Culture

Norse

Also Known As Vikings Viking names the seaborne activity rather than the people, and is used popularly for the Norse. · Norsemen

Peoples

The Norse were the Germanic-speaking peoples of pre-Christian and Viking Age Scandinavia, the homeland now divided among Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. Their language, Old Norse, and their pantheon of Aesir and Vanir gods, Odin and Thor foremost among them, are known chiefly through thirteenth century Icelandic writings, above all Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, set down generations after Scandinavia's conversion to Christianity. Viking Age seafaring and settlement carried Norse language, law and belief to Iceland, Greenland, parts of the British Isles, Normandy and the river routes to Byzantium.

Facts

Origins

Origin Region

Scandinavia, the peninsula and islands now divided among Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland 1

Language Family

Old Norse, a North Germanic language, ancestor of modern Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish 2

Writing System

The Elder Futhark and later Younger Futhark runic alphabets, used chiefly for memorial inscriptions and, tradition holds, divination and charms, rather than extended literature 1

Practice

Practice Status

Reconstructed in the modern era and openly practised 2

No unbroken pre-Christian practice survives; the modern Heathenry or Asatru revival is a reconstructed, generally open and non-initiatory practice drawing on the same Eddic and skaldic sources scholars use

Traditions

Principal Religious Traditions

Pre-Christian Norse Paganism (Aesir and Vanir worship) through the Viking Age, displaced by Christianity between roughly 1000 and 1100 CE; a modern Heathenry or Asatru revival reconstructs the older practice rather than continuing it unbroken 2

Overview

Diaspora Presence

Viking Age settlement and trade carried Norse language, law and belief to Iceland, Greenland, parts of the British Isles, Normandy and the river routes to Byzantium as the Varangians 1

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Longships, Settlement and a Slow Conversion

Historians conventionally date the Viking Age from the raid on the monastery of Lindisfarne in 793 CE to the Norman conquest of England in 1066, though Scandinavian trade, raiding and settlement both preceded and outlasted that span. Shallow-drafted longships let Norse crews raid and trade far beyond Scandinavia at once: west to the British Isles and Ireland, where they founded Dublin and settled large parts of England as the Danelaw; further west to uninhabited Iceland, settled from roughly 870 CE, and briefly to Greenland and the North American coast the sagas call Vinland; and east along Russian rivers as the Varangians, reaching Constantinople and founding the trade towns that grew into the Kievan Rus state.

Conversion to Christianity came unevenly and mostly from political pressure rather than mass persuasion. Iceland converted by a single decision of its assembly, the Althing, around the year 1000, reportedly as a compromise to avoid civil war between pagan and Christian factions, and allowed private pagan worship for a time afterward. Norway's conversion under kings Olaf Tryggvason and Olaf Haraldsson (later Saint Olaf) in the decades around 1000 to 1030 was considerably more violent, involving forced baptism and the destruction of temples. Denmark and Sweden converted over a similarly rough two centuries, with Sweden's major pagan cult center at Uppsala, described by the German chronicler Adam of Bremen, likely still active into the eleventh century. By 1100 or so, Christianity had formally displaced Norse Paganism as the region's state religion everywhere, though folk practice and belief persisted far longer at the margins.

Aesir, Vanir and the Icelanders Who Wrote Them Down

Norse Paganism organized its gods into two related families: the Aesir, led by Odin, god of war, wisdom and the dead, and including Thor, Tyr, Frigg, Baldr and Heimdall; and the Vanir, fertility deities including Freyja, Freyr and Njord, who joined the Aesir in Asgard after a mythic war between the two tribes. Cosmology set nine worlds around the world tree Yggdrasil, among them Asgard (home of the gods), Midgard (the human world) and Helheim (a realm of the dead), with Valhalla, Odin's hall, receiving warriors chosen in battle by his valkyries. Almost everything known of this system comes from Iceland two centuries after conversion: the Prose Edda, a handbook of poetic technique and myth compiled around 1220 by the Christian chronicler and politician Snorri Sturluson, and the anonymous Poetic Edda preserved in the thirteenth century Codex Regius manuscript.

That gap between practice and record is a live methodological problem. Rudolf Simek's Dictionary of Northern Mythology and John Lindow's Norse Mythology: A Guide both caution that Snorri, writing as a Christian antiquarian rather than a believer, likely systematized and in places invented connective material to make disparate oral poems read as one coherent mythology, so scholars weigh Eddic material against skaldic verse, place names and archaeology rather than treating Snorri as a neutral transcript of pagan belief. The Elder Futhark runic alphabet, twenty four characters used for memorial inscriptions and, tradition holds, divination and magic, is the one Norse Pagan-era writing system to survive in its own words. No unbroken pre-Christian practice survives; the modern Heathenry or Asatru revival, active since the twentieth century, reconstructs Norse Pagan worship from these same sources.

Connections

Associated With

Triquetra

This source names Norse directly: "manuscript art, on Anglo-Saxon and Norse metalwork and runestones, and on Pictish stones, generally as pattern within a larger field rather than as a captioned emblem."

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Týr

This source names Norse directly: "In Norse narrative tradition Tyr is a god of war and law, the bravest of the Aesir, remembered above all for sacrificing his hand to bind the monstrous wolf Fenrir."

Source The Prose EddaSnorri Sturluson

Uppsala

Gamla Uppsala was a royal and assembly site of the Svear.

Valhalla

Valhalla is Odin's hall, receiving warriors chosen in battle by the valkyries.

Source EddaSnorri Sturluson; Anthony Faulkes (trans.)

