The Pagan Artifacts of the British National Museum

foreign [Music] and welcome back to the wisdom of Odin today I'm going to have a very chaotic video for you and I really have no idea how it's going to turn out at the time of filming this behind me here is the British national museum housing over 8 million different artifacts and being established 250 years ago more than 250 years ago and it's going to take all day to go through but primarily what I'm searching for of course is any artifacts pertaining to the Pagan past the pre-christian past of Iron Age and Bronze Age northern Europe I know one of the most famous artifacts here is the helmet of Sutton who and so we're definitely going to be checking that out I'll be getting lots of footage for you and if I can find places to film I'll be whispering some behind the scenes stuff for you and giving you some interesting details on artifacts in here I know I've already been looking up some of them uh and if I can find them I'm really excited to show you some of them as a lot of them are very rare artifacts from the early days of Britain when they were actually practicing pagans and had a very unique practice behind them as they interacted with the Romans so with that let's go ahead and get in here and show you the British national museum and what artifacts we can find inside foreign [Music] so it's going to be very hard to film any kind of bits in here I'm going to do my best but their backgrounds may not be that interesting but definitely this is the largest museum I have ever been in and it's free which is really crazy to me because most museums in the states are definitely not freeing there are so many different exhibits here I don't think you can take it all in in one day this is a multiple day thing if you want to see everything so let's go find some really old stuff [Music] thank you take me very long the stone right behind me here has some early examples of Irish om I think it's actually what it's called I've been saying a lot of people say agum but om on the stone behind me here what I find very interesting about ohm in general is that it fulfills a very similar purpose to runestones in Scandinavia even though this is found in Ireland and they've also been found om has also been found in indeed it just rolled as well and so this is just a memorial stone to someone who died so the fact that we have Traditions very similar but not very similar things just in different languages that fulfilled similar purposes that's the kind of stuff I really like about the ancient world foreign so this is the earliest point of European you know history and so I'm gonna search for some interesting cultural or religious artifacts in here and report back to you I think this is going to work out pretty well it's not too crowded in here so this right here 10 000 year old mask look at that it's got little eye holes on everything so they don't know if this was used for hunting or ceremonial purposes obviously I'm inclined to say it's for ceremonial practices because that's very spooky and I like it and I want to wear it so yeah I think that's really cool and for all the people out there who say we shouldn't put antlers on our head here's a great example that people have been doing that for thousands of years right over here this little play figure if you can see this is an uh 5 000 year old Idol made up play that no one really knows what it is now the most obvious suggestion is that it could be a household deity or a deity that you know we just don't know the name of obviously we're not going to know the name of this because they didn't have a writing system but it is very eerie to look at I really like the form and the shape so you decide is it an ancient deity or an ancient alien quick rapid fire around here we got ancient drums made out of chalk that's interesting and then over here I saw some of these in Scotland as well there are these just little Stone balls that have unique shapes and have been found scattered across uh the British Isles mostly in Scotland so no one really knows what they are but they are quite functional so you decide to get ancient deities or Ancient Aliens all right so right behind me here as I slip into the Shadows this is a bronze shield from 2000 years ago found in Wales so long before the swedes and the Scandinavians came over and yet these almost exact bronze ceremonial Shields because there's no way this is used for fighting this exact bronze Shield has been found in many Swedish Graves as well and I think just Scandinavian grapes in general often left as a ceremonious object and so you have people in Wales doing this 2000 years ago as far as I know you have people in Scandinavia doing it around that same tunnel interesting connections these are the questions I always had going into these places it's like wait so these people knew each other and yet they were they were very distant from what we know of History fascinated stuff here's an interesting one as well right here so this gold cape was also found in Wales for around the same time period as the shield I just showed you um I've never seen this before never even heard of it but it's entirely made of gold from what I can tell it was discovered in the 1800s and it's been reconstructed from its original form and they carefully tested it on a person and whoever wore this was very restricted from movement and so their only thought is this was a ceremonious object now that could have been for royalty but typically royalty and ceremony and religion were all kind of wrapped together at some point so this gold came more than likely in my