Elder Gods - Introduction
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The Elder Gods The Otherworld of Early England Stephen Pollington
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Transcript of Elder Gods - Introduction
The Elder Gods
The Otherworld of Early England
Stephen Pollington
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ContentsTable of Figures ..................................................................................................................9 Glossary............................................................................................................................ 12 Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................... 15 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 17
The Object of Enquiry................................................................................................. 17 The Cultural Continuity Problem................................................................................ 19 The ‘Pagan’ Problem................................................................................................... 20 Cædmon’s Epiphany ................................................................................................... 22
2. Sources of Information ................................................................................................ 26 Archaeology ................................................................................................................ 26 Literature...................................................................................................................... 30
Verse ....................................................................................................................... 32 Poet and Storyteller............................................................................................ 32 Beowulf.............................................................................................................. 36
Genealogies............................................................................................................. 39 Prohibitions............................................................................................................. 41
Folklore........................................................................................................................ 42 Folktale ................................................................................................................... 46 Yuletide Customs ................................................................................................... 47 Tabu ........................................................................................................................ 48
Comparative Material.................................................................................................. 50 The Germanic World.............................................................................................. 51
A Warning to the Curious.................................................................................. 53 Three Functions ...................................................................................................... 56 The Stone of Destiny.............................................................................................. 58 Status of the Vanir .................................................................................................. 59
3. Heathen Worship.......................................................................................................... 62 Gods, Myth and Religion ............................................................................................ 63
Myth........................................................................................................................ 63 Religion................................................................................................................... 65
Observing Anglo-Saxon Religion ..................................................................... 66 The Gods and Their Cults ........................................................................................... 74
The Names of God.................................................................................................. 74 Ese........................................................................................................................... 77
The Wið Færstice Charm................................................................................... 80 Wæne ...................................................................................................................... 82 Mægen & Hæl ........................................................................................................ 84
Hæl and Kingship .............................................................................................. 85 Places of Worship........................................................................................................ 88
Barrows................................................................................................................... 92
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Post, Bog and Hall .................................................................................................. 93 Men and Gods .................................................................................................... 97 World-Tree ......................................................................................................... 97 Waterways and Marsh Hoards......................................................................... 101
Ealh ....................................................................................................................... 103 Hearh ..................................................................................................................... 103 Hof......................................................................................................................... 105 Hyrst...................................................................................................................... 108 Leah....................................................................................................................... 108 Stapol..................................................................................................................... 109 Stow....................................................................................................................... 112 Weoh ..................................................................................................................... 112
Priesthood .................................................................................................................. 116 Priestesses ............................................................................................................. 120 Scop & Þyle .......................................................................................................... 120 Bede and Coifi ...................................................................................................... 122 The Horned Man................................................................................................... 129
Horned Helmets ............................................................................................... 130 Worship of the Gods.................................................................................................. 136
Sacrifice ................................................................................................................ 137 The Sacrificial King ......................................................................................... 141 Wih and Halig .................................................................................................. 143
Rites and Rituals ................................................................................................... 144 Ritual and Initiation ......................................................................................... 146 Song and Dance ............................................................................................... 148 Ritual Meals ..................................................................................................... 149 The Symbolic Head.......................................................................................... 151 Symbel.............................................................................................................. 154 Mead and the Drink of Youth.......................................................................... 158
Ritual Drama......................................................................................................... 163 Masks................................................................................................................ 165
4. The Elder Gods........................................................................................................... 166 Tiw ............................................................................................................................. 167
Tiw & Beowulf ..................................................................................................... 172 Woden........................................................................................................................ 173
Woden, the Ninth Father ...................................................................................... 181 Sacral Kingship..................................................................................................... 184 The Woden Cult.................................................................................................... 187 The Second Merseburg Charm............................................................................. 192 The One-Eyed God............................................................................................... 194
Þunor .......................................................................................................................... 199 Þunor and Beowulf ............................................................................................... 203
Frige ........................................................................................................................... 205 Gods in the Shadows ................................................................................................. 208
