Religion

The Vikings - From Pagan to Christian.
The religion of the Viking people was one of the last pagan faiths left in Europe.
By Artemis Gouros

The popular image of the Viking people is of great blonde barbarians sporting horned helmets who burned and pillaged their way across Europe and worshipped war loving gods. This view does not take into consideration the fact that there were farmers, hunters, tradesmen and craftsmen among them as well. The creation stories of the Vikings have many familiar elements. There was a period of primeval chaos, after which the gods and giants came into being and then finally humankind. The great tree of the world called Yggdrasil reached through all time and space and was under constant attack from the evil serpent Nidhogg. After the final battle of the world, Ragnarok, the old gods would perish and a new reign of peace and love would be ushered in with both gods and world reborn to begin a new cycle of life. The gods therefore were tied to their fate just as men were.

The Viking pagan religion is known as Norsemen’s mythology. There were two warring families of Nordic gods know as the Aesir and the Vanir, the former dedicated to war and the latter to love. All the gods lived in Asgard and their traditional enemies were the giants. The famous god of war and wisdom was Odin, the leader of the Aesir. The Vikings did not worship in the manner that Christians did. Their gods were to be respected and honoured as their power demanded but they were not viewed as holy and omniscient beings. The gods were not entirely good and had human-like habits and pastimes such as eating and fighting.

The Vikings were not only warriors and so worshipped many deities other than the war gods. For instance the farmers had the fertility gods Frej and Freja whilst sailors and traders prayed to Njord. The Vikings also had a Christian-like idea of a soul, personal spirits called the fylgja and hamingja. Interestingly, Hel was the goddess of the cold and bleak underworld (also called Hel) where non warriors went after death. Heroes slain on the battlefield were elevated to Valhalla by the Valkyries where they fought daily and feasted nightly with Odin. This would have contributed to the reverence Norse people had for both warriors and dying in battle. The beliefs of the Vikings may be well known to us but their practices are not. An Icelandic poet called Snorri Sturlson, born in the 11th century, recorded many myths and histories however he was writing two hundred years after the Christianising of Iceland and so had little information on practices.

This is not surprising as worship was originally conducted outdoors; under guardian trees, near sacred wells or within sacred arrangements of stones, with a few wooden temples including altars and carved wooden representations of the gods being used in later times. As their religious beliefs and practices were not written down or codified we may never know exactly what their practices entailed. We do know that those who served the gods as priests were self appointed chieftains or jarls and they were not organised into a hierarchical political body that could attempt to hold power as in other cultures. There were shamans and volvas (female shamans) and worship involved the sacrifice of horses and other animals but we don’t know much more than that.

Although they are painted as heathen despoilers of Christian churches, the reality was that the Vikings had so many deities in their pantheons that it was not difficult for them to accept Christ along with their own gods. When Vikings settled in Christian lands such as Normandy, Ireland and Britain, they accepted Christianity as their religion quite quickly. The reason behind the pillaging of churches lay mainly in the fact that they were poorly guarded repositories of valuables rather than because the Vikings sought to destroy Christianity. Although many Vikings died for their religious beliefs and resisted conversion, by the mid 11th century Christianity was well established in Denmark, Iceland and Norway and in Sweden by the mid 12th century. History would seem to suggest that conversion owed more to politics and economics rather than spiritual concerns, the fact remains however that by the 12th century the age of the pagan Viking religion was finally ended.