professional opinion was used for some kind of religious ceremony 3000 years ago 2000 years ago in Wales [Music] going forward here so right here we have the transition into the Iron Age and the Celtic era of the exhibit uh some some notable things right here and again this is Celtic if you need more proof that I'm not you know bullshitting you here here is a map of what Celtic means here in the museum so Celtic is a very broad term so anyways some of the interesting things over here this Shield absolutely gorgeous beautiful probably not religious in origin but absolutely gorgeous further down we have a Ford's helmet found in the river Tim so around where I'm at currently in London and again no one really knows what this is It's very rare find as far as like a horned helmet uh again horn helmets more than likely were ceremonious and then down here we have a mirror what is interesting about this mirror is the description below saying oh we mostly find these mirrors in Southern England we don't really find them anywhere else at this time created and yet at the same time period the pigs were carving this dang Mir almost exactly further north up in Scotland the day pigs knew about this mirror or carving it or we haven't found any up there but we found some down here history is wild very interesting I love it though why were the pigs drawing it and why have we only found them in the south may not be an official historian but I did take art history and one of those things I learned in our history is the history is a lot of pots let me tell you they're kind of boring to me and this is probably why I never actually became an official historian it's because I really don't want to have to look at pots all day foreign and now we've entered the Roman section of the Roman interaction with the British Isles at this time we didn't have a lot of artifacts from the Iron Age because this was pre-roman basically and a lot of what we know from that kind of past is very limited to archaeological data whereas the Romans were making tons of art they were building cities and they were writing things down so typically we have much more information about the Roman interactions during that time period with the British Isles and uh yeah this is yeah this is only one section I feel like I've been here for hours but on this map right here you can see the extent of Rome's interaction with the British Isles going all the way up into Scotland and then eventually the Roman Empire was collapsing and they eventually left but there was tons of battles tons of Conquest tons of history I mean right here on this island of Anglesey is where the Last Stand that the Druid supposedly was either the raids of buddhica all things I'm going to be talking about Channel moving forward but let's see what kind of artifacts we use spine while I'm in here right now foreign [Music] so the amount of religious iconography is sadly very low in this room but I figured this would be a good precursor as I'm going to actually start making more content about the Roman interactions with Pagan religions or at least like the way they interact with them in general so essentially how they reacted they would come into a new area they would look at those deities and be like hey keep worshiping your Gods pay us taxes adopt our language we're going to teach you how to write and you know submit some troops to the legions and that's basically how they conquered most territories and if they didn't do that then they would try to invade forcibly and then bring people into the Roman Empire and as if I research more into the Roman Empire they've really been doing this since the beginning uh is when they take new lands they adopt people and then replace them with Romans and so that's what we see with a lot of the artwork from the areas that they actually conquered and invaded or at least try to invade and so a lot of the iconography about Celtic deities transitioned into Roman iconography but there was a transitional period and you can see some of that style changing over time um a few other things to note uh vote of shrines became popular at this time as well and then romanizing the names of certain deities and so a lot of the deities we learn about from ancient Britain uh all across the British Isles uh are a romanized names a good example of this comes from uh the Netherlands with nahalinia Goddess that I've been around personally however with that helenia that's a romanized name and we actually don't know the original name of nehalidia and this is true for a lot of what happened to the early britons as well so much of the religious iconography that is left in this exhibit is all through here uh probably the most famous and probably the most known for this area is this serving dish serving platter dedicated to Oceans oceans was the Roman god of the sea uh so I mean obviously this is a Roman related thing but it's an absolutely beautiful piece and we don't hear much about the dedication to Oceanus and I don't think many of us actually realize that the word for ocean that we still use today comes from oceanis the Roman god of the seas and so I always find that interesting there's a few other things scattered about here that I was kind of able to find and you know I've kind of shown you throughout this I haven't really found anything that's awe-inspiring right here is a forward to a a possible British deity there's some offerings that were tossed into the healing pools at bath which I'm going to be talking about in a future video but in general the Roman relationship to the Celtic and early Britain people um again was hey keep