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Ægel ...................................................................................................................... 209 Æsc........................................................................................................................ 210 Almighty God....................................................................................................... 212 Bealdor / Bældæg ................................................................................................ 213
Warrior Initiation ............................................................................................. 215 Beow ..................................................................................................................... 219 Breca ..................................................................................................................... 222 Earendel ................................................................................................................ 223 Eormen.................................................................................................................. 224 Eostre .................................................................................................................... 225 Erce ....................................................................................................................... 226
The Æcerbot Charm......................................................................................... 227 Ertæ....................................................................................................................... 231 Fornet .................................................................................................................... 232 Fosite..................................................................................................................... 233 Frea ....................................................................................................................... 234 Garsecg ................................................................................................................. 237 Geat ....................................................................................................................... 238 Geofon .................................................................................................................. 240 Grim...................................................................................................................... 241 Halga..................................................................................................................... 242 Hama..................................................................................................................... 243
Hama and Heimdallr........................................................................................ 244 Hengest ................................................................................................................. 244
The Divine Twins ............................................................................................ 246 Heremod ............................................................................................................... 251 Hreðe..................................................................................................................... 251 Ingwe .................................................................................................................... 252 Iring....................................................................................................................... 255 Meotod.................................................................................................................. 256
Spinners and Nornir ......................................................................................... 256 Nerthus.................................................................................................................. 259
Nerthus, the Waggon and the Sacred Marriage .............................................. 262 Nerthus, Njörðr and Hadingus......................................................................... 265
Sceaf...................................................................................................................... 266 Scede..................................................................................................................... 267 Scyld ..................................................................................................................... 268 Seaxneat ................................................................................................................ 269 Swæfdæg............................................................................................................... 272 Wada ..................................................................................................................... 274 Wændel ................................................................................................................. 274 Welund.................................................................................................................. 276
The Taplow Vandyke ...................................................................................... 281
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Wuldor .................................................................................................................. 283 Wuldortanas ..................................................................................................... 284 Servant of Wuldor............................................................................................ 285
The ‘Nameless Others’ ......................................................................................... 286 5. Anthropomorphic Beings........................................................................................... 289
Dry ............................................................................................................................. 289 Dweorgas (Dwarfs) ................................................................................................... 289
The Wið Dweorh Charm ...................................................................................... 292 Entas........................................................................................................................... 293 Eotenas....................................................................................................................... 295 Fifelas......................................................................................................................... 298 Gastas......................................................................................................................... 299 Gigantas ..................................................................................................................... 300 Grendel & his Mother................................................................................................ 300 Gyden......................................................................................................................... 304 Hægtessan, Burgrune & Wiccan............................................................................... 304 Heavenly Bodies........................................................................................................ 310 Idesa ........................................................................................................................... 313
The First Merseberg Charm.................................................................................. 317 Ielfe (Elves)................................................................................................................ 317 Land Wights............................................................................................................... 322 Merewif...................................................................................................................... 323 Mothers ...................................................................................................................... 323
Hludana ................................................................................................................. 328 Nehalennia ............................................................................................................ 329 Tanfana.................................................................................................................. 332 Weird Sisters......................................................................................................... 332
Orcneas ...................................................................................................................... 333 Pucelas ....................................................................................................................... 333 Regen ......................................................................................................................... 333 Scinan......................................................................................................................... 335 Þyrse........................................................................................................................... 335 Wælcyrigean .............................................................................................................. 337
The Alaisiagae ...................................................................................................... 340 Werwulfas.................................................................................................................. 341
Animal Transformation ........................................................................................ 343 Rites of Passage .................................................................................................... 344 Entheogens and Transformation........................................................................... 346
Wuduwosan ............................................................................................................... 348
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6. Zoomorphic Beings.................................................................................................... 349 Dragons (Dracan, Wyrmas) ...................................................................................... 349
The Serpent Motif in Early Anglo-Saxon Art ..................................................... 352 The Protective Serpent ......................................................................................... 355 Sigemund the Dragonslayer ................................................................................. 356
