![Franks Casket vorne links](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Franks_Casket_vorne_links.jpg)
Anglo-Saxon paganism, sometimes termed Anglo-Saxon heathenism, Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian religion, or Anglo-Saxon traditional religion, refers to the religious beliefs and practices followed by the
Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened ...
between the 5th and 8th centuries AD, during the initial period of
Early Medieval England
Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England, existing from the 5th to the 11th centuries from the end of Roman Britain until the Norman conquest in 1066, consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927, when it was united as the Kingdom of ...
. A variant of
Germanic paganism
Germanic paganism or Germanic religion refers to the traditional, culturally significant religion of the Germanic peoples. With a chronological range of at least one thousand years in an area covering Scandinavia, the British Isles, modern Germ ...
found across much of north-western Europe, it encompassed a heterogeneous variety of beliefs and cultic practices, with much regional variation.
Developing from the earlier
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly ...
religion of continental northern Europe, it was introduced to Britain following the
Anglo-Saxon migration
The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain is the process which changed the language and culture of most of what became England from Romano-British to Germanic. The Germanic-speakers in Britain, themselves of diverse origins, eventually develop ...
in the mid 5th century, and remained the dominant belief system in England until the
Christianisation
Christianization ( or Christianisation) is to make Christian; to imbue with Christian principles; to become Christian. It can apply to the conversion of an individual, a practice, a place or a whole society. It began in the Roman Empire, conti ...
of its kingdoms between the 7th and 8th centuries, with some aspects gradually blending into
folklore
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, rangin ...
. The pejorative terms ''paganism'' and ''heathenism'' were first applied to this religion by Christian Anglo-Saxons, and it does not appear that these pagans had a name for their religion themselves; there has therefore been debate among contemporary scholars as to the appropriateness of continuing to describe these belief systems using this Christian terminology. Contemporary knowledge of Anglo-Saxon paganism derives largely from three sources: textual evidence produced by Christian Anglo-Saxons like
Bede
Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom ...
and
Aldhelm
Aldhelm ( ang, Ealdhelm, la, Aldhelmus Malmesberiensis) (c. 63925 May 709), Abbot of Malmesbury Abbey, Bishop of Sherborne, and a writer and scholar of Latin poetry, was born before the middle of the 7th century. He is said to have been the ...
, place-name evidence, and
archaeological
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
evidence of cultic practices. Further suggestions regarding the nature of Anglo-Saxon paganism have been developed through comparisons with the better-attested pre-Christian belief systems of neighbouring peoples such as the
Norse.
Anglo-Saxon paganism was a
polytheistic
Polytheism is the belief in multiple deities, which are usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own religious sects and rituals. Polytheism is a type of theism. Within theism, it contrasts with monotheism, the ...
belief system, focused around a belief in deities known as the (singular ). The most prominent of these deities was probably
Woden
Odin (; from non, Óðinn, ) is a widely revered god in Germanic paganism. Norse mythology, the source of most surviving information about him, associates him with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, war, battle, victor ...
; other prominent gods included
Thunor and
Tiw. There was also a belief in a variety of other supernatural entities which inhabited the landscape, including
elves
An elf () is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore. Elves appear especially in North Germanic mythology. They are subsequently mentioned in Snorri Sturluson's Icelandic Prose Edda. He distinguishes ...
,
nicor, and
dragons
A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...
. Cultic practice largely revolved around demonstrations of devotion, including
sacrifice
Sacrifice is the offering of material possessions or the lives of animals or humans to a deity as an act of propitiation or worship. Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly exis ...
of inanimate objects and animals, to these deities, particularly at certain religious festivals during the year. There is some evidence for the existence of timber temples, although other cultic spaces might have been open-air, and would have included cultic trees and megaliths. Little is known about pagan conceptions of an afterlife, although such beliefs likely influenced
funerary practices, in which the dead were either inhumed or cremated, typically with a selection of
grave goods
Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body.
They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods may be classed as a ...
. The belief system also likely included ideas about
magic and
witchcraft
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have ...
, and elements that could be classified as a form of
shamanism
Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiri ...
.
The deities of this religion provided the basis for the names of the days of the week in the English language. What is known about the religion and its accompanying mythology have since influenced both literature and
Modern Paganism
Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism and neopaganism, is a term for a religion or family of religions influenced by the various historical pre-Christian beliefs of pre-modern peoples in Europe and adjacent areas of North Afric ...
.
Definition
![England green top](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/England_green_top.svg)
The word ''
pagan
Paganism (from classical Latin ''pāgānus'' "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Judaism. I ...
'' is a
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
term that was used by Christians in
Anglo-Saxon England
Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England, existing from the 5th to the 11th centuries from the end of Roman Britain until the Norman conquest in 1066, consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927, when it was united as the Kingdom of ...
to designate non-Christians. In
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...
, the vernacular language of Anglo-Saxon England, the equivalent term was ("heathen"), a word that was cognate to the
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...
, both of which may derive from a
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
word, . Both ''pagan'' and ''heathen'' were terms that carried pejorative overtones, with also being used in Late Anglo-Saxon texts to refer to criminals and others deemed to have not behaved according to Christian teachings. The term "paganism" was one used by Christians as a form of
othering, and as the archaeologist
Neil Price put it, in the Anglo-Saxon context, "paganism" is "largely an empty concept defined by what it is not (Christianity)".
There is no evidence that anyone living in Anglo-Saxon England ever described themselves as a "pagan" or understood there to be a singular religion, "paganism", that stood as a monolithic alternative to Christianity. These pagan belief systems would have been inseparable from other aspects of daily life. According to the archaeologists
Martin Carver, Alex Sanmark, and Sarah Semple, Anglo-Saxon paganism was "not a religion with supraregional rules and institutions but a loose term for a variety of local intellectual world views." Carver stressed that, in Anglo-Saxon England, neither paganism nor Christianity represented "homogenous intellectual positions or canons and practice"; instead, there was "considerable interdigitation" between the two. As a phenomenon, this belief system lacked any apparent rules or consistency, and exhibited both regional and chronological variation. The archaeologist Aleks Pluskowski suggested that it is possible to talk of "multiple Anglo-Saxon 'paganisms'".
Adopting the terminology of the
sociologist of religion
Sociology of religion is the study of the beliefs, practices and organizational forms of religion using the tools and methods of the discipline of sociology. This objective investigation may include the use both of quantitative methods (surveys, ...
Max Weber
Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas p ...
, the historian Marilyn Dunn described Anglo-Saxon paganism as a "world accepting" religion, one which was "concerned with the here and now" and in particular with issues surrounding the safety of the family, prosperity, and the avoidance of drought or famine. Also adopting the categories of
Gustav Mensching, she described Anglo-Saxon paganism as a "
folk religion
In religious studies and folkloristics, folk religion, popular religion, traditional religion or vernacular religion comprises various forms and expressions of religion that are distinct from the official doctrines and practices of organized re ...
", in that its adherents concentrated on survival and prosperity in this world.
Using the expressions "paganism" or "heathenism" when discussing pre-Christian belief systems in Anglo-Saxon England is problematic. Historically, many early scholars of the Anglo-Saxon period used these terms to describe the religious beliefs in England before
its conversion to Christianity in the 7th century. Several later scholars criticised this approach; as the historian
Ian N. Wood
Ian N. Wood, (born 1950) is an English scholar of early medieval history, and a professor at the University of Leeds who specializes in the history of the Merovingian dynasty and the missionary efforts on the European continent. Patrick J. Gea ...
stated, using the term "pagan" when discussing the Anglo-Saxons forces the scholar to adopt "the cultural constructs and value judgements of the early medieval
hristianmissionaries" and thus obscures scholarly understandings of the so-called pagans' own perspectives.
At present, while some Anglo-Saxonists have ceased using the terms "paganism" or "pagan" when discussing the early Anglo-Saxon period, others have continued to do so, viewing these terms as a useful means of designating something that is not Christian yet which is still identifiably religious. The historian John Hines proposed "traditional religion" as a better alternative, although Carver cautioned against this, noting that Britain in the 5th to the 8th century was replete with new ideas and thus belief systems of that period were not particularly "traditional". The term "pre-Christian" religion has also been used; this avoids the judgemental connotations of "paganism" and "heathenism" but is not always chronologically accurate.
Evidence
![The Venerable Bede translates John 1902](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/The_Venerable_Bede_translates_John_1902.jpg)
The pre-Christian society of Anglo-Saxon England was illiterate. Thus there is no contemporary written evidence produced by Anglo-Saxon pagans themselves. Instead, our primary textual source material derives from later authors, such as
Bede
Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom ...
and the anonymous author of the ''
Life of St Wilfrid
The ''Vita Sancti Wilfrithi'' or ''Life of St Wilfrid'' (spelled "Wilfrid" in the modern era) is an early 8th-century hagiographic text recounting the life of the Northumbrian bishop, Wilfrid. Although a hagiography, it has few miracles, while ...
'', who wrote in
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
rather than in Old English. These writers were not interested in providing a full portrait of the Anglo-Saxons' pre-Christian belief systems, and thus our textual portrayal of these religious beliefs is fragmentary and incidental. Also perhaps useful are the writings of those Christian Anglo-Saxon missionaries who were active in converting the pagan societies of continental Europe, namely
Willibrord
Willibrord (; 658 – 7 November AD 739) was an Anglo-Saxon missionary and saint, known as the "Apostle to the Frisians" in the modern Netherlands. He became the first bishop of Utrecht and died at Echternach, Luxembourg.
Early life
His fathe ...
and
Boniface
Boniface, OSB ( la, Bonifatius; 675 – 5 June 754) was an English Benedictine monk and leading figure in the Anglo-Saxon mission to the Germanic parts of the Frankish Empire during the eighth century. He organised significant foundations o ...
, as well as the writings of the 1st century AD Roman writer
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars.
The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...
, who commented upon the pagan religions of the Anglo-Saxons' ancestors in continental Europe. The historian
Frank Stenton
Sir Frank Merry Stenton, FBA (17 May 1880 – 15 September 1967) was an English historian of Anglo-Saxon England, and president of the Royal Historical Society (1937–1945).
The son of Henry Stenton of Southwell, Nottinghamshire, he was edu ...
commented that the available texts only provide us with "a dim impression" of pagan religion in Anglo-Saxon England, while similarly, the archaeologist David Wilson commented that written sources "should be treated with caution and viewed as suggestive rather than in any way definitive".
Far fewer textual records discuss Anglo-Saxon paganism than the pre-Christian belief systems found in nearby Ireland, Francia, or Scandinavia. There is no neat, formalised account of Anglo-Saxon pagan beliefs as there is for instance for
Classical mythology
Classical mythology, Greco-Roman mythology, or Greek and Roman mythology is both the body of and the study of myths from the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans as they are used or transformed by cultural reception. Along with philosophy and poli ...
and
Norse mythology
Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern per ...
. Although many scholars have used Norse mythology as a guide to understanding the beliefs of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon England, caution has been expressed as to the utility of this approach. Stenton assumes that the connection between Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian paganism occurred "in a past which was already remote" at the time of the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain, and claims that there was clear diversity among the pre-Christian belief systems of Scandinavia itself, further complicating the use of Scandinavian material to understand that of England. Conversely, the historian Brian Branston argued for the use of Old Norse sources to better understand Anglo-Saxon pagan beliefs, recognising mythological commonalities between the two rooted in their common ancestry.
