Ur-Folk

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My copy of Hellig Olaf: Historisk Fortælling by Elisabeth Schøyen, published in 1897. This edition features illustrations by Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen.

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Below text from Indo-European Fire Rituals: Cattle and Cultivation, Cremation and Cosmogony page 44 (Routledge, 2022) by Anders Kaliff and Terje Oestigaard:

"Thor has been seen as the god protecting households and the hearth. Following folklore, fire originated from Thor's lightning, and therefore lighting would never harm a house where the fire was burning in the hearth or the stove."

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interior of 12th century Urnes Stave Church in Norway. Image from The Art of Scandinavia.

Below text from The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity (Oxford University Press, 1996) by James C. Russell:

"The early medieval Germanization of Christianity, in most cases, was not the result of organized Germanic resistance to Christianity, or of an attempt by the Germanic peoples to transform Christianity into an acceptable form. Rather, it was primarily a consequence of the deliberate inculturation of Germanic religiocultural attitudes within Christianity by Christian missionaries. This process of accommodation resulted in the essential transformation of Christianity from a universal salvation religion to a Germanic, and eventually European, folk religion. The sociopsychological response of the Germanic peoples to this inculturated form of Christianity included the acceptance of those traditionally Christian elements which coincided with Germanic religiosity and the resolution of dissonant elements by reinterpreting them in accordance with the Germanic ethos and world-view."

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Below text from Indo-European Fire Rituals: Cattle and Cultivation, Cremation and Cosmogony (Routledge, 2022) by Anders Kaliff and Terje Oestigaard: "Traces of fire rituals in the archaeological material are much more common than just in funeral contexts. Remains of fire altars with traces of sacrifices, seasonal fires linked to agriculture as well as ritual activities connected to the hearth of the home, are other find categories that are included which indicates a much more general and widespread use of various fire in cult and cosmology. These rituals have been deeply rooted and integrated in culture and society and thus represent very long continuities and historic trajectories. This in turn has resulted in the fact that in many cases the traditions have been preserved until recent times, even if in a partially modified and Christianised form, in the form of folk beliefs, including notions of the magical and healing power of fire, sacrifices to the hearth of the home and not least seasonal fires."

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Image by Johan Christian Dahl (1837) Below text from Tree of Salvation: Yggdrasil and the Cross in the North (Oxford University Press, 2013) by G. Ronald Murphy S.J. “My suggestion is that the stave church is a Christian Yggdrasil, based on the poetic insight that there is an appropriate analogue in the North by which to express the concept of the place of salvation: it is to translate salvation as the inner space of Yggdrasil, the holy wooden place of protection at doomsday, and that at the heart of the evergreen tree’s space is Christ on his wooden tree, the cross.”

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Above artwork by Theodor Kittelsen from book Hellig Olaf : Historisk Fortælling (1897) by Elisabeth Schøyen

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Above: "Odin and Sleipnir" (1911) by John Bauer.

In 1863, Gunnar Olof Hyltén Cavallius wrote the seminal Wärend och Wirdarne, describing a southern Swedish region believed to preserve ancient Norse traditions in its folklore more strongly than almost anywhere else, continuing to exist side by side with Christianity. One example was an agrarian practice done to promote the fertility of the field for the following year.

Gunnar Olof Hyltén Cavallius expanded further on page 159 of Wärend och Wirdarne:

"Even a few generations ago, the common folk of Wärend used to sacrifice or give to Odin’s horses. This occurred in such a way that during the hay-mowing in the meadow, one either left behind a few green stalks of grass, which were bent down and covered with moss so they would not be touched by the cattle, or else on every bredestad [row of mown hay] left a fresh tuft of hay, protected in the same manner against disturbance. On these occasions, the farmer always expressly announced or commanded that "this Odin shall have for his horses" or "this shall be for Odin’s horses." Should anyone neglect this offering to Odin’s horses, it was believed he would be punished by receiving a poor grass harvest in his meadow the following year."

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Below text from page 17 of Werewolves, Warriors and Winter Sacrifices: Unmasking Kivik and Indo-European Cosmology in Bronze Age Scandinavia (2022) by Anders Kaliff and Terje Oestigaard (published by Uppsala Universitet)

"One may identify four ways in which it was believed that a person could become a wolf. The most common way was, as pointed out by Brown & Anthony (2019), through the youth war bands, the kóryos or Männerbünde. The initiate was selected at the age of eight and trained for four to eight years. At the midwinter solstice, the neophytes were initiated into the war band and, in some cases, sent away as outlaws to live in the forest as wolf and dogs for four years. Second, during the harvest, the corn-spirit could embody the last sheaf, often in the form of an animal - a wolf, dog or mare. These animals were either sacrificed as part of harvest rituals to mark the beginning of winter, or, in the case of domesticated animals, they were kept in the farmhouse for use in specific rituals at midwinter solstice. If an animal was sacrificed, its hide could be used as a hood that would transform the ritual protagonist of sowing rituals the following spring. Third, numerous sources describe how humans could actively transform themselves into werewolves. One way was to pronounce a spell while proposing a toast; another was to climb through a belt. Lastly, a less common way of becoming a wolf was by birth."

