales of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, who endured such hardship as death for the benefit of his constituents and adherents. When demanding Christianization of their Germanic brother cultures, the English missionaries such as St. Bede emphasized this commonality of behavior between Odin and Jesus as a source of accepting the highly-similar transcendent lord.

Around the same time that the Edda were codified by the Icelandic and Scandinavian poets, Adam von Bremen (Adam of Bremen or Adam of Hamburg) depicted the religiosity of the pre-Christian Swedes in the Latin text Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum. The value of his first-hand depictions as a tool to describe pre-Christian Germanic religion as a whole is dubious because of a variety of factors, including Christian anti-"heathen" bias, the fact that Odinic religion was very different in Sweden than it was Germany or Anglo-Saxon England, and that Odinic religion had already been vanquished and declared illegal in most of Scandinavia centuries prior by Christian kings, thus the behavior he saw at Upsala temple could be completely the opposite of traditional Odinism. Adam von Bremen wrote:

"At this point I shall say a few words about the religious beliefs of the Swedes. That nation has a magnificent temple, which is called Upsala, located not far from the city of Sigtuna. In this temple, built entirely of gold, the people worship the statues of three gods. These images are arranged so that Thor, the most powerful, has his throne in the middle of the group of three. On either side of him sit Othin and Freyr. Their provinces are as follows: “Thor,” they say, “rules the heavens; he is the god of thunder, wind and rain, fair weather and the produce of the fields. The second god, Othin, is the god of war, and he provides man with courage in the face of his enemies. The third god is Freyr, who bestows peace and pleasure upon mortals.” Indeed they depict him as having a large phallus. Othin they represent armed just as our people usually portray Mars, and Thor with his scepter seems to be the counterpart of Jupiter. They also worship deified human being upon whom they bestow immortality because of their outstanding deeds.

To all their gods they have assigned priests to offer up the sacrifices of the people. If pestilence and famine threaten, a libation is made to the image of Thor, if war is immanent, one is made to Othin; if a marriage is performed, to Freyr. A general festival for all the provinces of Sweden is customarily held at Upsala every nine years. Participation in this festival is required of everyone. Kings and their subjects, collectively and individually, send their gifts to Upsala; and a thing more cruel than any punishment – those who have already adopted Christianity buy themselves off from these ceremonies. The sacrifice is as follows; of every kind of male creature, nine victims are offered. By the blood of these creatures it is the custom to appease the gods. Their bodies, moreover, are hanged in a grove which is adjacent to the temple. This grove is so sacred to the people that the separate trees in it are believed to be holy because of the death or putrefaction of the sacrificial victims. There even dogs and horses hang beside human beings. (A certain Christian told me that he had seen seventy-two of their bodies hanging up together.) The incantations, however, which are usually sung in the performance of a libation of this kind are numerous and disgraceful, and it is better not to speak of them.

Near that temple is a very large tree with widespread branches which are always green both in winter and summer. What kind of tree it is nobody knows. There is also a spring there where the pagan are accustomed to perform sacrifices and to immerse a human being alive. As long as his body is not found, the request of the people will be fulfilled.

A golden chain encircles that temple and hangs over the gables of the building. Those who approach see its gleam from afar off because the shrine, which is located on a plain, is encircled by mountains so situated as to give the effect of a theatre.

For nine days feasts and sacrifices of this kind are celebrated. Every day they sacrifice one human being in addition to other animals, so that in nine days there are 72 victims which are sacrificed. This sacrifice takes place about the time of the vernal equinox."

In the above description, the reverence of holy trees reflects the tradition of the World Tree (Yggdrasil - "Oog-drah-siyl) as well as the honoring of Odin's self-hanging sacrifice via the lynching of human offerings.

An artistic depiction of the Uppsala temple sacrifice depicted by Adam von Bremen. (Click to enlarge)

Believed to be the mounds on which the now-demolished Odinic temples lay.