Nicoras....................................................................................................................... 360 Scuccan...................................................................................................................... 362
7. Magic and the Supernatural ....................................................................................... 363 Amulets...................................................................................................................... 363 Leechcraft .................................................................................................................. 367 Spirit Shapes .............................................................................................................. 369 Time and Fate ............................................................................................................ 370
The Passage of Time ............................................................................................ 370 Blessing, Luck and Health ................................................................................... 372 Curses.................................................................................................................... 373 Ordeal.................................................................................................................... 374 Wyrd ..................................................................................................................... 375
Charms....................................................................................................................... 378 Binding Charms.................................................................................................... 379
Seiðr and Spinning Magic ............................................................................... 385 Fertility Charms.................................................................................................... 387
The Wið Ymbe Charm .................................................................................... 387 The Nine Herbs Charm......................................................................................... 389 The Wið Cyrnel Charm........................................................................................ 392
Divination .................................................................................................................. 393 Dreams.................................................................................................................. 395 Lot-Casting ........................................................................................................... 397
Battle-Magic .............................................................................................................. 399 Long-Haired Youths............................................................................................. 402 Bear-Warriors ....................................................................................................... 404 Boar Images.......................................................................................................... 405 Dancing Youths .................................................................................................... 408
The Paired Warriors......................................................................................... 409 Hanging................................................................................................................. 411 Raven Banner ....................................................................................................... 414 Ring-Swords ......................................................................................................... 415 Wolf-Warriors ...................................................................................................... 417
Runes ......................................................................................................................... 421 Runic Usages ........................................................................................................ 422
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Non-Runic Signs........................................................................................................ 423
Animal Art ............................................................................................................ 423 Animal Art: Animism and Totemism.............................................................. 426
Fylfot ..................................................................................................................... 428 Hammer................................................................................................................. 432 Interlace and Knotwork ........................................................................................ 432
Three-Way Knot (Valknut).............................................................................. 433 Four-Way Knot ................................................................................................ 434
Tamgas .................................................................................................................. 435 8. Otherworlds ................................................................................................................ 437
Beginnings and Endings............................................................................................ 437 Heaven ....................................................................................................................... 439
Heavenly Riders and the Wild Hunt .................................................................... 440 The Hall of the Slain............................................................................................. 441
Hell............................................................................................................................. 444 Ancestors in the Earth................................................................................................ 446
9. Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 448 Conversion................................................................................................................. 448
Catholics, Arians and Heresies............................................................................. 451 Augustine’s Mission ............................................................................................. 454
The Old Ways ............................................................................................................ 456 Children of a Greater God? ....................................................................................... 458
Angusta est Domus............................................................................................... 463 Appendix 1 Polytheism.................................................................................................. 465 Appendix 2 Matronæ Names ......................................................................................... 468 Appendix 3 Some Heathen Place-Names in England ................................................... 472 Appendix 4 The Staffordshire Hoard............................................................................. 475
Bibliography................................................................................................................... 480 Index ............................................................................................................................... 506
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Table of Figures
No. Page
1 Plans of three halls at Yeavering 29
2 The Sutton Hoo whetstone 61
3a,b The Sutton Hoo shield, serpent and bird – colour pages 482-3 71
4 The Franks casket – right panel with encrypted runes 72
5 Wrist-clasp gusset plate from Winchester 72
6 The Sutton Hoo helmet (side view) – colour page 484 87
7 The Braak idols 114
8 The Asthall barrow 115
9 The Pietroasa neck-ring 118
10 Speardancer plaque from Cambridgeshire 132
11 Helmeted face plaques from Yorkshire and Norfolk 133
12 Nydam carved head 134
13 Helmet foil from Caenby 134
14 The Ayton die 136
15 Speardancer on a pelta mount 136
16 Sutton Hoo purse-lid design 168
17 Sword pommel 170
18 Frankish bird-brooch 172
19 The Trollhätten bracteate 172
20 The Wodnes beorg barrow 180
21 A ‘Woden head’ sceatta 188
22 Sword chape fitting 191
23 The Sutton Hoo helmet faceplate – colour page 485 195
24 The Finglesham buckle 196
25 An Anglo-Saxon button brooch 198
26 A mask from the Sutton Hoo whetstone 198
27 A mask from the Sutton Hoo shield 198
28 Kentish amulets and pendants 201
29 Female copper-alloy figurine – obverse - colour page 486 209
30 Female copper-alloy figurine – reverse - colour page 486 209
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31 The Franks Casket - lid 210
32 The Ruthwell Cross runic text 217
33 The Sutton Hoo helmet – rider panel 236
34 ‘Gaut’ and ‘Gapt in Gothic script 240
35 The Wansdyke 242
36 Cloisonné jewellery – Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasp – colour page 487 245
37 The Sutton Hoo purse-lid horses 249
38 Twins on the Gallehus horns 250
39 The Bloodmore Hill (Carlton Colville) figurine 255
40 The Friston figurine 255
41 The Smiss stone 260
42 The Northolt seax 270
43 The Long Man of Wilmington 275
44 The Franks Casket – Wayland’s smithy 278
45 The Taplow vandyke 281
46 The Thorsberg chape 284
47 Male face hidden in the design of a brooch 322
48 The Franks Casket – right panel 325
49 The Kirklevington cross-shaft 326
50 The Caistor-by-Norwich urn 331
51 The Nehalennia shrine 331
52 The Style I beastman 343
53 The Åker buckle 345
54 A Frankish S-fibula 354
55 Style II designs from Sutton Hoo Mound 2 381
56 Spearshaft from Kragehul 381
57 Spearshafts from Kragehul 382
58 Spearhead from Great Chesterford 383
59 The Icklingham die 383
60 The Sutton Hoo helmet – dancing warriors plate 409
61 Ring-sword hilt 416
62 Male coming-of-age rituals 419
63 The Sutton Hoo axe-hammer 427
64 The Caistor-by-Norwich urn 429
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65 Openwork disc brroch 431
66 Scutiform pendant 431
67 Dover Buckland spearhead 435
68 The Prittlewell chamber-grave 443
69 The Fen Drayton Pressblech die 449
70 The Benty Grange helmet 459
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1. Introduction Thus many features of the Conversion period which have been interpreted post eventum as Christian were undoubtedly seen with other - and familiar - overtones by the Woden-sprung rulers and their people.