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Images from book "Pen and Pencil Sketches of Faröe and Iceland" (1862) by W. J. Linton

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In Germania (chapter 40), written in 98 AD by the Roman historian Tacitus, described the Earth goddess Nerthus:

“they are distinguished by a common worship of Nerthus, that is, Mother Earth, and believes that she intervenes in human affairs and rides through their peoples. There is a sacred grove on an island in the Ocean, in which there is a consecrated chariot, draped with cloth, where the priest alone may touch. He perceives the presence of the goddess in the innermost shrine and with great reverence escorts her in her chariot, which is drawn by female cattle. There are days of rejoicing then and the countryside celebrates the festival, wherever she designs to visit and to accept hospitality. No one goes to war, no one takes up arms, all objects of iron are locked away, then and only then do they experience peace and quiet, only then do they prize them, until the goddess has had her fill of human society and the priest brings her back to her temple. Afterwards the chariot, the cloth, and, if one may believe it, the deity herself are washed in a hidden lake.”

The book Barbarian Rites: The Spiritual World of the Vikings and the Germanic Tribes by Hans-Peter Hasenfratz (page 109) goes on to further explain:

“Nerthus (*Nerþuz) was nothing other than the earlier Germanic feminine form of Old West Norse Njǫrðr. Because the categories of words known as feminine and masculine u-stems are indistinguishable in their inflection, a later North Germanic linguistic development of the feminine form would have likewise had to have been Njǫrðr—and therefore if the god Njǫrðr might have had a sister and feminine counterpart (as Frey has in Freyja), she would have had the same name as him. Because both deities (Nerthus and Njǫrðr) have a connection to fertility (compare, too, the likely etymology of the name, which relates to a notion of “below”) and are associated with the sea, the situation could be that in Nerthus we have an attestation for the early form of the name for Njǫrðr’s twin sister, whose existence is indeed preserved in the North, although her name, which would also be reconstructed as Njǫrðr, is not recorded. Or it could be the other way around: in Njǫrðr we have a late form of the name for the twin brother of Nerthus, who would have also been called *Nerþuz, but of whose existence Tacitus did not preserve any record.”

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image from "The Arts and Crafts of Our Teutonic Forefathers" (1910) by Gerard Baldwin Brown

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Image from "Sagaen om Ragnar Lodbrog og Hans Sønner" (1880)

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Image from "Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde" (1911)

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“The warriors who were initiated to Óðinn and had lived their lives as Odinic warriors were taken home by the god himself” – from essay The Warrior in Old Norse Religion by Jens Peter Schjødt, P. 284 from book Ideology and Power in the Viking and Middle Ages (2011)

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Below text from “LOKI, THE VÄTTE, AND THE ASH LAD: A STUDY COMBINING OLD SCANDINAVIAN AND LATE MATERIAL” by Eldar Heide (Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 7 (2011) pages 63-106)

“It seems that there were two Lokis. One was a vätte 'domestic spirit' living under or by the fireplace, helping farmers with the farm work and attracting wealth to the farm. The other, the mythical character, was very different but still derived from the vätte, and many Loki myths allude to the vätte. The vätte Loki is most easily seen in late traditions, but there are strong reasons to believe that he existed in medieval traditions, too. Factors within the late corpus and its relation to other late material indicate ancientness, and essential parts of it can be anchored to medieval material.” P.63

“In many parts of Sweden and Norway people attributed the crackling or whistling of a fire, or the sudden flare of a fire from the embers, or the blowing of ash, to the Vätten — he was blowing on the ashes or the fire, or spanking his children, causing them to scream (= the crackling/whistling). In Telemark, Norway, some of these phenomena were attributed to Loke (…) The example of Setesdal, next to Telemark, in which small 'sacrifices' of food were made to the Vätten in the fire (vetti, feminine definite); and in Telemark itself, the recipient of this was Loke (Celander 1911, 47, 49; Skar 1903-16, III, 27).” P.66

“Sacrifices to Loki in the fireplace do not necessarily mean that Loki is the fire, just that he (and his people) live under or by the fireplace. This understanding is supported by the richer evidence of the Vätten: sacrifices may be deposited in the corners of the fireplace, not necessarily in the fire, and when the Vätten is blowing on the embers and the fire flares up again, the Vätten clearly is not the fire, even if he is closely connected to it (Celander 1911, 52; 1914, 76).” P.  67

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“The wolfish aspect of the Greek god Apollo seems to connect him both to death and to fertilizing and live-giving powers, in consonance with the other doubled or contradictory aspects of this god, who surely resembles another god with wolf names and companions, the Norse Óðinn”  

“The wolf-image ordinarily would be attached to the aggressive second function warrior but what might be called wolf-kings are also seen: Lykos or 'wolf' was a king-name in ancient Thebes; Sigmund and his son (in Volsunga saga) took their lycanthropic posture and powers from wolves' skins once worn by two shape-changing princes (konungasynir, Vols. c8) while the violent war-king of Norway, Harald lúfa, himself showing a near-berserk image, had his own berserker band of Wolfskins, Úlfhèðnar (Heimskringla 19).”

-- Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture (1997), page 647 by J.P. Mallory and Douglas Adams

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image from book "Sagaen om Ragnar Lodbrog og Hans Sønner" (1880) by Peter August Gödecke