CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

POPULAR RELIGION IN

THE VIKING AGE

Catharina Raudvere

T

he assignment of presenting the popular religion of the Viking world converges
with complex issues such as the connection between mythology as cosmological
narration and as literature, between mythology as belief system and as part of ritual
practice, between mythology as cultural memory and as history-writing. The few and
feeble sources of such an ancient world-view make the problem even more demanding
especially when early Christian influences are taken into consideration.
We are aware from available legal documentation that the focus of the conflict
between the old religion and the new was not primarily over dogma, but over public
ritual behaviour instead. According to Íslendingabók baptism was required of everyone,
although sacrifices could be accepted as long as there were no witnesses. The early
medieval laws were products of a long process of interaction between a missionary
church with universal claims and an ethnic religion that had formulated no dogmas, nor
definitions regarding who was an insider and who was not, and appears to have been
oriented more towards the performance of rituals. In Old Norse society there was
scarcely any conceptual difference between religion and social community. The
former was conspicuously entailed in the latter, and the idiom that comes closest to an
equivalent of religion is the expression ‘ancient custom’ (forn siðr).
When the early medieval laws of Iceland, Norway and Sweden stated prohibitions
against the old religion the primary emphasis was on unacceptable pagan behaviour and
practices, and not on the question of belief. It was, for example, considered as punishable
to execute rituals in order to awaken the trolls, employ formulas and charms (galdr),
perform divination or ride like a night-hag (a practice which was condemned and
rejected, while treated as a possibility for evil-minded persons).
Most Christian laws identify pagan (heiðinn) practice in terms similar to those found
in the Icelandic collection of early legal texts Grágás which state that: ‘A man worships
heathen beings (blotar hæiðnar vættir) when he assigns his property to anyone but God
and His saints. If a man worships heathen beings, the penalty is lesser outlawry’ (Grágás
1 : 38 ).
The narratives of Old Norse religion were recorded for purposes of preservation by
Christians, its rituals appearing in the sources mostly as contrasts or examples of mis-
behaviour. The members of the populus were to be converted, corrected and generally
disciplined; if their beliefs were ignorant and foolish, their rituals were – even worse –