Nordic Pantheon
Adam of Bremen (born ~1050 to 1081/1085) was one of the foremost historians and early ethnographers of the medieval period. Adam is most famous for his chronicle Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum (Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church). In this he included a chapter mentioning the Norse outpost of Vinland, and was thus the first continental European to write about the New World.
Photo online at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Utdrag_ur_Gesta_Hammaburgensis_ecclesiae_pontificum.jpg
The 3 Main Norse/Germanic Deities of 1000 CE Were Life God Thor, War God Oden, and Sex God Frigg
Adam of Bremen in Book 4 of his History of the Archbishops of Hamburg 1075-1080 CE Says This about the 3 Main Norse Deities of His Time
(July 8, 2023) While Adam of Bremen took every opportunity to disrespect Paganism by exaggerating animal and human sacrifices he still provides good information such as:
Chapter 26: Now we shall say a few words about the superstitions of the Swedes. That folk has a very famous temple [134] called Uppsala, situated not far from the city of Sigtuna and Björkö. In this temple, [135] entirely decked out in gold, the people worship the statues of three gods in such wise that the mightiest of them, Thor, occupies a throne in the middle of the chamber; Wotan (Odin) and Frikko (Frigg) have places on either side. The significance of these gods is as follows: Thor, they say, presides over the air, which governs the thunder and lightning, the winds and rains, fair weather and crops. The other, Wotan -that is, the Furious--carries on war and imparts to man strength against his enemies. The third is Frikko, who bestows peace and pleasure on mortals. His likeness, too, they fashion with an immense phallus. But Wotan they chisel armed, as our people are wont to represent Mars. Thor with his scepter apparently resembles Jove. [136] The people also worship heroes made gods, whom they endow with immortality because of their remarkable exploits, as one reads in the Vita of Saint Ansgar they did in the case of King Eric.
Chapter 27: For all their gods there are appointed priests to offer sacrifices for the people. If plague and famine threaten, a libation is poured to the idol Thor; if war, to Wotan; if marriages are to be celebrated, to Frikko. It is customary also to solemnize in Uppsala, at nine-year intervals, a general feast of all the provinces of Sweden. From attendance at this festival no one is exempted Kings and people all and singly send their gifts to Uppsala and, what is more distressing than any kind of punishment, those who have already adopted Christianity redeem themselves through these ceremonies. The sacrifice is of this nature: of every living thing that is male, they offer nine heads with the blood of which it is customary to placate gods of this sort. The bodies they hang in the sacred grove that adjoins the temple. Now this grove is so sacred in the eyes of the heathen that each and every tree in it is believed divine because of the death or putrefaction of the victims. Even dogs and horses hang there with men. A Christian told me that he had seen 72 bodies suspended promiscuously. Furthermore, the incantations customarily chanted in the ritual of a sacrifice of this kind are manifold and unseemly; therefore, it is better to keep silent about them. (Then Breme adds this: Feasts and sacrifices of this kind are solemnized for nine days. On each day they offer a man along with other living beings in such a number that in the course of the nine days they will have made offerings of seventy-two creatures. This sacrifice takes place about the time of the vernal equinox)
Online at: http://germanicmythology.com/works/uppsalatemple.html
Swedish Rok Runestone: Left Side View With Ogham Markings
Photo from Wikimedia Commons at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:R%C3%B6kstenen08.JPG
Pagan nature based festivals honor the Divine through nature's annual cycle which modern Pagans call the "Wheel of the Year." The main historical sources used to develop these festivals during the modern Pagan revival were a 750 BCE poem in a medieval Irish commentary on the Psalter (Psalms) called Hibernica Minora and inferences made by Aiden Kelly based on old Pagan source material in 1974.
Swedish Rok Runestone: Left Side View With Celtic Ogham Markings Lists the Pagan Nature Festivals (1100 CE)
(December 13, 2024) The top part of the Celtic Ogham on this Swedish runestone lists the Pagan Nature festivals and provides the Viking interpretation of them. The bottom part is also in ogham but it just repeats the words "anointed" 19 times. This is a reference to emotion/motion magic rituals in which scented oils are used. This is in contrast to life power rituals which use waters for cleansing and purification.
List of Viking Nature Festivals.