Chaney, Paganism to Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England
The Object of Enquiry The subject of this book is the Otherworld and its inhabitants in Old English culture, and specifically the early traditions of the Anglo-Saxons, mainly inherited from their Germanic past and further developed by them in England. From the earliest Germanic presence in Britain of which we have any evidence – inscriptions from the area of Hadrian’s Wall from the late 1st c. AD – to the completion of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kings in the later 600s, Britain had a heathen Germanic culture in some areas for around six centuries. Add in the new wave of heathen impetus from the later Scandinavian incursions, and the span approaches a thousand years.
During this time, the nature of heathen belief was evolving due to internal and external pressures: contact with Imperial Rome, contact with the later Roman military cults of Mithraism and Christianity, changes in political structures and ideology. 1 A rapid geographic expansion and a massive change in social structure doubtless saw corresponding developments in religious practice. We do not know the extent to which Anglo-Saxon heathen belief was affected by the Goths’ conversion to Arian Christianity in the 4th c., for example: did elements of Arian belief and ritual leak into the wider Germanic world? And if so, did this happen with sufficient glamour, and in sufficient time, to affect the daily lives of 5th c. Anglian farmers or Saxon seamen? It would be interesting to gauge the effects of contact with Avars, Sarmatians, Slavs, Britons and Picts on Anglo-Saxon ideas about the nature and shape of this world and the next.
The greater part of the research for this book took place while I was researching and writing Wayland’s Work as an examination of the cultural background to Anglo-Saxon England and in particular the traditions of representation and iconography in use in the pre-Christian period. The present text sometimes bears the hallmark of that source, dealing with the specifics of a particular artefact, motif or design, and uses evidence drawn from material culture to illustrate ideas. I have also used a wealth of information gleaned from researching both runic tradition and the evolution of religion. The result is a compendium of information about the pre-Christian gods and supernatural beings of the English.
1 Rudgley, 2006; Shaw, 2002, p.63. Carl Jung, for one, detailed a particular view of Wotan, in an
essay of the same name, which was appropriate to the time of his writing (1928) and in the intellectual climate of his day. Others have seen this god as developing from a youthful and mischievous teenager (Wotan) into a capable warrior (Woden) and finally into a mature father-figure and ruler (Óðinn). (A. Mercer, pers.comm.) Modern views of the gods of old can only ever capture a part or aspect of their essence. (See Blain, Ezzy & Harvey, 2004 (eds.) for further exploration of this problem.)
1 Introduction
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This book is thus an attempt to present information about how the heathen Anglo-Saxons viewed the Otherworld and its inhabitants, but there are a few things that this book is not. It is not a rehearsal of the standard Norse myths dressed up in Anglo-Saxon names. It is not just another Snorri-dependent study of a tidied-up Norse cosmology and mythology. It is not a collation of the worthy and well-known works of Brian Branston and Brian Bates, smartened up with some new pictures. It is not a round-up of ecclesiastical penitentials and classically based texts amounting to a snapshot of what the Otherworld might have looked like to an 11th c. Christian with a good knowledge of Latin and Greek. Such works already exist.
The book concentrates on the English evidence for religion and belief, but in the nature of the case we have to look further afield in order to understand the significance of words and deeds. This means using Old Norse evidence where appropriate, of course, and also Continental Germanic sources. 1 Indeed, the culture and ethos of the later Roman army may well have had a greater impact than is usually realised on religious performance among the people of Jutland in the 4th and 5th c., in which case the search for the roots of English heathenism must also look to Roman military cults such as Mithraism and Sol Invictus. The evidence from Indo-European studies is often relevant too, especially where some detail in an English source chimes with Hittite or Vedic or Baltic practice – all too distant in space and time to have had much effect by contact, and thus probably part of a shared cultural tradition.
It may be argued that this study is insufficiently chronologically nuanced, meaning that it combines details drawn from 5th c. archaeology with references in 9th c. land-grants and place-name data from the 12th c. and treats them all as evidence for the ‘Anglo-Saxon period’. This is a fair point to raise, to some extent: our jigsaw puzzle has been dropped and it has been necessary to look in as many places as possible to recover the pieces. Many are still missing, and perhaps some of the pieces I have found do not actually belong to the same puzzle. But it seems to me that it is probably better to bring together everything available with a view to examination, rather than to exclude summarily a number of potentially genuine pieces for want of firm evidence that they belong. The lack of the picture on the box-lid is the real problem here.
There has recently been an increased interest in and awareness of the early English documentation relating to many aspects of religious belief, and especially healing traditions. This upsurge is partly connected to the birth of ‘pagan’ or ‘neo-pagan’ traditions as an apolitical (or at least, not formally party-political) form of counter-culture in the later 20th c. allied to both concerned environmentalism and the longing for a rooted tradition among westerners who have been aroused and fascinated by the experiences found within other cultures, and who seek similar experiences and meaning in their own. A return to traditional folk-ways has greater appeal than yet another
1 Campbell, 2007. Wilson’s 1992 book Anglo-Saxon Paganism is a good example of a writer’s
unwillingness to look outside the narrow terms of reference he has set himself, so that the reader can glean very little about the title subject in its pages. Shaw, 2002, likewise resorts to some very special pleading to rule out as much evidence as possible for Woden as an actual deity rather than a mythic ancestor, then dismisses the god as a Christian re-imagining of late Roman cult. North’s 1997 work Heathen Gods in OE Literature was criticized for being too free in interpreting the sources, but it nevertheless relieved the researcher from the emasculating fear of making an assumption or two and testing them against the evidence.
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imported cult or mystical path, however interesting such may be from an outsider’s perspective. Exploring the worlds of the elder gods is in many senses not a voyage of discovery but rather a return home.
The Cultural Continuity Problem One difficulty we face when trying to contrast Christian with heathen ideas, especially when the latter are reported mainly by adherents of the former, is that of the cultural dynamic: the fact that heathen religion was not static and monolithic but a living, developing tradition which reacted to the world around it and which had to face up to the threat which an organised, universalist religion such as Christianity posed to it.1 The later-period heathens who met Christian political power face-to-face were not the equivalent of the Amesh, shutting themselves away from an unpalatable world in the hope that it would leave them alone. Heathen kings in England had no intention of handing over any part of their power to Rome, nor even to Canterbury; but to keep what they had, they would have to find new ways of adapting to changed circumstances.
Despite presenting itself as immutable and given shape by the word of God, Christianity has made many accommodations in order to gain acceptance, and it is these ‘syncretisms’, these unique blends of old ways and new, which can offer interesting insights into alternative world-views.2 “The process of syncretism is especially apparent in the emergence of ethnic forms of Christianity …medieval Christo-Germanic syncretism may be found in the development of the concepts of the Eigenkirche and of chivalry.” An Eigenkirch is a church which is personal property, a ‘private chapel’ not available to the community at large. As we shall see below, this concept has something in common with pre-Christian places of worship.3
Understanding of the central fact that heathens actually did have different ways of looking at the world - which were as valid for them as Christianity or Islam or Hinduism are to their own adherents - has often escaped modern observers. Brown, the Bede specialist, is the latest in a line of scholars who have been inclined to dismiss the Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian religion as either feeble or fatalistic, and therefore inadequate on both counts. Campbell rightly castigated him for this dismissive and unscholarly judgement on a religion of which Brown could have no direct knowledge, because none is available.4 There is no evidence that the old heathen religion was inadequate in itself: what comes through clearly from reading Bede is that the church was willing and able to use a good deal of pre-digested, persuasive argumentation in its cause, as well as offering immediate benefits for rulers who were willing to convert. As a ‘folk’ religion pitted against a ‘universalist’ religion, there was already a disparity in the aims of each with regard to conversion. The heathen tradition was to promote communal identity and exclusivity for
1 Parker Pearson, 2006 2 Russell, 1994, p.18 The forms of ‘ethnic Christianity’ most familiar in the modern world are
voodoo in Haiti, Rastafariansim in the West Indies and macumba in Brazil. Each has taken certain aspects of Christianity and blended them with (folk?) traditions to produce a unique new belief-system. Some societies, for example Japan, have proved highly resistant to the Christian message despite determined efforts over several centuries to secure converts.
3 Campbell, 2007, p.69 4 Campbell, 2007, p.67
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its members, while Christianity promoted unrestrained inclusivity.1 By presenting Christ and his followers as more successful than their heathen opponents, Christian missionaries were able to sow doubts about the efficacy of the elder gods.
In Carver’s majestic phrase: “The dark curtain of Christianity was about to close around Europe, inhibiting original thought about the supernatural there for the next 1,000 years.”2
The ‘Pagan’ Problem The term ‘pagan’ is now used to describe the many modern forms of religious experience predicated on ‘earth mysteries’ and various cults of the divine, mostly based to some extent on an approximation to some actual divinity worshipped in historical societies – be it Isis, Tammuz or Woden. As a catch-all term ‘pagan’ has its uses, but it is not without its own intellectual baggage. It seems curious that we should label this cultural and religious trend purely in terms of what it is not.
Modern historical (intellectual, academic, impartial and objective) research has inherited some of the prejudices of the western Christian tradition from which it emerged.3 The early English folk who made the artefacts which archaeologists describe and discuss were not Christian, but they were not in any meaningful sense ‘pagan’ either. The Latin term paganus is used in mediaeval literature as a means of asserting the moral authority of Christendom (and especially of the church) over outsiders, whom it classed under a single convenient heading of ‘non-Christian’ i.e. ‘pagan’. ‘Paganism’ was never a religion, it is a Christian construct used to manipulate the idea of a threatening outer darkness, which needed to be first vanquished and then saved through conversion.
It is often assumed that non-Christians of northern Europe had no coherent or meaningful set of beliefs, but rather adhered to socially-constructed ‘cults’ devoid of any spiritual, emotional or intellectual content. Winterbourne tackled this problem:4
To affirm the distinction between paganism and Christianity in terms of the centrality of cults in the former, and beliefs in the latter, not only robs the cult of any authentic religiosity to which it might otherwise lay claim (which amounts simply to question-begging), but furthermore has the effect of stripping it of any meaning whatever; for cult practices performed – not just by anyone at any time, but also by priests at ritually significant times – in the complete absence of belief, are not cults at all, but repetitive actions that contingently occur within a context that just happens to be socially significant. …. At some point we must allow the meaning of the cult to be anchored in some beliefs located somewhere within the cultural context; in Wittgenstein’s words, justification must have a stop.
1 This came about only once the transformation from ‘secret cult’ to ‘official state religion’ had taken
place; the history of the Christian faith was not always as inclusive as it has been portrayed. 2 Carver, 2010, p.16 3 The extent to which any field research can be at the same time ‘authentic’ and ‘objective’ is
addressed in several papers in the volume edited by Blain, Ezzy & Harvey, 2004 4 Winterbourne, 2004, p.131
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While retaining the name ‘paganism’, Carver similarly asserted:1
… we must look at the Paganism of the seventh century as having as much actuality as the Christianity of the same place and date. Paganism was not mindless or asleep and … it was not ‘tradition’ which fuelled it. It was having fresh ideas of its own which happened to be different to those of Christians.
It hardly needs adding that the beliefs and rites of one period and location would not necessarily have been very similar to those of other times or other places, much less more distant cultures; in a polytheistic tradition, diversity is natural. Therefore it would be misleading to treat the whole of pre-Christian northern Europe as a single cultural entity and so to draw directly on 13th c. Icelandic literary sources to explain 6th c. Kentish archaeology. I am not suggesting that we should ignore Tacitus or Snorri, Saxo or Gregory of Tours, merely that we should bear in mind that these writers might have been as much outsiders in the heathen Anglo-Saxon world as we are. Where their testimony can shed some light, we should accept their help, but we should not lose sight of the potential for false connections and misunderstanding.
There have been attempts to redeem Snorri and the saga-makers and poets of the early mediaeval period, most notably by scholars such as Rausing who defends the place of Beowulf and Ynglingasaga in discussions of principally archaeological matters as a viable source of additional information which should not be discarded unexamined or rejected out of hand. 2 The ‘mining’ of literary texts for historical data which so angered Tolkien, and which he derided in his famous essay The Monsters and the Critics, is nevertheless irresistibly attractive when our sources of information are so few and so unhelpful.
Indeed, Snorri himself did a great deal to render the heathen past neutral, to turn the once-powerful gods and monsters of the old tales into mere men and beasts – or rather, less than men, since they are changing into the two-dimensional ciphers which populate myths once they have lost their power to motivate, illuminate and explain.3 Snorri saved a great deal of the popular tradition of the Icelandic skalds - for which we should be grateful to him, without losing sight of the fact that he operated within the constraints of a hostile religious culture and at a remove of several centuries from the time when the traditions he recorded were a living body of lore. It is well known that some of the information in the Prose Edda conflicts directly with the Poetic Edda and with other sources, as for example the identity of the dökkálfar and svartálfar;4 it is hard to resist the conclusion that he sometimes misunderstood the material before him, or sought to present a rationalized and homogenized version of traditions which were never actually consistent.
1 Carver, 2000, p.35 2 Niles, 2007, p.5 3 Arnold, 2005, p.141 4 Shippey, 2005b, p.177-81 The dökkálfar ‘dark-elves’ and svartálfar ‘black-elves’ are said to be two
different kindreds, distinct from the ljósálfar ‘light-elves’. The svartálfar are evidently the same beings as the dvergar ‘dwarfs’, but other evidence implies that ‘dark-elves’ are the same beings as ‘black-elves’, although Snorri contradicts this.
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There is a further complexity here: for a Christian writer, the term ‘pagan’ could also refer to an alternative form of Christianity, a ‘heresy’, and it was so used by energetic partisans such as Boniface.1 Orthodox Christians ‘knew’ (from the unimpeachable source of the Bible) that pagans were idolaters, and they therefore laid this charge against all who failed to conform to their own notion of appropriate behaviour; in a sense and to a limited extent, we have no means of determining whether the claim of idolatry was valid or not. In other words, Christian writers brought a set of preconceptions about non-Christian behaviour to their writings, and we must always allow for this.
For these reasons, I prefer the term ‘heathen’ which has the benefit of being a genuine OE word (hæþen) from the period under discussion, with little Christian meaning foisted upon it, and of being fairly transparent in its context – ‘heathens’ were not ‘Christians’ but they were not solely defined by their ‘non-Christian-ness’, they had rites and beliefs and traditions of their own.2
Cædmon’s Epiphany Cædmon, a humble member of the Christian religious community at Whitby (Yorkshire) had no confidence in his ability to entertain his fellows at the nightly gebeorscipe ‘drinks party’ in the community hall. Bede relates the story thus:3
Þa he þæt þa sumre tide dyde, þæt he forlet þæt hus þæs gebeorscipes, 7 ut wæs gongende to neata scipene, þara heord him wæs þære neahte beboden þa he ða þær in gelimplicre tide his leomu on reste gesette 7 onslepte, þa stod him sum mon æt þurh swefn 7 hine halette 7 grette 7 hine be his noman nemnde: "Cedmon, sing me hwæthwugu." Þa ondswarede he 7 cwæð: "Ne con ic noht singan; 7 ic forþon of þeossum gebeorscipe ut eode, 7 hider gewat, forþon ic naht singan ne cuðe." Eft he cwæð, se ðe mid hine sprecende wæs: "Hwæðre þu meaht singan." Þa cwæð he: "Hwæt sceal ic singan?" Cwæð he: "Sing me frumsceaft." Þa he ða þas andsware onfeng, þa ongon he sona singan in herenesse Godes Scyppendes þa fers 7 þa word þe he næfre gehyrde, þara endebyrdnes þis is:
1 Wood, 1995, p.253, 257 2 Tolley, 2009, p.479 notes that the reference to ‘heath’, open space or moorland, may be due to the
practice of sitting out alone in order to gain access to hidden knowledge. If so, the term may have refered rather to magical than to religious practices. The OE term is frequently used as an antonym of ‘Christian’ in relation to the Danes, as well as of ‘Jewish’ in Old Testament contexts.
3 Text and translation from Pollington, 2003. The name Cædmon, although perfectly in agreement with OE rules of word construction, appears to be a British form, *Catumanus, which may imply that Cædmon’s family were of mixed descent. Cook, 1891, preferred derivation from Hebrew (!).
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"Nu sculon herigean heofonrices Weard, Meotodes meahte 7 his modgeþanc, weorc Wuldorfæder, swa he wundra gehwæs, ece Drihten, or onstealde. He ærest sceop eorðan bearnum heofon to hrofe halig Scyppend; þa middangeard monncynnes Weard, ece Drihten, æfter teode firum foldan, Frea ælmihtig." One time when he did that – he left the house of the beer-drinking and started to go out to the shed with the cattle whose care was assigned to him for that night – he laid his body into rest at the appropriate time and fell asleep, then a certain man stood by him in his dream, and hailed and greeted him and named him by his name. “Cædmon, sing something to me.” Then he answered and said “I cannot sing anything, and I went out from this beer-drinking and came here because I did not know how to sing anything.” He who spoke with him said again: “Yet you are able to sing.” Then he said: “What must I sing?” He said: “Sing the original creation to me.” When he received this answer, he began straightaway to sing in praise of God the Creator those verses and those words which he had never heard before, of which this is the arrangement: “Now we must praise the Keeper of heaven, the Measurer’s might and his mind’s thought, the Glory-father’s work as for each wonder he, the everlasting Lord, set the beginning. He first made the earth for men, heaven as a roof – the holy shaper – then Middle-earth mankind’s keeper, the everlasting Lord made thereafter, the world for men – the almighty Lord.”