Old English place-names also provide some insight into the pre-Christian beliefs and practices of Anglo-Saxon England. Some of these place-names reference the names of particular deities, while others use terms that refer to cultic practices that took place there. In England, these two categories remain separate, unlike in Scandinavia, where certain place-names exhibit both features. Those place-names which carry possible pagan associations are centred primarily in the centre and south-east of England, while no obvious examples are known from
Northumbria
la, Regnum Northanhymbrorum
, conventional_long_name = Kingdom of Northumbria
, common_name = Northumbria
, status = State
, status_text = Unified Anglian kingdom (before 876)North: Anglian kingdom (af ...
or
East Anglia
East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...
. It is not clear why such names are rarer or non-existent in certain parts of the country; it may be due to changes in nomenclature brought about by Scandinavian settlement in the Late Anglo-Saxon period or because of evangelising efforts by later Christian authorities. In 1941, Stenton suggested that "between fifty and sixty sites of heathen worship" could be identified through the place-name evidence, although in 1961 the place-name scholar
Margaret Gelling
Margaret Joy Gelling, (''née'' Midgley; 29 November 1924 – 24 April 2009) was an English toponymist, known for her extensive studies of English place-names. She served as President of the English Place-Name Society from 1986 to 1998, and ...
cautioned that only forty-five of these appeared reliable. The literature specialist Philip A. Shaw has however warned that many of these sites might not have been named by pagans but by later Christian Anglo-Saxons, reflecting spaces that were perceived to be heathen from a Christian perspective.
According to Wilson, the archaeological evidence is "prolific and hence is potentially the most useful in the study of paganism" in Anglo-Saxon England. Archaeologically, the realms of religion, ritual, and magic can only be identified if they affected
material culture
Material culture is the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects and architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms, and rituals that the objects crea ...
. As such, scholarly understandings of pre-Christian religion in Anglo-Saxon England are reliant largely on rich burials and monumental buildings, which exert as much of a political purpose as a religious one. Metalwork items discovered by
metal detector
A metal detector is an instrument that detects the nearby presence of metal. Metal detectors are useful for finding metal objects on the surface, underground, and under water. The unit itself, consist of a control box, and an adjustable shaft, ...
ists have also contributed to the interpretation of Anglo-Saxon paganism. The world-views of the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons would have impinged on all aspects of everyday life, making it particularly difficult for modern scholars to separate Anglo-Saxon ritual activities as something distinct from other areas of daily life. Much of this archaeological material comes from the period in which pagan beliefs were being supplanted by Christianity, and thus an understanding of Anglo-Saxon paganism must be seen in tandem with the archaeology of the conversion.
Based on the evidence available, the historian
John Blair stated that the pre-Christian religion of Anglo-Saxon England largely resembled "that of the pagan Britons under Roman rule... at least in its outward forms".
However, the archaeologist
Audrey Meaney concluded that there exists "very little undoubted evidence for Anglo-Saxon paganism, and we remain ignorant of many of its essential features of organisation and philosophy". Similarly, the Old English specialist Roy Page expressed the view that the surviving evidence was "too sparse and too scattered" to permit a good understanding of Anglo-Saxon paganism.
Historical development
Arrival and establishment
During most of the fourth century, the majority of Britain had been part of the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Roman Republic, Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings aro ...
, which—starting in 380 AD with the
Edict of Thessalonica
The Edict of Thessalonica (also known as ''Cunctos populos''), issued on 27 February AD 380 by Theodosius I, made the Catholicism of Nicene Christians the state church of the Roman Empire.
It condemned other Christian creeds such as Arianism ...
—had Christianity as its official religion. However, in Britain, Christianity was probably still a minority religion, restricted largely to the urban centres and their hinterlands. While it did have some impact in the countryside, here it appears that indigenous Late Iron Age polytheistic belief systems continued to be widely practised. Some areas, such as the
Welsh Marches
The Welsh Marches ( cy, Y Mers) is an imprecisely defined area along the border between England and Wales in the United Kingdom. The precise meaning of the term has varied at different periods.
The English term Welsh March (in Medieval Latin ...
, the majority of Wales (excepting
Gwent),
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancas ...
, and the south-western peninsula, are totally lacking evidence for Christianity in this period.
Britons who found themselves in the areas now dominated by Anglo-Saxon elites possibly embraced the Anglo-Saxons' pagan religion in order to aid their own self-advancement, just as they adopted other trappings of Anglo-Saxon culture. This would have been easier for those Britons who, rather than being Christian, continued to practise indigenous polytheistic belief systems, and in areas this Late Iron Age polytheism could have
syncretically mixed with the incoming Anglo-Saxon religion. Conversely, there is weak possible evidence for limited survival of Roman Christianity into the Anglo-Saxon period, such as the place-name ''ecclēs'', meaning 'church', at
two locations in
Norfolk
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the Nor ...
and
Eccles in
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
. However, Blair suggested that Roman Christianity would not have experienced more than a "ghost-life" in Anglo-Saxon areas. Those Britons who continued to practise Christianity were probably perceived as second-class citizens and were unlikely to have had much of an impact on the pagan kings and aristocracy which was then emphasising Anglo-Saxon culture and defining itself against British culture. If the British Christians were able to convert any of the Anglo-Saxon elite conquerors, it was likely only on a small community scale, with British Christianity having little impact on the later establishment of Anglo-Saxon Christianity in the seventh century.
Prior scholarship tended to view Anglo-Saxon paganism as a development from an older
Germanic paganism
Germanic paganism or Germanic religion refers to the traditional, culturally significant religion of the Germanic peoples. With a chronological range of at least one thousand years in an area covering Scandinavia, the British Isles, modern Germ ...
. The scholar Michael Bintley cautioned against this approach, noting that this "'Germanic' paganism" had "never had a single ''ur''-form" from which later variants developed.
The conversion to Christianity
Anglo-Saxon paganism only existed for a relatively short time-span, from the fifth to the eighth centuries. Our knowledge of the Christianisation process derives from Christian textual sources, as the pagans were illiterate. Both Latin and
ogham
Ogham ( Modern Irish: ; mga, ogum, ogom, later mga, ogam, label=none ) is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions, 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later the Old Irish langu ...
inscriptions and the ''Ruin of Britain'' by
Gildas
Gildas ( Breton: ''Gweltaz''; c. 450/500 – c. 570) — also known as Gildas the Wise or ''Gildas Sapiens'' — was a 6th-century British monk best known for his scathing religious polemic ''De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae'', which recount ...
suggest that the leading families of
Dumnonia
Dumnonia is the Latinised name for a Brythonic kingdom that existed in Sub-Roman Britain between the late 4th and late 8th centuries CE in the more westerly parts of present-day South West England. It was centred in the area of modern Devon, ...
and other
Brittonic
Brittonic or Brythonic may refer to:
*Common Brittonic, or Brythonic, the Celtic language anciently spoken in Great Britain
*Brittonic languages, a branch of the Celtic languages descended from Common Brittonic
*Britons (Celtic people)
The Br ...
kingdoms had already adopted Christianity in the 6th century. In 596,
Pope Gregory I
Pope Gregory I ( la, Gregorius I; – 12 March 604), commonly known as Saint Gregory the Great, was the bishop of Rome from 3 September 590 to his death. He is known for instigating the first recorded large-scale mission from Rome, the Gregoria ...
ordered a
Gregorian mission
The Gregorian missionJones "Gregorian Mission" ''Speculum'' p. 335 or Augustinian missionMcGowan "Introduction to the Corpus" ''Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature'' p. 17 was a Christian mission sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 596 to conv ...
to be launched in order to convert the Anglo-Saxons to the
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
. The leader of this mission,
Augustine
Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afr ...
, probably landed in
Thanet, then part of the
Kingdom of Kent
la, Regnum Cantuariorum
, conventional_long_name = Kingdom of the Kentish
, common_name = Kent
, era = Heptarchy
, status = vassal
, status_text =
, government_type = Monarchy ...
, in the summer of 597. While Christianity was initially restricted to Kent, it saw "major and sustained expansion" in the period from c. 625 to 642, when the Kentish king
Eadbald sponsored a mission to the Northumbrians led by Paulinus, the Northumbrian king
Oswald Oswald may refer to:
People
*Oswald (given name), including a list of people with the name
*Oswald (surname), including a list of people with the name
Fictional characters
*Oswald the Reeve, who tells a tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's ''The Canterbur ...
invited a Christian mission from Irish monks to establish themselves, and the courts of the East Anglians and the Gewisse were converted by continental missionaries
Felix the Burgundian and
Birinus the Italian. The next phase of the conversion took place between c.653 and 664, and entailed the Northumbrian sponsored conversion of the rulers of the East Saxons, Middle Anglians, and Mercians. In the final phase of the conversion, which took place during the 670s and 680s, the final two Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to be led by pagan rulers — in Sussex and the Isle of Wight — saw their leaders baptised.
As with other areas of Europe, the conversion to Christianity was facilitated by the aristocracy. These rulers may have felt themselves to be members of a pagan backwater in contrast to the Christian kingdoms in continental Europe. The pace of Christian conversion varied across Anglo-Saxon England, with it taking almost 90 years for the official conversion to succeed. Most of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms returned to paganism for a time after the death of their first converted king. However, by the end of the 680s, all of the Anglo-Saxon peoples were at least nominally Christian.
Blair noted that for most Anglo-Saxons, the "moral and practical imperatives" of following one's lord by converting to Christianity were a "powerful stimulus".
It remains difficult to determine the extent to which pre-Christian beliefs retained their popularity among the Anglo-Saxon populace from the seventh century onward. ''
Theodore's Penitential'' and the Laws of
Wihtred of Kent
Wihtred ( la, Wihtredus) ( – 23 April 725) was king of Kent from about 690 or 691 until his death. He was a son of Ecgberht I and a brother of Eadric. Wihtred ascended to the throne after a confused period in the 680s, which included ...
issued in 695 imposed penalties on those who provided offerings to "demons". However, by two or three decades later, Bede could write as if paganism had died out in Anglo-Saxon England. Condemnations of pagan cults also do not appear in other canons from this later period, again suggesting that ecclesiastical figures no longer considered persisting paganism to be a problem.
Scandinavian incursions
In the latter decades of the ninth century during the Late Anglo-Saxon period, Scandinavian settlers arrived in Britain, bringing with them
their own, kindred pre-Christian beliefs. No cultic sites used by Scandinavian pagans have been archaeologically identified, although place names suggest some possible examples. For instance,
Roseberry Topping
Roseberry Topping is a distinctive hill in North Yorkshire, England. It is situated near Great Ayton and Newton under Roseberry. Its summit has a distinctive half-cone shape with a jagged cliff, which has led to many comparisons with the much h ...
in North Yorkshire was known as Othensberg in the twelfth century, a name which derived from the
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...
, or 'Hill of Óðin'. A number of place-names also contain Old Norse references to mythological entities, such as , , and . A number of pendants representing
Mjolnir, the hammer of the god
Thor
Thor (; from non, Þórr ) is a prominent god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred groves and trees, strength, the protection of humankind, hallowing, ...
, have also been found in England, reflecting the probability that he was worshipped among the
Anglo-Scandinavian
Anglo-Scandinavian is an academic term referring to the hybridisation between Norse and Anglo-Saxon cultures in Britain during the early medieval period. It remains a term and concept often used by historians and archaeologists, and in linguisti ...
population. Jesch argued that, given that there was only evidence for the worship of Odin and Thor in Anglo-Scandinavian England, these might have been the only deities to have been actively venerated by the Scandinavian settlers, even if they were aware of the mythological stories surrounding other Norse gods and goddesses. North however argued that one passage in the
Old English rune poem, written in the eighth or ninth century, may reflect knowledge of the Scandinavian god
Týr
(; Old Norse: , ) is a god in Germanic mythology, a valorous and powerful member of the and patron of warriors and mythological heroes. In Norse mythology, which provides most of the surviving narratives about gods among the Germanic people ...