The phenomenon of moral dualism exists in a unique form in German religion, that is, the worldview that the cosmos is divided on earth and in the planes beyond into the polarities of evil and good. It is dissimilar to Christian, Jewish, and Islamic (Abrahamic) religion in that there is not a singular holy authority and a negative equivalent as the devil. It is more similar to the Zoroastrian religion and its dualism in pre-Islamic Iran dating before the foundation of Jewish monotheism. Both religions are polytheistic, with a high lord of many representing the holy (for Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda, and for German religion, Odin) and a malevolent lord of many leading evil, in the case of Germandom that of Loki and his son the Fimbul-wolf. Qualification for “good” as opposed to “evil” is not defined by abstaining from violence or theft (as both the good and evil in the Germanic Pantheon embraced violence as did German warrior culture in history), but rather being an intentional creation and adherent of Odin and his holy Pantheon from the body of his grandfather Ymir.

The famous concept of the Ragnarök – the world's end – is also documented vividly in the Edda. In this cataclysm, the nine worlds endure a dramatic cascade of cosmic collapse before a Final Battle in which the worlds are destroyed, the gods are slain (with few exceptions), and the world is reborn anew in its purified and original form of pristine perfection. This idea both fuels and reflects the natural Germanic culture which historically has been noted by the Romans and Byzantines as a rich warrior culture unparalleled in will and strength. This concept of the end-time bears similarity to the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish apocalypse with the exception of a returning overlord. It can interestingly be more aptly compared to the revival and world recreation of Shiva as embraced in the Hindu faith of India, Bali, and Nepal, in which the world of this time is merely a cyclic era that will inevitably end and be recreated. Akin to the Revelations of the Holy Bible, a seer is given morbidly grim visions from the Allfather of an horrific yet distant end:

“Then said Ganglere: What tidings are to be told of Ragnarok? Of this I have never heard before. Har answered: Great things are to be said thereof. First, there is a winter called the Fimbul-winter, when snow drives from all quarters, the frosts are so severe, the winds so keen and piercing, that there is no joy in the sun. There are three such winters in succession, without any intervening summer. But before these there are three other winters, during which great wars rage over all the world. Brothers slay each other for the sake of gain, and no one spares his father or mother in that manslaughter and adultery. Thus says the Vala's Prophecy:

Brothers will fight together
And become each other's bane;
Sisters' children
Their sib shall spoil.
Hard is the world,
Sensual sins grow huge.
There are ax-ages, sword-ages---
Shields are cleft in twain,---
There are wind-ages, wolf-ages,
Ere the world falls dead.”

pan-Germanic god of war Thor uses his Mjollnir hammer on the enemies of Valhalla

Germanic religion has been revived via nationalism of the Germanic peoples during the late Middle Ages, and, especially, during the 19th century Enlightenment as a source of ethnic pride and national cultural awareness. The German religion was revived during the Third Reich as a non-monastic mystic religion of Axis Germany as a type of syncretism with Christendom: monotheism was embraced and polytheism was rejected, but the myths and traditions of the ancient Germanic religion were sources of resonant pride and nationalism in the war era. Odin was portrayed as a “German Christ” and became a type of transcendent holy lord through whom faith in a singular God is established. This cult-like religion that drew heavily from the Lutheran anti-Papal model as a “true German religion” was also a convenient way to part from the all-encompassing Catholic monastic faith and other “Jewish” movements.

These ancient Edda are a fascinating collection and play a large role in our current understanding of the traditions and religious aspects of these pan-Germanic cultures. They assumed the role of defining the religious, social, ritual, and spiritual values of the Germans and Scandinavians from early ancient antiquity until Christianization. The Edda allow us to trace the Nordic and Germanic influence in modern English history, and later, popular culture; this in turn has allowed us to also study the British people and their common heritage in a common descendant of the Germans. The purpose of the Edda themselves is unique in vast contrast with Christianity in the Old Testament: whereas Moses demanded that his apocrypha be accepted as the Word of the Godhead, the Edda were merely cultural myths which resonated with the natural cultural development and rituals of pre- and post-Christian Germandom.

________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Mayfield is the owner and Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I am working for a doctorate in history, with a specific emphasis on Islamic and European histories. I am well versed in all world cultures, ethnicities, religions, languages, politics, and historical evolution in relation to and against each other.

BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES USED:

The Nordic Edda.

Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum.