The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia

A scholarly survey reconstructs pre-Christian Scandinavian religious beliefs and practices from native poetic and prose traditions, the Prose Edda, sagas, later historical accounts, and material evidence. It separates poetic mythology from cultic practice and examines temple worship, cult images, rites such as sacrifices and funerary customs, and regional and social variations in observance. The study also considers limitations in the surviving evidence and the effects of later Christian authorship on the record, aiming to present what can be reasonably established about ritual forms, institutional worship, and popular belief in the northern heathen past.