.
![Roseberry topping north side](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Roseberry_topping_north_side.jpg)
Archaeologically, the introduction of Norse paganism to Britain in this period is mostly visited in the mortuary evidence.
A number of Scandinavian furnished burial styles were also introduced that differed from the Christian churchyard burials then dominant in Late Anglo-Saxon England. Whether these represent clear pagan identity or not is however debated among archaeologists. Norse mythological scenes have also been identified on a number of stone carvings from the period, such as the
Gosforth Cross, which included images of ''
Ragnarök
In Norse mythology, (; non, wikt:ragnarǫk, Ragnarǫk) is a series of events, including a great battle, foretelling the death of numerous great figures (including the Æsir, gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki), natural disast ...
''.
The English church found that it needed to conduct a new conversion process to Christianise the incoming Scandinavian population. It is not well understood how the Christian institutions converted these settlers, in part due to a lack of textual descriptions of this conversion process equivalent to Bede's description of the earlier Anglo-Saxon conversion. However, it appears that the Scandinavian migrants had converted to Christianity within the first few decades of their arrival.
The historian Judith Jesch suggested that these beliefs survived throughout Late Anglo-Saxon England not in the form of an active non-Christian religion, but as "cultural paganism", the acceptance of references to pre-Christian myths in particular cultural contexts within an officially Christian society. Such "cultural paganism" could represent a reference to the cultural heritage of the Scandinavian population rather than their religious heritage. For instance, many Norse mythological themes and motifs are present in the poetry composed for the court of
Cnut the Great
Cnut (; ang, Cnut cyning; non, Knútr inn ríki ; or , no, Knut den mektige, sv, Knut den Store. died 12 November 1035), also known as Cnut the Great and Canute, was King of England from 1016, King of Denmark from 1018, and King of Norw ...
, an eleventh-century Anglo-Scandinavian king who had been baptised into Christianity and who otherwise emphasised his identity as a Christian monarch.
Post-Christianization folklore
Although Christianity had been adopted across Anglo-Saxon England by the late seventh century, many pre-Christian customs continued to be practised. Bintley argued that aspects of Anglo-Saxon paganism served as the foundations for parts of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. Pre-Christian beliefs affected the
folklore
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, rangin ...
of the Anglo-Saxon period, and through this continued to exert an influence on
popular religion
In religious studies and folkloristics, folk religion, popular religion, traditional religion or vernacular religion comprises various forms and expressions of religion that are distinct from the official doctrines and practices of organized rel ...
within the late Anglo-Saxon period. The conversion did not result in the obliteration of pre-Christian traditions, but in various ways created a synthesis of traditions, as exhibited for instance by the
Franks Casket
The Franks Casket (or the Auzon Casket) is a small Anglo-Saxon whale's bone (not "whalebone" in the sense of baleen) chest from the early 8th century, now in the British Museum. The casket is densely decorated with knife-cut narrative scenes ...
, an artwork depicting both the pre-Christian myth of
Weland the Smith and the Christian myth of the
Adoration of the Magi
The Adoration of the Magi or Adoration of the Kings is the name traditionally given to the subject in the Nativity of Jesus in art in which the three Magi, represented as kings, especially in the West, having found Jesus by following a star, ...
. Blair noted that even in the late eleventh century, "important aspects of lay Christianity were still influenced by traditional indigenous practices".
Both secular and church authorities issued condemnations of alleged non-Christian pagan practices, such as the veneration of wells, trees, and stones, right through to the eleventh century and into the High Middle Ages. However, most of the
penitentials
A penitential is a book or set of church rules concerning the Christian sacrament of penance, a "new manner of reconciliation with God" that was first developed by Celtic monks in Ireland in the sixth century AD. It consisted of a list of sins a ...
condemning such practices – notably that attributed to
Ecgbert of York
Ecgbert (died 19 November 766) was an 8th-century cleric who established the archdiocese of York in 735. In 737, Ecgbert's brother became king of Northumbria and the two siblings worked together on ecclesiastical issues. Ecgbert was a corresponde ...
– were largely produced around the year 1000, which may suggest that their prohibitions against non-Christian cultic behaviour may be a response to Norse pagan beliefs brought in by Scandinavian settlers rather than a reference to older Anglo-Saxon practices. Various scholars, among them historical geographer
Della Hooke and Price, have contrastingly believed that these reflected the continuing practice of veneration at wells and trees at a popular level long after the official Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon society.
Various elements of English
folklore
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, rangin ...
from the Medieval period onwards have been interpreted as being survivals from Anglo-Saxon paganism. For instance, writing in the 1720s, Henry Bourne stated his belief that the winter custom of the
Yule log
The Yule log, Yule clog, or Christmas block is a specially selected log burnt on a hearth as a winter tradition in regions of Europe, and subsequently North America. The origin of the folk custom is unclear. Like other traditions associated wit ...
was a leftover from Anglo-Saxon paganism, however this is an idea that has been disputed by some subsequent research by the likes of historian
Ronald Hutton
Ronald Edmund Hutton (born 19 December 1953) is an English historian who specialises in Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and Contemporary Paganism. He is a professor at the University of Bristol, has written 14 ...
, who believe that it was only introduced into England in the seventeenth century by immigrants arriving from
Flanders
Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to cultu ...
. The
Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, which is performed annually in the village of
Abbots Bromley
Abbots Bromley is a village and civil parish in the East Staffordshire district of Staffordshire and lies approximately east of Stafford, England. According to the University of Nottingham English Place-names project, the settlement name Abbots ...
in
Staffordshire
Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands C ...
, has also been claimed, by some, to be a remnant of Anglo-Saxon paganism. The antlers used in the dance belonged to
reindeer
Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 subs ...
and have been
carbon dated
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.
The method was dev ...
to the eleventh century, and it is therefore believed that they originated in
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...
and were brought to England some time in the late Mediaeval period, as by that time reindeer were extinct in Britain.
Mythology
Cosmology
Little is known about the cosmological beliefs of Anglo-Saxon paganism. Carver, Sanmark, and Semple suggested that every community within Anglo-Saxon England likely had "its own take on cosmology", although suggested that there might have been "an underlying system" that was widely shared. The later Anglo-Saxon ''
Nine Herbs Charm
The "Nine Herbs Charm" is an Old English charm recorded in the tenth-century CEGordon (1962:92–93). Anglo-Saxon medical compilation known as ''Lacnunga'', which survives on the manuscript, Harley MS 585, in the British Library, at London.Macleo ...
'' mentions seven worlds, which may be a reference to an earlier pagan cosmological belief. Similarly, Bede claimed that the Christian king
Oswald of Northumbria
Oswald (; c 604 – 5 August 641/642Bede gives the year of Oswald's death as 642, however there is some question as to whether what Bede considered 642 is the same as what would now be considered 642. R. L. Poole (''Studies in Chronology an ...
defeated a pagan rival at a sacred plain or meadow called
Heavenfield (), which may be a reference to a pagan belief in a heavenly plain. The Anglo-Saxon concept corresponding to
fate was , although the "pagan" nature of this conception is subject to some debate; Dorothy Whitelock suggested that it was a belief held only after Christianisation, while Branston maintained that had been an important concept for the pagan Anglo-Saxons. He suggested that it was cognate to the Icelandic term
Urdr and thus was connected to the concept of three sisters, the
Nornir, who oversee fate in recorded Norse mythology. It is possible that the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons held a belief in an apocalypse that bore similarities with the later Norse myth of
Ragnarok.
Although we have no evidence directly testifying to the existence of such a belief, the possibility that the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons believed in a cosmological
world tree
The world tree is a motif present in several religions and mythologies, particularly Indo-European religions, Siberian religions, and Native American religions. The world tree is represented as a colossal tree which supports the heavens, thereb ...
has also been considered. It has been suggested that the idea of a world tree can be discerned through certain references in the ''
Dream of the Rood
''The'' ''Dream of the Rood'' is one of the Christian poems in the corpus of Old English literature and an example of the genre of dream poetry. Like most Old English poetry, it is written in alliterative verse. ''Rood'' is from the Old Englis ...
'' poem. This idea may be bolstered if it is the case, as some scholars have argued, that their concept of a world tree may be derived from a purported common
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
root. The historian Clive Tolley has cautioned that any Anglo-Saxon world tree would likely not be directly comparable to that referenced in Norse textual sources.
Deities
Anglo-Saxon paganism was a
polytheistic
Polytheism is the belief in multiple deities, which are usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own religious sects and rituals. Polytheism is a type of theism. Within theism, it contrasts with monotheism, the ...
belief system, with its practitioners believing in many deities. However, most Christian Anglo-Saxon writers had little or no interest in the pagan gods, and thus did not discuss them in their texts. The Old English words for a god were and , and they may be reflected in such place-names as
Easole ("God's Ridge") in Kent and Eisey ("God's Island") in
Wiltshire
Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...
.
The deity for whom we have most evidence is
Woden
Odin (; from non, Óðinn, ) is a widely revered god in Germanic paganism. Norse mythology, the source of most surviving information about him, associates him with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, war, battle, victor ...
, as "traces of his cult are scattered more widely over the rolling English countryside than those of any other heathen deity". Place names containing or ''Wednes-'' as their first element have been interpreted as references to Woden, and as a result his name is often seen as the basis for such place names as
Woodnesborough
Woodnesborough ( ) is a village in the Dover District of Kent, England, west of Sandwich. The population taken at the 2011 census included Coombe as well as Marshborough, and totalled 1,066. There is a Grade II* listed Anglican church dedicat ...
("Woden's Barrow") in
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
,
Wansdyke ("Woden's Dyke") in
Wiltshire
Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...
, and
Wensley ("Woden's Woodland Clearing" or "Woden's Wood") in
Derbyshire
Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...
. The name Woden also appears as an ancestor of the royal genealogies of
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
,
Wessex
la, Regnum Occidentalium Saxonum
, conventional_long_name = Kingdom of the West Saxons
, common_name = Wessex
, image_map = Southern British Isles 9th century.svg
, map_caption = S ...
,
East Anglia
East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...
and
Mercia
la, Merciorum regnum
, conventional_long_name=Kingdom of Mercia
, common_name=Mercia
, status=Kingdom
, status_text=Independent kingdom (527–879)Client state of Wessex ()
, life_span=527–918
, era=Heptarchy
, event_start=
, date_start=
, y ...
, resulting in suggestions that after losing his status as a god during the Christianisation process he was
euhemerised
Euhemerism () is an approach to the interpretation of mythology in which mythological accounts are presumed to have originated from real historical events or personages. Euhemerism supposes that historical accounts become myths as they are exagge ...
as a royal ancestor. Woden also appears as the leader of the
Wild Hunt
The Wild Hunt is a folklore motif (Motif E501 in Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature) that occurs in the folklore of various northern European cultures. Wild Hunts typically involve a chase led by a mythological figure escorted by ...
, and he is referred to as a magical healer in the ''
Nine Herbs Charm
The "Nine Herbs Charm" is an Old English charm recorded in the tenth-century CEGordon (1962:92–93). Anglo-Saxon medical compilation known as ''Lacnunga'', which survives on the manuscript, Harley MS 585, in the British Library, at London.Macleo ...
