Sun Worship in Northern Europe – Horses, Boats and More

As Heathens the times we most tend to look at in the past are the historical periods where we have intersection between textual manuscripts and archaeological finds, starting from the Pre-Roman Iron Age (500-1 BCE) where Caesar writes of the battles with Germanic tribes, through the Roman Iron-Age (1-400 CE), then into the Germanic Migration Period (which peaked around 375-568 CE) culminating in the Viking Age (793–1066 CE), and sometimes even post conversion examined into the late Medieval period. But examining preceding time periods in the region can give us some insights even though culture and religious practices changed. So there can be some value in looking at the adjacent Iron Age Cultures like Jastorf Culture (6th C BCE – 1st C BCE) and La Tene Culture (450 BCE – 1 BCE), and preceding Bronze Age cultures like the Hallstatt culture (1200 – 450 BCE, which we associate more with later Proto-Celtic culture), and the Nordic Bronze Age (1750–500 BCE).

The Nordic Bronze Age (1750 BCE – 500 BCE) was characterized by a significant and highly prevalent sun cultus, many see in the Trundholm Sun Chariot archaeological find an echo to similar stories within the Indo-European umbrella, but what is more recognizable for Heathens is what appears to be an earlier iteration we later recognize as the story of Sunna and her chariot within Norse cosmological myths. So you can look even further back to try to trace certain threads of belief and praxis (such as examining the wagon processionals).

One of (if not the earliest) surviving account of Germanic tribal solar lore comes to us from first century Roman historian Tacitus’ Germania, that states “beyond the Suiones [tribe]” a sea was located where the sun maintained its brilliance from its rising to its sunset, and that “[the] popular belief” was that “the sound of its emergence was audible” and “the form of its horses visible”. Among Northern Germanic cultures we see the story reverberate.

But the concept of the sun with horses dates even further back, the Nordic Bronze Age (1700–500 BCE) seems to have focused heavily around a sun cultus. We have an inscribed glyph of a horse with sun on a razor found at Neder Hvolris near Viborg, and a petroglyph at Fossum (near Tanum). There’s other figural inscriptions and glyphs too.

Sun Horse on a razor found at Neder Hvolris (Denmark).

Sun Horse petroglyph in field 262 at Fossum (near Tanum, Sweden)

Exploring Our Gods and Goddesses – Coventina

Often times Heathens focus primarily on Viking Age Scandinavia, followed by Anglo-Saxon England, and more rarely continental Germanic Europe during the Migration Era, and the earlier Iron Age during contact with the Roman Empire. But they tend to overlook Roman occupied England for exploration. Yet there’s a wealth of information to be found that can show insights into who heathens were venerating. There is no such thing as a pure Germanic heathen religion, polytheism allows for deities from other traditions to be syncretized by others. Through war, trade, alliance, slavery, and personal interactions there’s always levels of blending and interaction. As such, to my mind, regardless of the origin of a deity, if they’re worshipped (especially on a documented scale by ancient Germanic heathens), those deities can and should become part of our heathen tradition too. With the understanding that to truly understand any power, learning as much as you can about the mysteries and cosmological nuance the deity had in his or her culture of origin is necessary to understand the deity.

Depiction of the Goddess Coventina upon a votive altar to her. RIB 1534.

As part of my explorations into Roman era Britain, we see Germanic worship to Coventina, a local Romano-British Goddess. We know thanks to numerous inscriptions found in the archaeological record that she was worshipped by Roman military auxiliary units from specific Germanic tribes (Batavians, Frisiavones, Cuberni) as attested along Hadrian’s Wall. These were erected by Germanic soldiers serving in the Roman Army. We have other inscriptions to the Goddess that came from individuals, including a couple we know were also Germanic heathens (Maduhus, Crotus). While we only definitively know she was worshipped at Fort Brocolitia there are some other sites that have been theorized to be connected with her too.

Understanding the Sources of the Northern Tradition

So you want to learn about the Northern Tradition, but don’t want to read scholarly analysis, or any ruminations from modern practitioners. You just want one source from the culture to learn everything that’s historically authentic to the culture but tells you about the cosmology, and the details of all the rituals? Well sorry to burst your bubble, but that doesn’t exist.  

There is an old joke, that ours is the religion with homework (and really, all religion has homework). There’s a lot you need to understand in the big picture before you can really start to tease out the details of pre-Christianity.

Before I go down the very nuanced rabbit hole, I want to make one thing abundantly clear: the history, the stories, the folk customs, the archaeology are all useful and important. But a faith is a living thing, and you have to live a religion, which means finding ways to practice it. How do you conduct rituals? What offerings do you give? What prayers do you say? What are your devotions? How do you live a religion? You can find helpful resources and inspiration from the past but at some point you have to venture out and find your own way of living the religion.

I also want to stress that you do not need to be a scholar to follow this religious path. The only thing standing between you developing a relationship with our Gods, the ancestors, and the vaettir is simply you. Some enjoy delving into the history, to immerse themselves and tease out nuances. Others don’t, and merely want a framework of understanding so they can then move onto living the religion through the customs that come with a living and ever evolving practice. But for those of you who want to delve into the vast knowledge from antiquity, the following should help define a helpful framework to have in mind before you start your own explorations of the sources. This is useful as well to read, even if you only ever plan to do a little bit of exploration into the ancient sources on your own.

We can find a lot of information if you’re patient by going through the old literary and archaeological sources, but it’s not easy. For those of us in the Northern Tradition we have the misfortune that so little has survived to us from ancient believers. Unlike some other major polytheisms, like the unbroken tradition of Hinduism, or other major polytheistic traditions that have a large corpus of work by believers from antiquity about their own religious culture that survives into the present day: Kemetic, Hellenic, and Cultus Deorum, etc.

First you have to understand the history, the various sources (and how they connect to the historical context). Then comes the harder element, the fact even when rituals are mentioned it’s usually in passing, or only in vague context. In order to obtain our creation story you have to look at five different sources: Völuspá, Grímnismál, Vafþrúðnismál, Gylfaginning, and Alvissmal.  So it’s very common that we have to take little puzzle pieces from a range of material to try to piece together specific details. This means to fill in the gaps many look at the entirety of the Northern Tradition umbrella from the lore (various literary sources including (but not limited to) the sagas, eddas, & skaldic poetry, various Anglo-Saxon sources, as well as Byzantium, Roman & Arab accounts, late appearing folk customs & tales, and even archaeological finds.

Approaching this material with an understanding of how this culture viewed the seasons, and drafted their calendar can help you tease apart the timing of some of the rituals too. While we can find commonalities in the over-arching shared worship to Odin/Woden, there were also unique traditions tied to specific settlements or tribal groups that to our knowledge did not appear elsewhere too. This has led in the modern movement to a range of different approaches, some are strictly reconstructionist from a specific area, and others may be more universal across the entirety of the umbrella, plus a range of other denominations in between.