Valknot (Hate Symbols Database)

This source names Norse directly: "about the symbol's life in genuine Norse funerary art and its association with Odin centuries before that appropriation needs a source produced outside this database."

Source Valknot (Hate Symbols Database)Anti-Defamation League

Vanadium

This source names Norse directly: "Named for Vanadis, a name of the Norse goddess Freyja, because its compounds run through so many colours."

Source Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the ElementsJohn Emsley

Vetrnaetr (Winter Nights)

This source names Norse directly: "marked the start of winter in the Old Norse calendar in mid-autumn, attested in saga literature as an occasion for the Alfablot (sacrifice to the elves) and for veneration of the disir and ancestral..."

Source The Prose EddaSnorri Sturluson

Voluspa

This source names Norse directly: "It is the single most cited primary source for the overall shape of Norse cosmology and eschatology."

Source The Poetic EddaAnonymous (Codex Regius)

Voluspo 3-4 (Bellows)

This source names Norse directly: "The Norse creation, spoken by a seeress to Odin."

Source The Poetic EddaAnonymous (Codex Regius)

Wikipedia, "Der Ring des Nibelungen"

This source names Norse directly: "Wotan and Brunnhilde against their Norse mythological sources."

Source Wikipedia, "Der Ring des Nibelungen"

Witzke, "Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen: Another Look," Christian Scholar's Review, 2021

This source names Norse directly: "rather than a specialist study in Old Norse religion, so it is cited here for the sourced fact of the cycle's composite textual basis and its transformation rather than as a comprehensive account of..."

Source Witzke, "Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen: Another Look," Christian Scholar's Review, 2021Ronald Witzke

Yggdrasil

This source names Norse directly: "Yggdrasil is the great world tree of Norse cosmology, an ash tree whose branches and roots connect the nine worlds, described in the Prose Edda as tended by beings including the Norns, who water it..."

Source The Prose EddaSnorri Sturluson

Ymir

This source names Norse directly: "Ymir is the primordial frost giant of Norse cosmology, formed from the meeting of fire from Muspelheim and ice from Niflheim in the void of Ginnungagap at the very start of creation, before earth..."

Source The Prose Edda of Snorri SturlusonArthur Gilchrist Brodeur

Ymir's Dismemberment

Ymir's Dismemberment is the Norse creation myth, the primordial giant's body forming the world.

Source EddaSnorri Sturluson; Anthony Faulkes (trans.)

Showing 51 to 64 of 64 in Associated With, page 2 of 2.

Originated In

Denmark

Denmark is part of the Norse homeland.

Source Dictionary of Northern MythologyRudolf Simek, translated by Angela Hall

Iceland

Iceland preserved most of the surviving Eddic and saga literature after its settlement around 870 CE.

Source Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and BeliefsJohn Lindow

Norway

Norway is part of the Norse homeland and the origin point of much Icelandic settlement.

Source Dictionary of Northern MythologyRudolf Simek, translated by Angela Hall

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is the Norse homeland.

Source Dictionary of Northern MythologyRudolf Simek, translated by Angela Hall

Sweden

Sweden is part of the Norse homeland, home to the pagan-era cult center at Uppsala.

Source Dictionary of Northern MythologyRudolf Simek, translated by Angela Hall

Originates in Language

Old Norse

Old Norse is the people's own recorded tongue.

Source Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and BeliefsJohn Lindow

Regions Where This Is Principal

Christianity

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Heathenry

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Norse Paganism

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Related To

Germanic Peoples

Norse Ship Burial

Excavated in Scandinavia and in the Norse diaspora.

Source Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the VikingsNeil Price

Worship Of

Baldr

Baldr, son of Odin and Frigg, was renowned for beauty and goodness; his death is a central Eddic myth.

Source EddaSnorri Sturluson; Anthony Faulkes (trans.)

Eir

Eir is honored in Norse tradition as the best of physicians, a gentle restoring presence among the goddesses and valkyries.

Source Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and BeliefsJohn Lindow

Freya

Freya, foremost of the Vanir, presided over fertility, love and a portion of the war dead.

Source Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and BeliefsJohn Lindow

Frigg

Frigg, Odin's wife, is the goddess of marriage, foresight and the household.

Source Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and BeliefsJohn Lindow

Heimdall

Heimdall guards Asgard's entrance, the rainbow bridge Bifrost, and will sound the horn that begins Ragnarok.

Source EddaSnorri Sturluson; Anthony Faulkes (trans.)

Nott

Nott, night personified, riding her chariot drawn by Hrimfaxi, belongs to the Norse mythological corpus alongside her son Dagr, the day.

Source Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and BeliefsJohn Lindow

Odin

Odin, chief of the Aesir, is attested in place names and in Adam of Bremen's account of the temple at Uppsala.

Source Dictionary of Northern MythologyRudolf Simek, translated by Angela Hall

Thor

Thor, god of thunder and protection, is the most widely attested Norse god in personal names and place names.

Source Dictionary of Northern MythologyRudolf Simek, translated by Angela Hall

Týr

Tyr, an Aesir god of law and war, gave his name to the weekday Tuesday across Germanic languages.

Source Dictionary of Northern MythologyRudolf Simek, translated by Angela Hall

In the Other Atlases

In Branch

Germanic

Also in Language Atlas: the branch this subject belongs to.

North Germanic

Also in Language Atlas: the branch this subject belongs to.

Sources

1. Dictionary of Northern Mythology

Rudolf Simek, translated by Angela Hall, D. S. Brewer, 1993View the Source

2. Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs

John Lindow, Oxford University Press, 2001View the Source

Edda

Snorri Sturluson; Anthony Faulkes (trans.), Everyman, 1987View the Source

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