'', directly paralleling the role of his continental German counterpart Wodan in the
Merseburg Incantations
The Merseburg charms or Merseburg incantations (german: die Merseburger Zaubersprüche) are two medieval magic spells, charms or incantations, written in Old High German. They are the only known examples of Germanic pagan belief preserved in the ...
. He is also often interpreted as being cognate with the Norse god
Óðinn
Odin (; from non, Óðinn, ) is a widely revered god in Germanic paganism. Norse mythology, the source of most surviving information about him, associates him with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, war, battle, victory, ...
and the
Old High German
Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050.
There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old Hig ...
Uuodan. Additionally, he appears in the Old English ancestor of ''Wednesday'',
Ƿōdenesdæġ ( a
calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...
from its Latin equivalent, as are the rest of the
days of the week
A day is the time period of a full rotation of the Earth with respect to the Sun. On average, this is 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds. In everyday life, the word "day" often refers to a solar day, which is the length between two ...
).
It has been suggested that Woden was also known as Grim – a name which appears in such English place-names as
Grimspound
Grimspound is a late Bronze Age settlement, situated on Dartmoor in Devon, England. It consists of a set of 24 hut circles surrounded by a low stone wall. The name was first recorded by the Reverend Richard Polwhele in 1797; it was probably ...
in
Dartmoor
Dartmoor is an upland area in southern Devon, England. The moorland and surrounding land has been protected by National Park status since 1951. Dartmoor National Park covers .
The granite which forms the uplands dates from the Carboniferous P ...
,
Grimes Graves in
Norfolk
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the Nor ...
and
Grimsby
Grimsby or Great Grimsby is a port town and the administrative centre of North East Lincolnshire, Lincolnshire, England. Grimsby adjoins the town of Cleethorpes directly to the south-east forming a conurbation. Grimsby is north-east of L ...
("Grim's Village") in
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-we ...
– because in recorded Norse mythology, the god Óðinn is also known as
Grímnir. Highlighting that there are around twice as many ''Grim'' place-names in England as ''Woden'' place-names, the place-name scholar
Margaret Gelling
Margaret Joy Gelling, (''née'' Midgley; 29 November 1924 – 24 April 2009) was an English toponymist, known for her extensive studies of English place-names. She served as President of the English Place-Name Society from 1986 to 1998, and ...
cautioned against the view that ''Grim'' was always associated with Woden in Anglo-Saxon England.
The second most widespread deity from Anglo-Saxon England appears to be the god
Thunor. It has been suggested that the hammer and the
swastika
The swastika (卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious and cultural symbol, predominantly in various Eurasian, as well as some African and American cultures, now also widely recognized for its appropriation by the Nazi Party and by neo-Nazis. I ...
were the god's symbols, representing thunderbolts, and both of these symbols have been found in Anglo-Saxon graves, the latter being common on cremation urns. A large number of Thunor place-names feature the Old English word ''lēah'' ("wood", or "clearing in a wood"), among them
Thunderley and
Thundersley
Thundersley is a town and former civil parish, now in the unparished area of Benfleet, in the Castle Point borough, in southeast Essex, England. It sits on a clay ridge shared with Basildon and Hadleigh, east of Charing Cross, London. In 1951 ...
in
Essex
Essex () is a Ceremonial counties of England, county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the Riv ...
. The deity's name also appears in other compounds too, as with
Thunderfield ("Thunor's Open Land") in Surrey and ''
Thunores hlaew'' ("Thunor's Mound") in Kent.
A third Anglo-Saxon god that is attested is
Tiw. In the
Anglo-Saxon rune poem
The Old English rune poem, dated to the 8th or 9th century, has stanzas on 29 Anglo-Saxon runes.
It stands alongside younger rune poems from Scandinavia, which record the names of the 16 Younger Futhark runes.
The poem is a product of the perio ...
, ''
Tir'' is identified with the star
Polaris
Polaris is a star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Minor. It is designated α Ursae Minoris ( Latinized to ''Alpha Ursae Minoris'') and is commonly called the North Star or Pole Star. With an apparent magnitude th ...
rather than with a deity, although it has been suggested that Tiw was probably a war deity. Dunn has suggested that Tiw might have been a supreme creator deity who was nevertheless deemed distant. The name Tiw has been identified in such place-names as
Tuesley ("Tiw's Wood or Clearing") in
Surrey
Surrey () is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant ur ...
,
Tysoe
Tysoe is a civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon District of Warwickshire, England. The parish is on the boundary with Oxfordshire, about northwest of Banbury. The parish includes the contiguous villages of Middle and Upper Tysoe and the sep ...
("Tiw's Hill-Spur") in
Warwickshire
Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avo ...
, and
Tyesmere ("Tiw's Pool") in
Worcestershire
Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...
. It has been suggested that the "T"-rune which appears on some weapons and crematory urns from the Anglo-Saxon period may be references to Tiw. Also, there is , which in
Modern English has become "
Tuesday
Tuesday is the day of the week between Monday and Wednesday. According to international standard ISO 8601, Monday is the first day of the week; thus, Tuesday is the second day of the week. According to some commonly used calendars, however ...
."
Perhaps the most prominent female deity in Anglo-Saxon paganism was
Frig
Frig may refer to:
* Frig (Anglo-Saxon goddess), a love goddess in Anglo-Saxon paganism
* Frig (interjection), an English word
* ''Frig'' (film), a French film
* Len Frig (born 1950), Canadian ice hockey defenceman
See also
* Frigg (disambig ...
; however, there is still very little evidence for her worship, although it has been speculated that she was "a goddess of love or festivity". Her name has been suggested as a component of the place-names
Frethern in
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean.
The county town is the city of ...
, and Freefolk, Frobury, and Froyle in
Hampshire
Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...
.
The
East Saxon
la, Regnum Orientalium Saxonum
, conventional_long_name = Kingdom of the East Saxons
, common_name = Essex
, era = Heptarchy
, status =
, status_text =
, government_type = Monarch ...
royalty claimed lineage from someone known as
Seaxnēat, who might have been a god, in part because an
Old Saxon
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). I ...
baptismal vow calls on the Christian to renounce "Thunaer, Woden and Saxnot". A runic poem mentions a god known as
Ingwine and the writer
Asser
Asser (; ; died 909) was a Welsh monk from St David's, Dyfed, who became Bishop of Sherborne in the 890s. About 885 he was asked by Alfred the Great to leave St David's and join the circle of learned men whom Alfred was recruiting for his ...
mentioned a god known as
Gēat. The Christian monk known as the
Venerable Bede
Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom ...
also mentioned two further goddesses in his written works:
Eostre, who was celebrated at a spring festival, and
Hretha In Anglo-Saxon paganism, Rheda ( Latinized from Old English ''*Hrêðe'' or ''*Hrêða'', possibly meaning "the famous" or "the victorious"Simek (2007:159).) is a goddess connected with the month '"Rhedmonth"' (from Old English ''*Hrēþmōnaþ''). ...
, whose name meant "glory".
References to
idols can be found in Anglo-Saxon texts. No
wooden carvings of anthropomorphic figures have been found in the area that once encompassed Anglo-Saxon England that are comparable to those found in Scandinavia or continental Europe. It may be that such sculptures were typically made out of wood, which has not survived in the archaeological record. Several anthropomorphic images have been found, mostly in Kent and dated to the first half of the seventh century; however, identifying these with any particular deity has not proven possible. A seated male figure appears on a cremation urn's lid discovered at
Spong Hill
Spong Hill is an Anglo-Saxon cemetery site located south of North Elmham in Norfolk, England. It is the largest known Early Anglo-Saxon cremation site. The site consists of a large cremation cemetery and a smaller, 6th century burial cemetery of ...
in Norfolk, which was interpreted as a possible depiction of Woden on a throne. Also found on many crematory urns are a variety of symbols; of these, the
swastikas
The swastika (卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious and cultural symbol, predominantly in various Eurasian, as well as some African and American cultures, now also widely recognized for its appropriation by the Nazi Party and by neo-Nazis. It ...
have sometimes been interpreted as symbols associated with Thunor.
Wights
Many Anglo-Saxonists have also assumed that Anglo-Saxon paganism was
animistic
Animism (from Latin: ' meaning 'breath, spirit, life') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, h ...
in basis, believing in a landscape populated by different spirits and other non-human entities, such as
elves
An elf () is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore. Elves appear especially in North Germanic mythology. They are subsequently mentioned in Snorri Sturluson's Icelandic Prose Edda. He distinguishes ...
,
dwarves, and
dragons
A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...
. The English literature scholar Richard North for instance described it as a "natural religion based on animism". Dunn suggested that for Anglo-Saxon pagans, most everyday interactions would not have been with major deities but with such "lesser supernatural beings". She also suggested that these entities might have exhibited similarities with later English beliefs in
fairies
A fairy (also fay, fae, fey, fair folk, or faerie) is a type of mythical being or legendary creature found in the folklore of multiple European cultures (including Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, English, and French folklore), a form of spirit, ...
. Later Anglo-Saxon texts refer to beliefs in (elves), who are depicted as male but who exhibit gender-transgressing and effeminate traits; these may have been a part of older pagan beliefs.Elves seem to have had some place in earlier pre-Christian beliefs, as evidenced by the presence of the Anglo-Saxon language prefix in early given names, such as (elf victory), (elf friend), (elf spear), (elf gift), (elf power) and (modern "Alfred", meaning "elf counsel"), amongst others. Various Old English place names reference (giants) and (dragons). However, such names did not necessarily emerge during the pagan period of early Anglo-Saxon England, but could have developed at a later date.
Legend and poetry
![Beowulf and the dragon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Beowulf_and_the_dragon.jpg)
In pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon England, legends and other stories were transmitted orally instead of being written down; it is for this reason that very few survive today.
In both ''
Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. ...
'' and ''
Deor's Lament'' there are references to the mythological smith
Weyland, and this figure also makes an appearance on the
Franks Casket
The Franks Casket (or the Auzon Casket) is a small Anglo-Saxon whale's bone (not "whalebone" in the sense of baleen) chest from the early 8th century, now in the British Museum. The casket is densely decorated with knife-cut narrative scenes ...
. There are moreover two place-names recorded in tenth century charters that include Weyland's name. This entity's mythological stories are better fleshed out in Norse stories.
The only surviving Anglo-Saxon
epic poem
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.
...
is the story of ''
Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. ...
'', known only from a surviving manuscript that was written down by the Christian monk Sepa sometime between the eighth and eleventh centuries AD. The story it tells is set not in England but in
Scandinavia
Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and S ...
, and revolves around a
Geatish warrior named
Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. ...
who travels to Denmark to defeat a monster known as
Grendel
Grendel is a character in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem '' Beowulf'' (700–1000). He is one of the poem's three antagonists (along with his mother and the dragon), all aligned in opposition against the protagonist Beowulf. Grendel is feared by ...
, who is terrorising the kingdom of
Hrothgar, and later,
Grendel's Mother as well. Following this, he later becomes the king of Geatland before finally dying in battle with a dragon. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was commonly believed that ''Beowulf'' was not an Anglo-Saxon pagan tale, but a Scandinavian Christian one; it was not until the influential critical essay ''
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics'' by
J. R. R. Tolkien, delivered in 1936, that ''Beowulf'' was established as a quintessentially English poem that, while Christian, looked back on a living memory of paganism. The poem refers to pagan practices such as cremation burials, but also contains repeated mentions of the Christian God and references to tales from
Biblical mythology, such as that of
Cain and Abel
In the biblical Book of Genesis, Cain ''Qayīn'', in pausa ''Qāyīn''; gr, Κάϊν ''Káïn''; ar, قابيل/قايين, Qābīl / Qāyīn and Abel ''Heḇel'', in pausa ''Hāḇel''; gr, Ἅβελ ''Hábel''; ar, هابيل, Hābīl ...
. Given the restricted nature of literacy in Anglo-Saxon England, it is likely that the author of the poem was a cleric or an associate of the clergy.
Nonetheless, some academics still hold reservations about accepting it as containing information pertaining to Anglo-Saxon paganism, with
Patrick Wormald
Charles Patrick Wormald (9 July 1947 – 29 September 2004) was a British historian born in Neston, Cheshire, son of historian Brian Wormald.
He attended Eton College as a King's Scholar. From 1966 to 1969 he read modern history at Balliol Colle ...
noting that "vast reserves of intellectual energy have been devoted to threshing this poem for grains of authentic pagan belief, but it must be admitted that the harvest has been meagre. The poet may have known that his heroes were pagans, but he did not know much about paganism." Similarly, Christine Fell declared that when it came to paganism, the poet who authored ''Beowulf'' had "little more than a vague awareness of what was done 'in those days'." Conversely, North argued that the poet knew more about paganism that he revealed in the poem, suggesting that this could be seen in some of the language and references.
Cultic practice
As archaeologist Sarah Semple noted, "the rituals
f the early Anglo-Saxonsinvolved the full pre-Christian repertoire: votive deposits, furnished burial, monumental mounds, sacred natural phenomenon and eventually constructed pillars, shrines and temples", thereby having many commonalities with other pre-Christian religions in Europe.
Places of worship
Place-name evidence
![Wayland Smithy Long barrow](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Wayland_Smithy_Long_barrow.jpg)
Place-name evidence may indicate some locations which were used as places of worship by the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons. However, no unambiguous archaeological evidence currently supports the interpretation of these sites as places of cultic practice. Two words that appear repeatedly in Old English place names and , have been interpreted as being references to cult spaces, however it is likely that the two terms had distinctive meanings. These locations were all found on high ground, with Wilson suggesting that these represented a communal place of worship for a specific group, such as the tribe, at a specific time of year. The archaeologist Sarah Semple also examined a number of such sites, noting that while they all reflected activity throughout later prehistory and the Romano-British period, they had little evidence from the sixth and seventh centuries CE. She suggested that rather than referring to specifically Anglo-Saxon cultic sites, was instead used in reference to "something British in tradition and usage."
Highlighting that while sites vary in their location, some being on high ground and others on low ground, Wilson noted that the majority were very close to ancient routeways. Accordingly, he suggested that the term denoted a "small, wayside shrine, accessible to the traveller". Given that some -sites were connected to the name of an individual, Wilson suggested that such individuals may have been the owner or guardian of the shrine.
A number of place-names including reference to pre-Christian deities compound these names with the Old English word ("wood", or "clearing in a wood"), and this may have attested to a
sacred grove
Sacred groves or sacred woods are groves of trees and have special religious importance within a particular culture. Sacred groves feature in various cultures throughout the world. They were important features of the mythological landscape and ...
at which cultic practice took place. A number of other place-names associate the deity's name with a high point in the landscape, such as or , which might represent that such spots were considered particularly appropriate for cultic practice. In six examples, the deity's name is associated with ("open land"), in which case these might have been sanctuaries located to specifically benefit the agricultural actions of the community.
Some Old English place names make reference to an animal's head, among them
Gateshead
Gateshead () is a large town in northern England. It is on the River Tyne's southern bank, opposite Newcastle to which it is joined by seven bridges. The town contains the Millennium Bridge, The Sage, and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary ...
("Goat's Head") in
Tyne and Wear
Tyne and Wear () is a metropolitan county in North East England, situated around the mouths of the rivers Tyne and Wear. It was created in 1974, by the Local Government Act 1972, along with five metropolitan boroughs of Gateshead, Newcas ...
and
Worms Heath ("Snake's Head") in Surrey. It is possible that some of these names had pagan religious origins, perhaps referring to a sacrificed animal's head that was erected on a pole, or a carved representation of one; equally some or all of these place-names may have been descriptive
metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...
s for local landscape features.
Built structures
No cultic building has survived from the early Anglo-Saxon period, and nor do we have a contemporary illustration or even a clear description of such a structure. However, there are four references to pre-Christian cultic structures that appear in Anglo-Saxon literary sources. Three of these can be found in Bede's ''Ecclesiastical History''. One is a quotation from a letter written in 601 by
Pope Gregory the Great
Pope Gregory I ( la, Gregorius I; – 12 March 604), commonly known as Saint Gregory the Great, was the bishop of Rome from 3 September 590 to his death. He is known for instigating the first recorded large-scale mission from Rome, the Gregoria ...
to the Abbot
Mellitus
Saint Mellitus (died 24 April 624) was the first bishop of London in the Saxon period, the third Archbishop of Canterbury, and a member of the Gregorian mission sent to England to convert the Anglo-Saxons from their native paganism to Chris ...
, in which he stated that Christian missionaries need not destroy "the temples of the idols" but that they should be sprinkled with
holy water
Holy water is water that has been blessed by a member of the clergy or a religious figure, or derived from a well or spring considered holy. The use for cleansing prior to a baptism and spiritual cleansing is common in several religions, from ...
and converted into churches. A second reference to cultic spaces found in Bede appears in his discussion of
Coifi, an influential English pagan priest for King
Edwin of Northumbria
Edwin ( ang, Ēadwine; c. 586 – 12 October 632/633), also known as Eadwine or Æduinus, was the King of Deira and Bernicia – which later became known as Northumbria – from about 616 until his death. He converted to Christi ...
, who – after converting to Christianity – cast a spear into the temple at
Goodmanham and then burned it to the ground. The third account was a reference to a temple in which King
Rædwald of East Anglia
Rædwald ( ang, Rædwald, ; 'power in counsel'), also written as Raedwald or Redwald (), was a king of East Anglia, an Anglo-Saxon kingdom which included the present-day English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. He was the son of Tytila of East ...
kept an altar to both the Christian God and another to "demons". Bede referred to these spaces using the Latin term ; he did not mention whether they were roofed or not, although he chose to use over the Latin term , which would more clearly describe a roofed temple building. However, Bede probably never saw a pagan cultic space first hand, and was thus relying on literary sources for his understanding of what they looked like.
Summarising the archaeological evidence, C. J. Arnold concluded that "the existence and nature of possible shrines remain intangible at present". The best known archaeological candidate for a building used in pre-Christian cultic practice is Building D2 at the
Yeavering
Yeavering () is a hamlet (place), hamlet in the north-east corner of the civil parish of Kirknewton, Northumberland, Kirknewton in the English county of Northumberland. It is located on the River Glen, Northumberland, River Glen at the northern ...
complex in
Northumberland
Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey.
It is bordered by land ...
. Inside the east door of the building was a pit filled with ox skulls, which have been interpreted as sacrificial deposits, while two post-holes inside the building have been interpreted as evidence for holding statues of the deities, and the building also showed no evidence of domestic usage, suggesting some special function. Blair suggested that the development of temple buildings in the late sixth and seventh centuries reflects the assimilation of Christian ideas.
Other possible temples or shrine buildings have been identified by archaeological investigation as existing within such Anglo-Saxon cemeteries as
Lyminge
Lyminge is a village in southeast Kent, England. It lies about five miles (8 km) from Folkestone and the Channel Tunnel, on the road passing through the Elham Valley. At the 2011 Census the population of Etchinghill was included. The Na ...
in
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
and
Bishopstone in
Sussex
Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the Englis ...
. Although Pope Gregory referred to the conversion of pagan cult spaces into churches, no archaeological investigation has yet found any firm evidence of churches being built on top of earlier pagan temples in England. It may be that Gregory's advice was never taken by the Anglo-Saxon Christians, although it is possible that the construction of
crypts
A crypt (from Latin '' crypta'' "vault") is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building. It typically contains coffins, sarcophagi, or religious relics.
Originally, crypts were typically found below the main apse of a chu ...
and the rebuilding of churches have destroyed earlier pagan foundations.
Blair highlighted evidence for the existence of square enclosures dating from the early Anglo-Saxon period which often included standing posts and which were often superimposed on earlier prehistoric monuments, most notably Bronze Age barrows. He argued that these were cultic spaces, and that – rather than being based on a tradition from continental Europe – they were based on a tradition of square enclosure building that dated back to the Pre-Roman Iron Age in Britain, thus reflecting the adoption of indigenous British ideas into early Anglo-Saxon cult. Building on Blair's argument, the archaeologist Sarah Semple suggested that in Early Anglo-Saxon England such barrows might have been understood as "the home of spirits, ancestors or gods" and accordingly used as cultic places.
According to Semple "ancient remains in the landscape held a significant place in the Anglo-Saxon mind as part of a wider, numinous, spiritual and resonant landscape".
Blair suggested that the scant archaeological evidence for built cultic structures may be because many cultic spaces in early Anglo-Saxon England did not involve buildings. Supporting this, he highlighted ethnographically recorded examples from elsewhere in Northern Europe, such as among the
Mansi
Mansi may refer to:
People
* Mansi people, an indigenous people living in Tyumen Oblast, Russia
** Mansi language
* Giovanni Domenico Mansi
Gian (Giovanni) Domenico Mansi (16 February 1692 – 27 September 1769) was an Italian prelate, theolog ...
, in which shrines are located away from the main area of settlement, and are demarcated by logs, ropes, fabrics, and images, none of which would leave an archaeological trace. Arnold suggested that it may be mistaken to assume that the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons carried out ritual activity at specific sites, instead suggesting that such practices occurred within the domestic area. As evidence, he pointed to certain deposits that have been excavated in Anglo-Saxon settlements, such as the deposition of an adult cow above a pit of clay and cobbles which had been placed at
Cowdery's Down. The deposition of human and animal bone in settlement sites has parallels both with continental practices and with Iron Age and Romano-British practices in Britain.
Cultic trees and megaliths
Although there are virtually no references to pre-Christian sacred trees in Old English literature, there are condemnations of tree veneration as well as the veneration of stones and wells in several later Anglo-Saxon penitentials. In the 680s, the Christian writer
Aldhelm
Aldhelm ( ang, Ealdhelm, la, Aldhelmus Malmesberiensis) (c. 63925 May 709), Abbot of Malmesbury Abbey, Bishop of Sherborne, and a writer and scholar of Latin poetry, was born before the middle of the 7th century. He is said to have been the ...
referred to the pagan use of pillars associated with the "foul snake and stag", praising the fact that many had been converted into sites for Christian worship. Aldhelm had used the Latin terms ("crude pillars"), although it was unclear what exactly he was referring to; possibly examples include something akin to a wooden
totem pole
Totem poles ( hai, gyáaʼaang) are monumental carvings found in western Canada and the northwestern United States. They are a type of Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures. They are usually ...
or a re-used Neolithic menhir. Meaney suggested that Aldhelm's reference to the snake and stag might be describing a representation of an animal's head atop a pole, in which case it would be related to the animal-head place-names. North also believed that this snake and stag were animals with pagan religious associations.