The events narrated by Bede would have happened some time around 685 AD.1 Given that Cædmon was, by his own admission, not proficient as a songsmith, the creation story he wove must have been brought together from existing vocabulary, metaphors and imagery from then-current tradition. Cædmon was not a trained cleric or devoted doctor of religion – his job was looking after the cattle. It therefore seems likely that the wording he used in his verse was already traditional, and was in fact drawn from a body of existing ideas, from ‘popular culture’; in the nature of the case for early Anglo-Saxon England, this means that it was probably composed from phrases known and used in heathen times. In other words, Cædmon’s marvellous song of creation drew on heathen
1 Orchard, 2003, p.99 The bearing of this date on the composition of Beowulf has yet to be determined
but Fulk is no doubt right to conclude that Beowulf should be later by up to half a century if Mercian in origin, and perhaps even a century more if Northumbrian. Niles, 2007, p.23-5 relates a traditional Scots tale which follows much the same pattern.
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tradition and used phrasing which was already part of the standard sources for such a subject. It will therefore be instructive to dissect the ‘hymn’ and look further at the ideas and images the would-be scop employed.
The poem’s first reference is to the ‘keeper of the kingdom of heaven’, but the word used – weard – is quite heavily laden with meaning. A weard is a ‘ward’, someone who keeps guard, who looks after things, but in later Scandinavian tradition varðr (its ON cognate) is a term used for the unseen guardian spirits who assist the völva seeress in working seiðr, her prophetic magic. This same half-line heofonrices weard, occurs in the Æcerbot Charm which we shall look at below (p.227).
The second reference is to meotod, which formally means a ‘measurer’.1 This recalls the image of the skein of one’s life having been set at birth by three supernatural females (in Latin Parcae, in Greek Moira, in Norse Nornir) who successively spin the thread of life, measure it and cut it.2 The ‘measurer’ here is therefore one of the beings with the power to shape and change (and shorten?) one’s life.
The third term, wuldorfæder, is interesting in that it combines two images: a holy father-god who oversees creation, and the word wuldor ‘glory, splendour’ which is the OE form of the Norse god-name Ullr.
A dryhten is formally a ‘lord’ but specifically a warlord, the leader of a dryht, a band of warriors. OE verse was routinely used to deliver praise-poems to men of this kind, to record their deeds so that their stories should be remembered after their deaths.
Conversely scyppend is a ‘shaper’, a maker and creator of things. Making things from nothing more than one’s thoughts – as in the Christian creation tale – was the occupation of the scop (probably a related term), the poet and singer of tales. Cædmon was acting in this capacity by composing the very verses recorded here.
The term frea is another OE word for a ‘lord’ in the sense of a leader, whether in war, in trade, or in religious ritual. It is cognate with the ON freyr and recalls the god of this name known from many of Snorri Sturluson’s tales.
Several other phrases used here suggest heathen cosmology: heaven as a roof, the world of men (two different expressions), the middle-yard. Cædmon could not escape his grounding in heathen thought and consciousness, and indeed he seems to have revelled in carefully choosing language from the old tales which would be consistent (or at least, not violently in conflict) with Christian cosmogonic notions.
Cædmon’s use of verse to formulate the message he needed to express was most appropriate, because poetry was one of the means by which inspiration (OE wod) could be manifested, and poetry was the medium in which such important matters were normally conveyed. It is also worth noting that Cædmon’s epiphany, the arrival or emergence of his wod, took place after a night of drinking and in conditions of solitude - both often associated with inspiration in pre-Christian northern Europe. Furthermore, Cædmon specifically sings of the ‘creation’ of the world, which in such early societies
1 Vázquez González, 2006 2 Dietrich (cited in Bauschatz, 1982) showed that the Parcae were originally a group of powerful
females, and the specialisation into three activities – connected to the three-way division of time, and three types of childbirth – is a later development.
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implied knowledge of its beginning and therefore provided power over the thing created – this notion occurs in the medical literature.1
Indeed, in considering the importance of inspired language or verse, the Anglo-Saxons’ own gods may be considered as ‘poetic truths’, meaning that they were culturally-determined beings whose primary function was to make natural and social phenomena meaningful, and to allow their worshippers to approach them as individuals, developing interpersonal relationships of trust and dependence. The sense of awe experienced in a thunderstorm, the wonder at the sun emerging from behind clouds, the intensity of love for a partner – all these experiences are still with us; the gods were real because these experiences were real. Gods can be seen as poetic truths because they are culturally-supported forms of experience, not empirically proven facts.2 Poetry was the vehicle used to express these ideas, and the public performance of poetry was central to the social bonding structures which the Anglo-Saxons used to form and maintain their communities.
In this book we shall look closely at some of the ideas Cædmon carried with him from the farm to the monastery, and try to find more heathen images, names and ideas in the art, language and material culture of the early Anglo-Saxons.
1 Tolley, 2009, p.423-4 2 Thanks to Ned Bates for distilling this line of thought into a telling phrase.
