Viking animism

Imagine a supernatural world. A world where the rivers, forests, and mountains have their own identity. A world where a blacksmith transforms a piece of stone into something fluid and subsequently produces a deadly sword from it. 

The world of our ancestors knew no distinction between natural and supernatural; in the absence of modern science, everything was experienced as supernatural. This was rooted in both their religion and the routines of daily life. Everything was intertwined: deceased ancestors, the connection with the land, nature, and the role of humans on earth. This formed a dharmic worldview of cosmic reciprocity, in which even magic was considered possible.

Animism is the belief that objects, places, and beings possess their own spiritual identity. This means that not only humans, but also animals, plants, stones, rivers, weather phenomena, and even human creations and words were considered to be ensouled. Each of these entities had its own consciousness and power.

Before the advent of Christianity, all European cultures were animistic. This animism originated from the Proto-Indo-European origin of our ancestors, probably mixed with the worldview of the Neolithic farmers who preceded them. However, this tradition goes even further back, making it shared with other peoples, such as the Native Americans, who migrated from Siberia to America via the Bering Strait during the last Ice Age.

The Vikings were also deeply animistic. They did not adopt this belief from their neighbors, the Sami, but it originated from their own thousands of years old tradition. Another branch of the Indo-European culture, the Romans, also had a strongly animistic society, in which hundreds of household gods, nymphs, demons, and geniuses were worshipped. Animism was interwoven throughout the Roman household, from oil lamps to shrines on the peaks of the Alps. Interestingly, the word 'Alps' is related to elves.

Ritual and daily life were closely intertwined during the Viking Age. The Scandinavians did not have a word for religion; they spoke of tradition or custom. This fundamentally differs from the way we currently understand religion within the Abrahamic traditions. This does not mean that the Vikings made no distinction between ritual and daily behavior, but that ritual actions often took place in ordinary social spaces. Activities such as spinning, forging, or building a new hall (great hall) had deep ritual meanings alongside their pragmatic functions.

Animism was not a replacement for belief in the gods; both were closely intertwined. The 'supernatural' had a hierarchical structure, similar to the social order of mortals. At the top were the gods, who watched over the cosmic order. Their greatest struggle was against chaos, embodied in Loki, the giants, and Ragnarok. From this perspective, the gods can be seen as less static: Freyja is not only the goddess of love, and Odin not merely the god of death. The gods traveled between the nine worlds, all connected via the world tree Yggdrasil. These worlds were inhabited by beings, both physical and in the form of spirit forces, who could be asked for advice, strength, or fertility.

Landvættir are spirits of the land in the old Norse belief. They are connected to specific places and, according to the stories, ensure the fertility of the land. In old Norse texts, they are sometimes described as dangerous: they would drive away people who are not welcome or harm the land. It was also believed that landvættir could become frightened by certain human actions, such as placing dragon heads on Viking ships. Therefore, it was important to treat them well. For example, people would leave food behind to maintain the bond with these spirits.

Academics have compared landvættir in various ways to other beings, such as elves, dwarves, and landdísir. Depending on the time and place, they were sometimes even considered the same kind of beings.

In the book Landnámabók, it is told about two brothers, Ingólf and Hjörleif, who moved from Norway to Iceland to settle there. Ingólf often performed rituals in honor of the gods and the landvættir, while his brother did not. Hjörleif was later murdered by his slaves at the place now called Hjörleifshöfði. Ingólf believed this happened because Hjörleif ignored the old pagan customs, including offering to the landvættir connected to specific places and ensuring the fertility of the land. The story emphasizes the deep gratitude of the Vikings for the fruits the land provided them and shows that those who did not adhere to the cosmic order could be in danger. No one dared to settle on that place afterward.

King Harald sent a sorcerer on a mission to transform and travel to Iceland to report what he found there. The sorcerer took the form of a whale. As he approached the land, he sailed along the west coast and northward around the island, and saw everywhere mountains and hills populated with landvættir – some large, others small – protecting the land.

In the Landnámabók story, it is told about a mountain dweller (Old Norse: bergbúi) who makes an agreement with a man named Björn. After Björn had almost lost all his goats to a lava flow, a buck appeared shortly afterward and sired offspring with his remaining goats. Thus, he eventually amassed much livestock and became wealthy. Björn maintained a friendly relationship with the landvættir in this story, who in return granted him prosperity and fertility.

It has also been suggested that Björn had to do something in return for the help he received. For example, he would have to offer food, similar to a practice described in Heimslýsing ok Helgifrœði, a sermon from the book Hauksbók. In that story, women place food by cairns or on flat stones, hoping that the landvættir would reward them with luck and wealth.