It remains difficult to determine the location of any pre-Christian holy trees. However, there are cases where
sacred trees and groves may be referenced in place-names. Blair suggested that the use of the Old English word ("tree") in Anglo-Saxon place-names may be a reference to a special tree. He also suggested that the place-names containing ("post" or "pillar") might have represented trees that had been venerated when alive and which were transformed into carved pillars after their death. For instance, both
Thurstable Hundred in
Essex
Essex () is a Ceremonial counties of England, county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the Riv ...
and
Thurstaple in Kent appear to have derived from the Old English , meaning 'Pillar of Þunor'. Archaeologically, a large post was discovered at
Yeavering
Yeavering () is a hamlet (place), hamlet in the north-east corner of the civil parish of Kirknewton, Northumberland, Kirknewton in the English county of Northumberland. It is located on the River Glen, Northumberland, River Glen at the northern ...
which has been interpreted as having a religious function. The purpose of such poles remains debatable, however; some might have represented grave markers, others might have signalised group or kin identities, or marked territory, assembly places, or sacred spaces. Such wooden pillars would have been easy to convert into large
crucifixes
A crucifix (from Latin ''cruci fixus'' meaning "(one) fixed to a cross") is a cross with an image of Jesus on it, as distinct from a bare cross. The representation of Jesus himself on the cross is referred to in English as the ''corpus'' (Lati ...
following the conversion to Christianity, and thus a number of these sacred sites may have survived as cultic spaces within a Christian context. It has also been suggested that the vinescroll patterns that decorated a number of Late Anglo-Saxon stone crosses, such as the
Ruthwell Cross
The Ruthwell Cross is a stone Anglo-Saxon cross probably dating from the 8th century, when the village of Ruthwell, now in Scotland, was part of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria.
It is the most famous and elaborate Anglo-Saxon monumental ...
, may have been a form of inculturation harking back to pre-Christian tree veneration. As Bintley commented, the impact of pre-Christian beliefs about sacred trees on Anglo-Saxon Christian beliefs should be interpreted "not as pagan survivals, but as a fully integrated aspect of early English Christianity".
Sacrifice
Christian sources regularly complained that the pagans of Anglo-Saxon England practised
animal sacrifice
Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of one or more animals, usually as part of a religious ritual or to appease or maintain favour with a deity. Animal sacrifices were common throughout Europe and the Ancient Near East until th ...
. In the seventh century, the first laws against pagan sacrifices appeared, while in the ''
Paenitentiale Theodori
The ''Paenitentiale Theodori'' (also known as the ''Iudicia Theodori'' or ''Canones Theodori'') is an early medieval penitential handbook based on the judgements of Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury. It exists in multiple versions, the fullest a ...
'' one to ten years' penance was allotted for making sacrifices or for eating sacrificed meat. Archaeological evidence reveals that meat was often used as a funerary offering and in many cases whole animal carcasses were placed in burials. Commenting on this archaeological evidence, Pluskowski expressed the view that this reflected "a regular and well-established practice in early Anglo-Saxon society."
It appears that they emphasised the killing of
oxen
An ox ( : oxen, ), also known as a bullock (in BrE, AusE, and IndE), is a male bovine trained and used as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle; castration inhibits testosterone and aggression, which makes th ...
over other species, as suggested by both written and archaeological evidence. The ''
Old English Martyrology
The Old English Martyrology is a collection of over 230 hagiographies, probably compiled in Mercia, or by someone who wrote in the Mercian dialect of the Old English language, in the second half of the 9th century.
The sources of the Old English ...
'' records that November (Old English "the month of
sacrifice
Sacrifice is the offering of material possessions or the lives of animals or humans to a deity as an act of propitiation or worship. Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly exis ...
") was particularly associated with sacrificial practices:
There are several cases where animal remains were buried in what appears to be ritualistic conditions, for instance at Frilford, Berkshire, a pig or boar's head was buried with six flat stones and two Roman-era tiles then placed on top, while at an Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Soham, Cambridgeshire, an ox's head was buried with the muzzle facing down. Archaeologist David Wilson stated that these may be "evidence of sacrifices to a pagan god". The folklorist
Jacqueline Simpson
Jacqueline Simpson (born 1930) is a prolific, award-winning British researcher and author on folklore.[human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, an authoritative/priestly figure or spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherei ...]
being practised in Anglo-Saxon England. Dunn suggested that had Christian writers believed that such practices were being carried out then they would have strongly condemned them. Nevertheless, the historian
Hilda Ellis Davidson
Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson (born Hilda Roderick Ellis; 1 October 1914 – 12 January 2006) was an English folklorist. She was a scholar at the University of Cambridge and The Folklore Society, and specialized in the study of Celtic and G ...
expressed the view that "undoubtedly human sacrifice must have been known to the Anglo-Saxons, even if it played no great part in their lives". She suggested that those who were used as victims included slaves, criminals, or prisoners of war, and that such sacrifices were only resorted to in times of crisis, such as plagues, famine, or attack. There has however been speculation that 23 of the corpses at the
Sutton Hoo
Sutton Hoo is the site of two early medieval cemeteries dating from the 6th to 7th centuries near the English town of Woodbridge. Archaeologists have been excavating the area since 1938, when a previously undisturbed ship burial containing ...
burial site were sacrificial victims clustered around a sacred tree from which they had been hanged. Alongside this, some have suggested that the corpse of an Anglo-Saxon woman found at
Sewerby
Sewerby is a village in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England approximately north-east of Bridlington on the North Sea coast. The village is on Bridlington Bay and is the only south-facing resort in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Sewerby forms ...
on the
Yorkshire Wolds
The Yorkshire Wolds are low hills in the counties of the East Riding of Yorkshire and North Yorkshire in north-eastern England. The name also applies to the district in which the hills lie.
On the western edge, the Wolds rise to an escarpment wh ...
suggested that she had been buried alive alongside a nobleman, possibly as a sacrifice, or to accompany him to the afterlife.
Weapons, among them spears, swords, seaxes, and shield fittings have been found from English rivers, such as the
River Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, se ...
, although no large-scale weapon deposits have been discovered that are akin to those found elsewhere in Europe.
Priests and kings
Wilson stated that "virtually nothing" was known of the pre-Christian priesthood in Anglo-Saxon England, although there are two references to Anglo-Saxon pagan priests in the surviving textual sources. One is that provided by Bede, which refers to Coifi of Northumbria.
North has backed Chaney's view that kings mediated between the gods and the people on the basis of a lack of any obvious priesthood.
One of the inhumation burials excavated at Yeavering, classified as Grave AX, has been interpreted as being that of a pre-Christian priest; although the body was not able to be sexed or aged by osteoarchaeologists, it was found with a goat's skull buried by its feet and a long wooden staff with metal fittings beside it. There have also been suggestions that individuals who were biologically male but who were buried in female costume may have represented a form of magico-religious specialists in Anglo-Saxon England. It has been suggested that these individuals were analogous to the recorded in Old Norse sources. This possibility is linked to an account provided by
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars.
The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...
in his in which he refers to a male pagan priest who wore female clothing.
Campbell suggested that it might have been priestly authorities who organised the imposition of physical penalties in early Anglo-Saxon England, with secular authorities only taking on this role during the conversion to Christianity. The concept of 'sacral kingship' no longer has much credibility within scholarship.
Germanic pagan society was structured hierarchically, under a
tribal
The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to conflic ...
chieftain or ("king") who at the same time acted as military leader, high judge and high priest. The tribe was bound together by a code of customary proper behaviour or regulating the contracts () and conflicts between the individual families or ''
sibbs'' within the tribe. The aristocratic society arrayed below the king included the ranks of , , and .
[Kemble, Saxons in England (1876) II. v. 151–181]
Offices at the court included that of the ''
þyle'' and the ''
sċop''. The title of ("
lord
Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power (social and political), power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the Peerage ...
") denoted the head of any household in origin and expressed the relation to allegiance between a follower and his leader. Early
Anglo-Saxon warfare
The period of Anglo-Saxon warfare spans the 5th century AD to the 11th in England. Its technology and tactics resemble those of other European cultural areas of the Early Medieval Period, although the Anglo-Saxons, unlike the Continental Germanic ...
had many aspects of
endemic warfare
__NOTOC__
Ritual warfare (sometimes called endemic warfare) is a state of continual or frequent warfare, such as is found in some tribal societies (but is not limited to tribal societies).
Description
Ritual fighting (or ritual battle or ritual ...
typical of tribal
warrior
A warrior is a person specializing in combat or warfare, especially within the context of a tribal or clan-based warrior culture society that recognizes a separate warrior aristocracies, class, or caste.
History
Warriors seem to have be ...
societies. It was based on retainers bound by
oath
Traditionally an oath (from Anglo-Saxon ', also called plight) is either a statement of fact or a promise taken by a sacrality as a sign of verity. A common legal substitute for those who conscientiously object to making sacred oaths is to g ...
to fight for their lords who in turn were obliged to show generosity to their followers.
[Halsall (1989:155—177).]
The pagan Anglo-Saxons inherited the common Germanic institution of
sacral kingship. A king () was
elected Elected may refer to:
* "Elected" (song), by Alice Cooper, 1973
* ''Elected'' (EP), by Ayreon, 2008
*The Elected, an American indie rock band
See also
*Election
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population ...
from among eligible members of a royal family or by the , an assembly of an elite that replaced the earlier
folkmoot, which was the equivalent of the
Germanic thing, the assembly of all free men. The person elected was usually the son of the last king. Tribal kingship came to an end in the 9th century with the hegemony of
Wessex
la, Regnum Occidentalium Saxonum
, conventional_long_name = Kingdom of the West Saxons
, common_name = Wessex
, image_map = Southern British Isles 9th century.svg
, map_caption = S ...
culminating in a unified
kingdom of England
The Kingdom of England (, ) was a sovereign state on the island of Great Britain from 12 July 927, when it emerged from various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, until 1 May 1707, when it united with Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.
On ...
by the 10th century. The cult of kingship was central to pagan Anglo-Saxon society. The king was equivalent to the position of high priest. By his divine descent he represented or indeed was the "luck" of the
people
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
.
[Chaney (1970).] The central importance of the institution of kingship is illustrated by the twenty-six synonyms for "king" employed by the ''Beowulf'' poet.
[Bowra (1952:244).]
The title of ''
Bretwalda
''Bretwalda'' (also ''brytenwalda'' and ''bretenanwealda'', sometimes capitalised) is an Old English word. The first record comes from the late 9th-century ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle''. It is given to some of the rulers of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms from ...
'' appears to have conveyed the status of some sort of formal or ceremonial overlordship over Britain, but it is uncertain whether it predates the 9th century, and if it does, what, if any, prerogatives it carried.
Patrick Wormald
Charles Patrick Wormald (9 July 1947 – 29 September 2004) was a British historian born in Neston, Cheshire, son of historian Brian Wormald.
He attended Eton College as a King's Scholar. From 1966 to 1969 he read modern history at Balliol Colle ...
interprets it as "less an objectively realised office than a subjectively perceived status" and emphasises the partiality of its usage in favour of
Southumbrian
The Southumbrians or 'Suðanhymbre' were the Anglo-Saxon people occupying northern Mercia. The term might not have been used by the Mercians and was instead possibly coined by the Deiran or Bernician people as a territorial response to their own ...
kings.
[Wormald (118—119).]
Funerary rites
Cemeteries are the most widely excavated aspect of Anglo-Saxon archaeology and thus much information about the funerary aspects of Anglo-Saxon pagan religion has been obtained.
One of the aspects of Anglo-Saxon paganism that we know most about is their burial customs, which we have discovered from archaeological excavations at various sites, including
Sutton Hoo
Sutton Hoo is the site of two early medieval cemeteries dating from the 6th to 7th centuries near the English town of Woodbridge. Archaeologists have been excavating the area since 1938, when a previously undisturbed ship burial containing ...