The top part is a listing of the nature quarter festivals in Druid Akkadian (read from top to bottom). The first half of the year is a time of settling accounts while the second half is a time of feasting.
- ᚃ ᚇ = ṢaDu = Feasting
- ᚄ ᚈ = ŠeTu = Time
- ᚁ ᚈ = ReTu = Settlements. (Spring Equinox, Celtic Ostara, Easter)
- ᚃ ᚆ = ṢaḪu = Rendering
- ᚁ ᚈ = ReTu = Settlements. (Summer Solstice, Mid-Summer, Celtic Litha)
- ᚅ ᚈ = NaTu = Nature's
- ᚃ ᚆ = ṢaḪu = Rendering
- ᚃ ᚇ = ṢaDu = Feast. (Fall Equinox, Thanksgiving, Celtic Mabon,)
- ᚂ ᚇ = PaDu = Breeding
- ᚃ ᚇ = ṢaDu = Feast. (Winter Solstice, Celtic Yule, Christmas)
This means the 4 Nature Festivals can be summarized as:
- Spiritual Settlements - Ostara (After Yule): March 21, Spring Equinox
- Worldly Settlements - Mid-Summer (Litha): June 22, Summer Solstice
- Spiritual Thanksgiving - Thanksgiving (Before Yule): September 21, Autumn Equinox
- Worldly Thanksgiving - Yule, December 22, Winter Solstice
"Nature's rendering" references the successful growth of plant-life. It is nature giving-up the source of all food. In contrast "Breeding" reference the successful production of young animals for food.
Kelly Aiden Fills in the Celtic Names of the Pagan Festivals
(November 8, 2024) The rest of the nature festivals need to be inferred with some historical detective work. Subsequent investigations confirms these Pagan festivals were widely observed although called by different names. This was done by Aidan Kelly in 1974. He recalls his thought process in these blog entries:
Back in 1974, I was putting together a “Pagan-Craft” calendar—the first of its kind, as far as I know—listing the holidays, astrological aspects, and other stuff of interest to Pagans. We have Gaelic names for the four Celtic holidays. It offended my aesthetic sensibilities that there seemed to be no Pagan names for the summer solstice or the fall equinox equivalent to Yule or Beltane—so I decided to supply them.
The spring equinox was almost a nonissue. The Venerable Bede says that it was sacred to a Saxon Goddess, Ostara or Eostre, from whom we get the name “Easter,” which, almost everywhere else, is called something like “Pasch,” derived, of course, from Pesach.
Summer was also rather easy. The Saxon calendar described by Bede was lunisolar. It usually had 12 months, but in the third, fifth, and last month of an 8-year cycle, a 13th month was added to keep it (more or less) in sync with the solar years. The last and first months in the calendar were named Foreyule and Afteryule, respectively, and obviously framed the holiday of Yule. The sixth and seventh months were named Forelitha and Afterlitha; furthermore, when the thirteenth month was added, it went in between them, and the year was then called a Threelitha. Obviously, by analogy with Yule, the summer solstice must have been called Litha. (I later discovered that Tolkien had figured this out also.)
The Fall equinox Mabon name comes from the Welsh Mabinogion version of the common Pagan myth in which the underworld god causes life on earth to sleep until his love is returned. In most Pagan myths his love is kidnapped (or rescued) in the fall.
In the Mabinogion collection, the story of Mabon ap Modron (which translates as “Son of the Mother,” just as Kore simply meant “girl”), whom Gwydion rescues from the underworld, much as Theseus rescued Helen. It would have been aesthetically better to have found a Saxon name, but . . . so I picked “Mabon” as the name for the holiday in my calendar. It was not an arbitrary choice. I sent a copy of the calendar to Oberon (then still Tim), who liked these new names and began using them in Green Egg, whence they passed into the national Pagan vocabulary.
The phrase "Mabon ap Modron" used above is actually the Akkadian phrase "Mu-A-Ba'u-Nu APu Ma'u-Du-Re'u-Mu." Mabon means: "The fertility-fluids resulting from the nest's revelations" in which "fertility-fluids" are the life powers which flow through the lift network to trigger life on earth. Thus this festival is celebrating the favorable divine attention to life on earth, on other words, Thanksgiving.