Landvættir are often associated with the landdísasteinar – stones in the northwest of Iceland that were treated with great respect until the 19th century. It was considered inappropriate to mow grass or let children play there. Although the term landdísir does not appear in Old Norse sources, it is believed that these beings lived in such stones, just like landvættir. This aligns with broader Germanic folklore, in which spirits such as elves and dwarves dwell in rocks, forests, and waterfalls.

In Landnámabók and other texts, it is described how people made offerings to nature spirits at sacred places. There is a story about a farmer, Koðrán, who collaborated with a spirit in a stone, until it was driven away with holy water by Christians (this story is, of course, written after the Christianization of Iceland). This spirit shows strong similarities with landvættir and mountain spirits.

Around the 12th century, people began to see elves and landvættir as separate beings: landvættir lived in hills and natural areas, while elves acquired divine attributes. In the Kormáks saga, an elfblót on a hill is described, which serves as an example of the later blending of these figures in Icelandic folk tales.

After the arrival of Christianity, the worship of landvættir was seen as a pagan and forbidden practice. In the Norwegian Gulating laws, which were written down in the second half of the 13th century, it was explicitly forbidden to believe that these spirits lived in sacred forests and at waterfalls. This belief was considered heresy because it was part of the old pagan traditions.

This disapproval is also echoed in religious texts from that time. For example, in the sermon Heimslýsing ok Helgifrœði, it is mentioned that some women still made offerings to landvættir, but according to the writer, this happened out of ignorance and foolishness. It is important to note that ordinary people in this period experienced Christianity and their original beliefs very differently from the writing elite. In practice, there was often a blend of both belief systems.

Various animals such as the wolf, the horse, the raven, and snakes played a central role in Old Norse animism. Each animal was revered for its own characteristic traits. Notable are the similarities between the animals revered in various Indo-European cultures.

The souls and graves of the ancestors also played an important role in animism. The grave was seen as a magical place where the ancestors resided. People could seek their advice or even sleep with them in anticipation of a vision. Graves, and especially burial mounds, formed, like swamps, a gateway to the afterlife. Grave gifts were regularly retrieved to the world of the living, where they were attributed with magical power.

But animism was not limited to nature. Man-made objects could also possess their own identity and magical power. Weapons, spindles, magic staffs, jewelry, and even clothing are examples of such animated objects.

Even runes were attributed with magical power. They offered protection and were often carved in sets of nine. Most magical rune inscriptions contain no words.

A fylgja is a supernatural being or spirit that is connected to a person's fate or fortune. This spirit can appear in dreams, often as a 'dream woman', but also in waking life, for example as an invisible or hostile presence.

The fylgja is considered a guardian spirit closely connected to one person. Although the word literally means 'follower', the fylgja usually goes ahead of its host. It often appears shortly before someone reaches an important place, and at the end of a person's life, it returns as a harbinger of death.

Sometimes a fylgja is not connected to one person but to an entire family. In that case, it is called an ættarfylgja, or a family follower. A related form of the fylgja is the dream woman, as described in the Gísla saga.

Additionally, in Icelandic folklore, the mara (nightmare) is sometimes seen as a dream fylgja that has detached from its original host and instead visits other people in their sleep, often with frightening consequences.

According to Else Mundal, the fylgja appears in two forms: as an animal or as a female spirit. These two variants have merged over time into one concept. Originally, the term fylgja probably referred to an animal spirit, and only later was it also used for female spiritual guides.

In Norse mythology, the hamingja was a female guardian spirit who determined a person's luck and fate. It was believed that this spirit accompanied someone throughout their life. The word 'hamingja' was therefore also used to denote luck or prosperity and still means 'luck' in modern Icelandic. 

Upon someone's death, the hamingja would pass on to a beloved family member, so it remained connected with the same family for generations, influencing their fate. It was even possible to temporarily lend the hamingja to someone else. For example, Hjalti Skeggiason asked King Olaf II of Norway to borrow his hamingja for a dangerous journey. 

The hamingja usually appeared during sleep in the form of an animal, but could also be the spirit of a sleeping person who acted as an animal. A well-known example of this is Bödvar Bjarki from the Hrólfs saga kraka. 

The concept of hamingja thus refers both to the personal guardian spirit and to the luck or life course that this spirit influences. 

Animism confronts us with the distance from our ancestors. For them, the supernatural world was completely intertwined with daily life. A thousand years ago, this changed: people began to focus more on the afterlife, with life sometimes being considered a necessary evil. Nowadays, many people no longer value these traditions, but rather focus on the individual, with an emphasis on comfort and material prosperity.