,
Spong Hill
Spong Hill is an Anglo-Saxon cemetery site located south of North Elmham in Norfolk, England. It is the largest known Early Anglo-Saxon cremation site. The site consists of a large cremation cemetery and a smaller, 6th century burial cemetery of ...
,
Prittlewell
Prittlewell is an inner city area of Southend-on-Sea in the City of Southend-on-Sea, in the ceremonial county of Essex, England. Historically, Prittlewell is the original settlement of the city, Southend being the ''south end'' of Prittlewell. ...
,
Snape and
Walkington Wold, and we today know of the existence of around 1200 Anglo-Saxon pagan cemeteries. There was no set form of burial among the pagan Anglo-Saxons, with
cremation
Cremation is a method of Disposal of human corpses, final disposition of a Cadaver, dead body through Combustion, burning.
Cremation may serve as a funeral or post-funeral rite and as an alternative to burial. In some countries, including India ...
being preferred among the
Angles
The Angles ( ang, Ængle, ; la, Angli) were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great Britain in the post-Roman period. They founded several kingdoms of the Heptarchy in Anglo-Saxon England. Their name is the root of the name ...
in the north and
burial
Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...
among the
Saxons
The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic
*
*
*
*
peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...
in the south, although both forms were found throughout England, sometimes in the same cemeteries. When cremation did take place, the ashes were usually placed within an urn and then buried, sometimes along with
grave goods
Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body.
They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods may be classed as a ...
. According to archaeologist Dave Wilson, "the usual orientation for an inhumation in a pagan Anglo-Saxon cemetery was west-east, with the head to the west, although there were often deviations from this." Indicating a possible religious belief, grave goods were common among inhumation burials as well as cremations; free Anglo-Saxon men were buried with at least one weapon in the pagan tradition, often a
seax
''Seax'' (; also sax, sæx, sex; invariant in plural, latinized ''sachsum'') is an Old English word for "knife". In modern archaeology, the term ''seax'' is used specifically for a type of small sword, knife or dagger typical of the Germanic pe ...
, but sometimes also with a
spear
A spear is a pole weapon consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with fire hardened spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastene ...
,
sword
A sword is an edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter blade with a pointed ti ...
or shield, or a combination of these. There are also a number of recorded cases of parts of non-human animals being buried within such graves. Most common among these was body parts belonging to either
goat
The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the a ...
s or
sheep
Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus '' Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticate ...
, although parts of
oxen
An ox ( : oxen, ), also known as a bullock (in BrE, AusE, and IndE), is a male bovine trained and used as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle; castration inhibits testosterone and aggression, which makes th ...
were also relatively common, and there are also isolated cases of
goose
A goose ( : geese) is a bird of any of several waterfowl species in the family Anatidae. This group comprises the genera '' Anser'' (the grey geese and white geese) and ''Branta'' (the black geese). Some other birds, mostly related to the ...
,
crab apple
''Malus'' ( or ) is a genus of about 30–55 species of small deciduous trees or shrubs in the family Rosaceae, including the domesticated orchard apple, crab apples, wild apples, and rainberries.
The genus is native to the temperate zone ...
s, duck eggs and
hazelnut
The hazelnut is the fruit of the hazel tree and therefore includes any of the nuts deriving from species of the genus '' Corylus'', especially the nuts of the species ''Corylus avellana''. They are also known as cobnuts or filberts according ...
s being buried in graves. It is widely thought therefore that such items constituted a food source for the deceased. In some cases, animal skulls, particularly oxen but also pig, were buried in human graves, a practice that was also found in earlier
Roman Britain
Roman Britain was the period in classical antiquity when large parts of the island of Great Britain were under occupation by the Roman Empire. The occupation lasted from AD 43 to AD 410. During that time, the territory conquered wa ...
.
Certain Anglo-Saxon burials appeared to have ritualistic elements to them, implying that a religious rite was performed over them during the funeral. While there are many multiple burials, where more than one corpse was found in a single grave, that date from the Anglo-Saxon period, there is "a small group of such burials where an interpretation involving ritual practices may be possible". For instance, at
Welbeck Hill
Welbeck is a village in Nottinghamshire, England, slightly to the south-west of Worksop. The village population is included in the civil parish of Holbeck.
Welbeck became a coal-mining centre in 1912 and has a famous stately home, Welbeck Ab ...
in
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-we ...
, the corpse of a decapitated woman was placed in reverse on top of the body of an old man, while in a number of other similar examples, female bodies were again placed above those of men. This has led some archaeologists to suspect a form of
suttee
Sati or suttee is a Hindu practice, now largely historical, in which a widow sacrifices herself by sitting atop her deceased husband's funeral pyre. Quote: Between 1943 and 1987, some thirty women in Rajasthan (twenty-eight, according to offic ...
, where the female was the spouse of the male, and was killed to accompany him upon death. Other theories hold that the females were slaves who were viewed as the property of the men, and who were again killed to accompany their master. Similarly, four Anglo-Saxon burials have been excavated where it appears that the individual was buried while still alive, which could imply that this was a part of either a religious rite or as a form of punishment. There are also many cases where corpses have been found
decapitated
Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the i ...
, for instance, at a mass grave in
Thetford
Thetford is a market town and civil parish in the Breckland District of Norfolk, England. It is on the A11 road between Norwich and London, just east of Thetford Forest. The civil parish, covering an area of , in 2015 had a population of 24, ...
,
Norfolk
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the Nor ...
, fifty beheaded individuals were discovered, their heads possibly having been taken as trophies of war. In other cases of decapitation it seems possible that it was evidence of religious ritual (presumably
human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, an authoritative/priestly figure or spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherei ...
) or execution.
![Sutton Hoo Burial Mound](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Sutton_Hoo_Burial_Mound.jpg)
Archaeological investigation has displayed that structures or buildings were built inside a number of pagan cemeteries, and as David Wilson noted, "The evidence, then, from cemetery excavations is suggestive of small structures and features, some of which may perhaps be interpreted as shrines or sacred areas". In some cases, there is evidence of far smaller structures being built around or alongside individual graves, implying possible small shrines to the dead individual or individuals buried there.
Eventually, in the sixth and seventh centuries, the idea of
burial mound
Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...
s began to appear in Anglo-Saxon England, and in certain cases earlier burial mounds from the
Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...
,
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...
,
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly ...
and
Romano-British
The Romano-British culture arose in Britain under the Roman Empire following the Roman conquest in AD 43 and the creation of the province of Britannia. It arose as a fusion of the imported Roman culture with that of the indigenous Britons, ...
periods were simply reused by the Anglo-Saxons. It is not known why they adopted this practice, but it may be from the practices of the native Britons. Burial mounds remained objects of veneration in early Anglo-Saxon Christianity, and numerous churches were built next to tumuli. Another form of burial was that of
ship burial
A ship burial or boat grave is a burial in which a ship or boat is used either as the tomb for the dead and the grave goods, or as a part of the grave goods itself. If the ship is very small, it is called a boat grave. This style of burial was ...
s, which were practised by many of the Germanic peoples across northern Europe. In many cases it seems that the corpse was placed in a ship that was either sent out to sea or left on land, but in both cases burned. In
Suffolk
Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include ...
however, ships were not burned, but buried, as is the case at Sutton Hoo, which it is believed, was the resting place of the king of the East Angles,
Raedwald. Both ship and tumulus burials were described in the ''Beowulf'' poem, through the funerals of
Scyld Scefing and
Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. ...
respectively.
It has been considered largely impossible to distinguish a pagan grave from a Christian one in the Anglo-Saxon context after the latter had spread throughout England.
Festivals
Everything that we know about the
religious festival
A religious festival is a time of special importance marked by adherents to that religion. Religious festivals are commonly celebrated on recurring cycles in a calendar year or lunar calendar. The science of religious rites and festivals is known ...
s of the pagan Anglo-Saxons comes from a book written by Bede, titled ''
De temporum ratione
''The Reckoning of Time'' ( la, De temporum ratione) is an Anglo-Saxon era treatise written in Medieval Latin by the Northumbrian monk Bede in 725. The treatise includes an introduction to the traditional ancient and medieval view of the cosmos ...
'' ("The Reckoning of Time"), in which he described the calendar of the year.However, its purpose was not to describe the pagan sacred year, and little information within it can be corroborated from other sources. Bede provided explanations for the names of the various pre-Christian festivals that he described, however these etymologies are questionable; it is unknown if these etymologies were based on his pre-existing knowledge or whether they represented his own theories. Casting further doubt over some of his festival etymologies is the fact that some of the place-name etymologies that Bede provides in his writings are demonstrably wrong.
The pagan Anglo-Saxons followed a calendar with twelve lunar months, with the occasional year having thirteen months so that the lunar and solar alignment could be corrected. Bede claimed that the greatest pagan festival was (meaning ''Mothers' Night''), which was situated at the
Winter solstice
The winter solstice, also called the hibernal solstice, occurs when either of Earth's poles reaches its maximum tilt away from the Sun. This happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere (Northern and Southern). For that hemisphere, the winter ...
, which marked the start of the Anglo-Saxon year.
Following this festival, in the month of (February), Bede claims that the pagans offered cakes to their deities.
[ Branston 1957. p. 41.] Then, in ''
Eostur-monath Aprilis'' (April), a spring festival was celebrated, dedicated to the goddess
Eostre, and the later Christian festival of
Easter
Easter,Traditional names for the feast in English are "Easter Day", as in the '' Book of Common Prayer''; "Easter Sunday", used by James Ussher''The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, Volume 4'') and Samuel Pepys''The Diary of Samue ...
took its name from this month and its goddess. The month of September was known as , meaning ''Holy Month'', which may indicate that it had special religious significance. The month of November was known as , meaning ''
Blót
( Old Norse) and or ( Old English) are terms for "blood sacrifice" in Norse paganism and Anglo-Saxon paganism respectively. A comparanda can also be reconstructed for wider Germanic paganism.
A ' could be dedicated to any of the Germanic ...
Month'', and was commemorated with animal sacrifice, both in offering to the gods, and probably also to gather a source of food to be stored over the winter.
Remarking on Bede's account of the Anglo-Saxon year, the historian Brian Branston noted that they "show us a people who of necessity fitted closely into the pattern of the changing year, who were of the earth and what grows in it" and that they were "in fact, a people who were in a symbiotic relationship with mother earth and father sky". Stenton thought that Bede's account reveals "that there was a strong element of heathen festivity" at the heart of the early Anglo-Saxon calendar. The historian James Campbell described this as a "complicated calendar", and expressed the view that it would have required "an organised and recognised priesthood" to plan the observation of it.
Symbolism
Various recurring symbols appear on certain pagan Anglo-Saxon artefacts, in particular on grave goods. Most notable among these was the
swastika
The swastika (卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious and cultural symbol, predominantly in various Eurasian, as well as some African and American cultures, now also widely recognized for its appropriation by the Nazi Party and by neo-Nazis. I ...
, which was widely inscribed on crematory urns and also on various brooches and other forms of jewellery as well as on certain pieces of ceremonial weaponry. The archaeologist David Wilson remarked that this "undoubtedly had special importance for the Anglo-Saxons, either magical or religious, or both. It seems very likely that it was the symbol of the thunder god
Thunor, and when found on weapons or military gear its purpose would be to provide protection and success in battle". He also noted however that its widespread usage might have led to it becoming "a purely decorative device with no real symbolic importance". Another symbol that has appeared on several pagan artefacts from this period, including a number of swords, was the
rune
Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...
, which represented the letter T and may be associated with the god Tiw.
