The Differences Between Germanic and Nordic Paganism

upon arriving in germany i became very curious if there was any difference between germanic paganism and nordic paganism or norse paganism as we call it today and when doing my research i thought at first it would become this chicken or the egg debate which came first was germanic paganism the root of nordic paganism or vice versa and what i found out and what actually is the main subject of this video is the differences between the two because at first they can appear very similar but through my research and what i will be sharing with you today i found that they are actually two very different faiths that have been kind of sandwiched together because of their similarities hello my name is jacob and i am a norse pagan and today we're going to be exploring the differences between germanic and nordic paganism [Music] what do you think happened to him so as we're getting started with this video i do also want to mention why i'm saying nordic paganism now and not norse paganism um there is a big debate emotionally in the scholarly community um that the term norse paganism is incorrect and it probably is um especially when looking at you know germanic paganism you know when i say germanic and then norse paganism it sounds awkward and odd and so chances are that we should be saying nordic paganism but at the end of the day this is the term most people have associated with the faith and so that's why i say norse pagan and nordic pagan just doesn't roll off the tongue as well but for the sake of this video i will be using nordic paganism pretty often just because it combines better with germanic and nordic paganism so to get into the history of both the germanic and the nordic sides um it's actually kind of difficult to tell which came first which is why there's kind of a large debate about it mostly because of the last ice age or at least the miniature ice age that existed about 10 000 years ago if there was any civilization or any tribes that existed in scandinavia at this time all information of them would have been wiped out it isn't until after the ice age that we actually start seeing evidence of people at least in numbers existing in scandinavia so a lot of our archaeological evidence from you know scandinavia comes from around the bronze age whereas in germany and the you know germania germanic area we have evidence to suggest that people have been there for well over 200 000 years it's some of the most some of the oldest artifacts in the world have been found in the germany region um so we have much more you know artifacts physical evidence to suggest that culture existed and with culture comes religion um it wasn't really until the neolithic era that it seems like there was society at least in the uh germanic area and it's after this period like i said in scandinavia that we start seeing society as well [Music] one thing i was thinking of actually while filming next to this lake it's really crowded so it's hard to actually get up there um but i mean this is a huge lake and imagine what it would be like to be actually you know a germanic pagan you know in the historical times when this you know whole area was just pagans i mean imagine what it would be like to be around this lake you know worshipping old gods i mean that's pretty incredible i mean to think that this region i mean you can see mountains and the distance here i mean the power in that knowing that everyone around here that sat on this lake i'm enjoyed these views um we're thinking about you know nature gods we're thinking about you know something bigger than themselves i mean it's hard to say what the faith was like as you can tell from many of my videos um you know it's hard to tell what it was like historically but it still is a wonderful fantasy in my mind to think what thoughts and conversations were had looking at this beautiful lake um on days such as this hundreds of years ago now when it comes to the religious side of these things artifacts don't always give us evidence to you know really help on the religious side one thing on the side of the germanic um you know ritualistic you know things that we have as far as artifacts is the fact that they use bogs for their sacrifices and bogs typically keep things pretty well preserved including the bodies that were actually used in a sacrificial way and also we have found other things such as swords like bent swords thrown into bogs both in the germanic region and as well as in denmark [Music] anyways so the historical artifacts that we have um mostly come from the germanic side at least in the you know the pre-history the you know the ancient times whereas most of our artifacts from the nordic side come from around the bronze age and then even later um so like i said with the bog bodies and like the bog artifacts as well we actually do have you know really good evidence of offering so we can see that yes offerings were made but we also know that many of their idols and you know things they used to venerate the gods were made of wood and other materials that eventually faded away but the reason we know about these wooden idols is because of the book sources that we have um so the it really if it wasn't for tacitus's germania we would have very little evidence to really build anything off of a germanic pagan past or at least knowing anything about their ritual practices or anything about the you know really a lot of things about their culture um just because of what the romans were recording about them now naturally as something i've kind of dug up with the celts as well and the gauls is the romans were really bad about making negative propaganda about the celtic people and the germanic people to kind of drum up hatred for them and against their campaigns and to drum up you know more support so again it's hard to say what is actually true in these things and tacitus actually i don't think ever traveled to germany himself he was mostly getting it from reports from other soldiers and people who have been up that way but regardless germania is a wonderful source material for the religious practices of the germanic peoples at least in around the first century i believe germany was published in i think it was like 98 ce or something like that it was pretty early on but like i said if we didn't have this we would know very little about the germanic pagan practices or at least the pre-christian germanic pagan practices um so this is where the kind of the tables turn whereas we have a lot of archaeological evidence um from like you know the germanic you know neolithic era and a lot of things to go further back we actually don't have a lot of information about you know basically their time of conversion we know about earman sewell we know about you know different groves that were destroyed in their campaigns we know you know obviously charlemagne but again we don't know much about practices whereas the nordic side we have the poetic and the prose edda where of course we get a lot of our information from and this is something i found when i was looking into germanic paganism is you actually find a lot of the information brings you back to the prose and poetic edda and it's like oh no i know this is scandinavian and not only is it scandinavian it's actually icelandic i mean there really isn't a lot of stuff in the pros and poetic edda that comes from norway or sweden i mean most of this comes from the icelandic sagas it comes from the icelandic people so there's probably a lot of information we've lost from norway sweden and denmark as well with the pros and poetic edda being made in around the 13th century we have a much more current account of what the practices would have been like or at least a you know reference guide to the faith in some way um now i should also mention saxo grammaticus's um history of the danes even though this isn't specifically about the germanic people it's about the danes so denmark it still gives us a decent amount of information although the you know actual faith side of things is very misconstrued um it really talks about things such as like you know the lineage of the gods and things like that that you know we see in stories writings as well but for the most part most people it seems like don't take that very seriously so what we can tell from these book sources mostly germania and of course the poetic and prose edda um and you know of course we also have other sources like the icelandic sagas um and we do have um you know a few accounts of heathen rituals at least the one up salah um so from what we can tell um is that the faiths were different they were still built around you know honor and reputation and sacrificing to the gods and things like that um but there were a lot of minor differences at least from what we can tell from the source material we even have things such as the fact that we can actually kind of infer that the scandinavian nordic influence actually did have you know indoor shrines indoor temples you know there's stories of temples being built the guides where the germanic people seem to have exclusively built outdoor shrines um and also built in groves this was something that was very sacred to them was building in these outdoor locations um especially things like irminsul even their you know burial mounds which we see burial mounds of course all the way across from germania all the way up through denmark all the way in through scandinavia so this is something that carries through as well another difference we see between the um germanic side and the nordic side comes in the form of the the vaughner deities or the vonnegut deities we see very little reference if no reference to them um within like tacitus's writing we don't really see any references archaeologically it seems like the veronica deities were fairly exclusive even to sweden is what i've been able to find out is that that was where they were primarily worshiped and this also brings me to the fact the deities that were worshipped were slightly different as well from the one account that we have of the like third-hand source of someone witnessing the upsala events you know the uppsala temple um in the pre-christian scandinavian times um they honored odin freyr and thor and the primary deities followed and venerated within germania were um woden t tier which i don't know if tier had a different name or not honestly i haven't been able to find that and then donar or thor um and so their deities were slightly different at least who were focused on um the germanic people seemed to be more heavily focused on the war aspect because they were always at war with um somebody with the romans with the christians with charlemagne um with each other whereas the scandinavian the nordic yes they had you know infightings and eventually they had the raids and things like that from what i've been able to tell in my research they've been they were focused much more on things like trade wealth agriculture yes they still had the war aspect but they had other focuses i mean they're known as explorers travelers um and tradesmen as much as they were warriors um at least you know that's what we can tell it was one of the big differences so you know the deities they follow are going to be slightly different as well now again this is something i have kind of turned up you know really the only the key dramatic deities at least in their language differences because obviously they spoke different languages but you had waden and donar were the big ones now speaking of donar he is the biggest connection we have in the similarities between germanic and nordic paganism and even slavic paganism because you have peyron which is very similar and a very honored and venerated deity as well and so you have the nordic um worshiping and honoring thor very heavily we have evidence all over scandinavia to suggest that thor was venerated um and then you have donor evidence all over the place that donar was you know venerated and then of course payron as well so that's probably the biggest thing you know donor is probably the the cornerstone of this entire conversation because yes there are similarities between nordic and germanic and even slavic paganism um but that does not mean they were you know all together similar or you know very much they were not the exact same we're talking about a very large region that had you know varying beliefs among every single tribe you know for hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years and then you even have you know the scandinavian nordic side which is the same it was a tribal faith um there was no centralized power for any of these faiths so there was no one central idea and so even among people in norway and sweden and iceland there was going to be varying degrees of differences between um you know the faith and how it was practiced very much so in the germanic side as well um so to me you know if i have an argument to make or if i have a statement to make is it seems like that germanic and nordic paganism are very similar but they are actually different and what really has happened is we have more historical information for germanic archaeology and then we have more written source material for the nordic side and they have enough similarities or at least they have thor that joins them together and so they get kind of mushed together and they often get wrapped together in a lot of conversations when at the at their core in a historical way germanic and nordic paganism are actually quite different i want to take a brief intermission first off to thank you for watching this video and second off to remind you that if you do like the content here at the wisdom of odin a small donation to patreon really makes a huge difference and not only that i do like to give you lots of benefits so i've been sharing a lot of my story and journeys here in germany as also you get the community discord and possibly even early access videos so i have a link down below if you want to support the channel even further otherwise back to this video as always what does this have to do with us here in the modern day mostly this is a question i had when i came here to germany is it different as far as germanic paganism and nordic paganism yes i do believe they are different um and i think mostly it has to do with the history how these two cultures developed and changed throughout pre-history um and into the roman era and into the you know the end of paganism and the end of the pagan era um you know they're very different stories and so therefore the faith and the culture and the stories that they told are going to be different um and it's been really fascinating being here in germany and seeing the weird you know like mismatch of celtic beliefs germanic beliefs roman beliefs catholic beliefs basically everywhere i mean that's honestly one of the reasons i'm here in a you know monastery most likely this was built on a spot i can't prove it but this is something that was very common is monasteries and churches were often built on very sacred spots in the pagan era um and then there's things such as beer drinking that are still very common here there's like you know a sun wheel on one of the you know sculptures in here as well and there's these slight pagan elements everywhere while it's still catholic germaine as a whole is you know paganism is sprinkled everywhere and there might not be a whole book written about it but there's so many little things all over the place it is unique and it is wonderful but at the end of the day you know germanic paganism is about honoring gods honoring you know the community honoring your ancestors and honoring spirits of the land um and that's the same thing for nordic paganism as well it's about the gods you follow it's about you know the people that you venerate and it's about you know the spirits of the land and nature as well um these were you know three core principles something i focused on very heavy when i first got into this path something that is still important to me to this day because it's something that we can see across many pagan belief systems and definitely between germanic and nordic paganism again you know one other way to think about it is these face fill in the blanks for one another like here's the information that we had about nordic paganism here's the information that we have about germanic paganism there's gaps between the two and so throughout time and throughout practicing this space people have just kind of slid them together because they do answer questions one of my favorite books is myths and symbols in pagan europe and that's exactly what it does is it fills in the blanks with celtic germanic norse and even slavic paganism to give us a better picture of what northern spirituality would really be like in a pre-christian world i do think i'm going to go ahead and wrap this up thank you so much for watching this video again i hope i was able to make the points clear i hope i was able to kind of show you what i've been discovering while here in germany and the differences between nordic and germanic paganism so thank you so much and until the hall let's go [Music] you

Channel: Jacob Toddson

Views: 55,271

Keywords: pagan, Paganism, Norse Paganism, Norse, Norse myth, Norse mythology, asatru, Viking, Vikings, heathen, heathenry, books, list, Odin, Thor, Freya, gods, old gods, religion, wicca, Wiccan, shaman, shamanism, Nordic, yule, pagan holidays, yuletide, winter, pagan christmas, holidays, yggrasil, offering, sacrifice, heilung, ritual, Asatru for beginners, Asatru ritual, Asatru explained, Asatru religion, Norse paganism for beginners, norse pagan ritual, Norse Pagan Religion, norse pagan, the wisdom of odin

Id: MCMDln6phNg

Length: 15min 36sec (936 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021