In the later sixth and seventh centuries, a trend emerged in Anglo-Saxon England entailing the symbolism of a horn-helmeted man. The archaeologist Tim Pestell stated that these represented "one of the clearest examples of objects with primarily cultic or religious connotations". This iconography is not unique to England and can be found in Scandinavia and continental Germanic Europe too. The inclusion of this image on helmets and pendants suggests that it may have had apotropaic or amuletic associations.
This figure has often been interpreted as a depiction of Woden, although there is no firm evidence to support this conclusion.
Shamanism, magic, and witchcraft
In 2011, Pluskowski noted that the term "
shamanism
Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiri ...
" was increasingly being used by scholars of Anglo-Saxon paganism. Glosecki argued that evidence for shamanic beliefs were visible in later Anglo-Saxon literature. Williams also argued that paganism had a shamanic component through his analysis of early funerary rites.
Summarising this evidence, Blair noted that it was "hard to doubt that something like shamanism lies ultimately in the background" of early Anglo-Saxon religion. He nevertheless highlighted problems with the use of "shamanism" in this context, noting that any such Anglo-Saxon practices would have been different from the shamanism of Siberia. Conversely, Noël Adams expressed the view that "at present there is no clear evidence of shamanistic beliefs" in Anglo-Saxon England.
Anglo-Saxon pagans believed in
magic and
witchcraft
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have ...
. There are various Old English terms for "witch", including "witch" (whence Modern English ''
hag
HAG is a Swiss maker of model trains. The company was founded by Hugo and Alwin Gahler on 1 April 1944 in St. Gallen, Switzerland.
The Gahler brothers originally manufactured model trains in O scale but due to competition, particularly by Mär ...
''), ''
wiċċa'', , and ''
helrūne''. The belief in witchcraft was suppressed in the 9th to 10th century as is evident e.g. from the ''Laws of
Ælfred'' (ca. 890). It is possible that the Anglo-Saxons drew no distinction between
magic and ritual in the same manner as modern Western society does.
The Christian authorities attempted to stamp out a belief and practice in witchcraft, with the ''
Paenitentiale Theodori
The ''Paenitentiale Theodori'' (also known as the ''Iudicia Theodori'' or ''Canones Theodori'') is an early medieval penitential handbook based on the judgements of Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury. It exists in multiple versions, the fullest a ...
'' attributed to
Theodore of Tarsus
Theodore of Tarsus ( gr, Θεόδωρος Ταρσοῦ; 60219 September 690) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to 690. Theodore grew up in Tarsus, but fled to Constantinople after the Persian Empire conquered Tarsus and other cities. Afte ...
condemning "those that consult divinations and use them in the pagan manner, or that permit people of that kind into their houses to seek some knowledge".
[Ewing (2008:83)] Similarly, the ''U'' version of the ''
Paenitentiale Theodori
The ''Paenitentiale Theodori'' (also known as the ''Iudicia Theodori'' or ''Canones Theodori'') is an early medieval penitential handbook based on the judgements of Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury. It exists in multiple versions, the fullest a ...
'' condemns those "who observe auguries, omens or dreams or any other prophecies after the manner of the pagans".
[
The word ''wiccan'' "witches" is associated with animistic healing rites in the ''Paenitentiale ]Halitgar Halitgar (Halitgarius, Halitcharius, Halitgaire, Aligerio) was a ninth-century bishop of Cambrai (in office 817–831). He is known also as an apostle to the Danes, and the writer of a widely known penitential.
Life
In 822 he travelled to Denmar ...
i'' where it is stated that:
Some men are so blind that they bring their offering to earth-fast stone and also to trees and to wellsprings, as the witches teach, and are unwilling to understand how stupidly they do or how that dead stone or that dumb tree might help them or give forth health when they themselves are never able to stir from their place.
The pagan Anglo-Saxons also appeared to wear amulet
An amulet, also known as a good luck charm or phylactery, is an object believed to confer protection upon its possessor. The word "amulet" comes from the Latin word amuletum, which Pliny's ''Natural History'' describes as "an object that protect ...
s, and there are many cases where corpses were buried with them. As David Wilson noted, "To the early nglo-axons, they were part and parcel of the supernatural
Supernatural refers to phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin (above, beyond, or outside of) + (nature) Though the corollary term "nature", has had multiple meanings si ...
that made up their world of 'belief', although occupying the shadowy dividing area between superstition and religion, if indeed such a division actually existed." One of the most notable amulets found in Anglo-Saxon graves is the cowrie shell
Cowrie or cowry () is the common name for a group of small to large sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Cypraeidae, the cowries.
The term ''porcelain'' derives from the old Italian term for the cowrie shell (''porcellana'') ...
, which has been often interpreted by modern academics as having been a fertility
Fertility is the capability to produce offspring through reproduction following the onset of sexual maturity. The fertility rate is the average number of children born by a female during her lifetime and is quantified demographically. Ferti ...
symbol due to its physical resemblance to the vagina
In mammals, the vagina is the elastic, muscular part of the female genital tract. In humans, it extends from the vestibule to the cervix. The outer vaginal opening is normally partly covered by a thin layer of mucosal tissue called the hymen ...
and the fact that it was most commonly found in female graves. Not being native to British seas, the cowrie shells had to have been brought to England by traders who had come all the way from the Red Sea
The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; ...
in the Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...
. Animal teeth were also used as amulets by the pagan Anglo-Saxons, and many examples have been found that had formerly belonged to boar
The wild boar (''Sus scrofa''), also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The species is ...
, beaver
Beavers are large, semiaquatic rodents in the genus ''Castor'' native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere. There are two extant species: the North American beaver (''Castor canadensis'') and the Eurasian beaver (''C. fiber''). Beavers a ...
, and in some cases even humans. Other amulets included items such as amethyst
Amethyst is a violet variety of quartz. The name comes from the Koine Greek αμέθυστος ''amethystos'' from α- ''a-'', "not" and μεθύσκω (Ancient Greek) / μεθώ (Modern Greek), "intoxicate", a reference to the belief that ...
and amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin that has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects."Amber" (2004). In M ...
beads, pieces of quartz
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical f ...
or iron pyrite
The mineral pyrite (), or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula Fe S2 (iron (II) disulfide). Pyrite is the most abundant sulfide mineral.
Pyrite's metallic luster and pale brass-yellow hue gi ...
, worked and unworked flint, pre-Anglo-Saxon coinage and fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
s, and from their distribution in graves, it has been stated that in Anglo-Saxon pagan society, "amulets erevery much more the preserve of women than men".
Reception and legacy
Days of the week
Four of the modern English days of the week derive their names from Anglo-Saxon deities . These names have their origins in the Latin system of week-day names, which had been translated into Old English.
The Anglo-Saxons, like other Germanic peoples, adapted the week-day names
In many languages, the names given to the seven days of the week are derived from the names of the classical planets in Hellenistic astronomy, which were in turn named after contemporary deities, a system introduced by the Sumerians and late ...
introduced by their interaction with the Roman Empire but glossed their indigenous gods over the Roman deities (with the exception of Saturday) in a process known as ''Interpretatio germanica
Interpretatio germanica is the practice by the Germanic peoples of identifying Roman gods with the names of Germanic deities. According to Rudolf Simek, this occurred around the 1st century AD, when both cultures came into closer contact.
Name ...
'':
Historiography
While historical investigation into Germanic paganism and its mythology began in the seventeenth century with Peder Resen's ''Edda Islandorum'' (1665), this largely focused only upon Norse mythology
Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern per ...
, much of which was preserved in Old Icelandic
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...
sources. In the eighteenth century, English Romanticism
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
developed a strong enthusiasm for Iceland and Nordic culture, expressed in original English poems extolling Viking virtues, such as Thomas Warton's "Runic Odes" of 1748. With nascent nationalism
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...
in early nineteenth-century Europe, by the 1830s both Nordic and German philology had produced "national mythologies" in N. F. S. Grundtvig's ''Nordens Mytologi'' and Jacob Grimm's ''Deutsche Mythologie'', respectively. British Romanticism at the same time had at its disposal both a Celtic revival, Celtic and a Viking revival, but nothing focusing on the Anglo-Saxons because there was very little evidence of their pagan mythology still surviving. Indeed, so scant was evidence of paganism in Anglo-Saxon England that some scholars came to assume that the Anglo-Saxons had been Christianised essentially from the moment of their arrival in Britain.
The study of Anglo-Saxon paganism began only in the mid nineteenth century, when John Kemble published ''The Saxons in England Volume I'' (1849), in which he discussed the usefulness of examining place-names to find out about the religion. This was followed by the publication of John Yonge Akerman's ''Remains of Pagan Saxondom'' (1855). Akerman defended his chosen subject in the introduction by pointing out the archaeological evidence of a "Pagan Saxon mode of sepulture" on English soil lasting from the "middle of the fifth to the middle or perhaps the end of the seventh century".[#Ack55, Ackerman 1855. p. vii.] From this point onward, more academic research into the Anglo-Saxons' pagan religion appeared. This led to further books on the subject, such as those primarily about the Anglo-Saxon gods, such as Brian Branston's ''The Lost Gods of England'' (1957), and Kathy Herbert's ''Looking for the Lost Gods of England'' (1994). Others emphasised archaeological evidence, such as David Wilson's ''Anglo-Saxon Paganism'' (1992) and the edited anthology ''Signals of Belief in Early England, Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited'' (2010).
Modern paganism
The deities of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon religion have been adopted by practitioners of various forms of modern Paganism, specifically those belonging to the new religious movement of Heathenry (new religious movement), Heathenry. The Anglo-Saxon gods have also been adopted in forms of the modern Pagan religion of Wicca, particularly the denomination of Seax-Wicca, founded by Raymond Buckland in the 1970s, which combined Anglo-Saxon deity names with the Wiccan theological structure. Such belief systems often attribute Norse beliefs to pagan Anglo-Saxons.
See also
* Christianity and Paganism
* List of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries
References
Footnotes
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Further reading
* Bishop, Chris. ""ÞYRS, ENT, EOTEN, GIGANS" - ANGLO-SAXON ONTOLOGIES OF 'GIANT'." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 107, no. 3 (2006): 259-70. .
* Cameron, M. L. "Anglo-Saxon Medicine and Magic." Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988): 191–215. www.jstor.org/stable/44510843.
* Grendon, Felix. "The Anglo-Saxon Charms." The Journal of American Folklore 22, no. 84 (1909): 105–237. .
* Hooke, Della. "Rivers, Wells and Springs in Anglo-Saxon England: Water in Sacred and Mystical Contexts." In Water and the Environment in the Anglo-Saxon World, edited by Hooke Della and Hyer Maren Clegg, by Dalwood Hal, Frederick Jill, Gardiner Mark, Reynolds Rebecca, Rippon Stephen, Watts Martin, and Wickham-Crowley Kelley M., 107–35. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ps31q2.11.
* Remly, Lynn L. "The Anglo-Saxon Gnomes as Sacred Poetry." Folklore 82, no. 2 (1971): 147–58. www.jstor.org/stable/1258773.
* Tornaghi, Paola. "ANGLO-SAXON CHARMS AND THE LANGUAGE OF MAGIC." Aevum 84, no. 2 (2010): 439–64. www.jstor.org/stable/20862333.
* Vaughan-Sterling, Judith A. "The Anglo-Saxon "Metrical Charms": Poetry as Ritual." The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 82, no. 2 (1983): 186–200. www.jstor.org/stable/27709147.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anglo-Saxon Paganism
Anglo-Saxon paganism,
Anglo-Saxon England