worshiping we're going to teach you some language payus taxes gives us give us soldiers and comply or we'll invade you that was basically how it would go and then the culture kind of transitioned and morphed and changed and which is one of the reasons it's really hard to research the early British religion because it was so romanized and again something I'm going to be talking about in the future oh yeah [Music] so the last section we actually have to talk about here is the Anglo-Saxon pictish Celtic Viking era that happened right towards the end of the Pagan era and the conversion area era into Christianity and so the first thing to actually talk about here comes from around 700 that comes from France really but it was here and display absolutely incredible piece it's called the Frankish casket uh absolutely beautiful decorated with runes throughout now this is a Christian piece however it does feature several motifs and several stories from the Anglo-Saxon era including a story about Weyland the Smith which is a pretty famous and well-known Anglo-Saxon myth because it's one of the few that actually has survived and so the story of Weyland is very similar to the story of voland which I'll be exploring and the sense that he was captured by a king to Smith he goes against the King kills his sons and then forges cups out of the skulls of his sons and so this is depicted on this casket now the casket itself is made of whale bone and again it's just highly detailed now the other story on the top is a story that's incomplete we really don't know that much about which is sad because we really don't know that much about specific Anglo-Saxon history and mythology and this story is about a person named Eagle who is fending off people with a bow and I think weyland's involved in some way if I read that that plaque correctly and then there's other stories about the Earth around listen Remus and they're nursing by the the She Wolf there's also a story about the three Magi and then something about Jerusalem on there as well so a very intricate box and represents stories from the Roman era the Christian era and the Pagan era and within mythology so just really fascinating uh but yeah I'm gonna go in there and see what else there's fine but I think the main thing is going to be the Sutton who horde and the Sutton who helmet [Music] I just saw the Sutton Goose stuff and read all of it admittedly I didn't know that much before coming here so a quick recap if you don't know the Sutton hoof helmet and the Sutton who burial Mount is one of the most famous finds in all of British history but also one of the few artifacts for the Anglo-Saxon era in fact the fact that a section here in the British museum is not very big on the Anglo-Saxons that's because their timeline was not very long for their unique existence so after the fall of Rome Anglo-Saxons being German started migrating to the British Isles and they were here for about 200 years and around 100 years in is when Christianity started moving in and the unique culture and unique mythology of the anglo-saxes began to dissipate now of course they were very similar to their Scandinavian brothers and sisters as well as Mainland Germany so a lot of what they believed in is very similar to what we know about Norse mythology however they had many distinct variations and I think you can see that within their work now they also had lots of commonalities most notably the amount of depictions of spear dancers there are several objects here that actually witness and show Spirit answers that have been found elsewhere in the ancient world now the actual Sutton who burial mound itself of course is quite marvelous the helmet that has been found there is is very popular and it is something to behold I mean they have a reconstructed form that shows what it might have looked like in the past and they actually did say that it was used in battle at least once as it shows signs of damage from Battle so it wasn't just a ceremonious thing and so obviously the person buried here was a king now something that I think a lot of people don't realize when they just kind of gloss over history is the Sutton who helmet is not of course a viking age helmet it's not a Viking helmet this is an Anglo-Saxon burial noun and Anglo-Saxon fine uh one important note about the helmet that I overheard from a tour is that the bird figure that actually adorns the front of the helmet has groovy eyes and that one of the eyes was purposely made a different way so that way when light reflects into it it actually doesn't shine and so one eye shines while the other one does not does that sound like something to you uh so there's definitely motifs of other Pagan ideas in here including Odin I mean this this mask was very heavily open Odin based if it didn't include Spirit answers On It originally and then of course if it has one eye blacked out there's definitely an Odin influence here as well some important notes before I have to move on as I think I have a security person circling me is the fact that there were other things found in the sport of course including a drinking horn remnants of a leer and then uh where a man ends up a cauldron as well and then a weapon as well as a really highly decorated shield and so all these pieces are incredibly beautiful [Music] foreign all right we have reached the end of this video I am absolutely exhausted I probably only covered 10 of this total Museum obviously I wanted to find all the stuff pertaining to bronze and Iron Age uh Pagan Europe I think I I went through most of it I hope I was able to record and share with you uh the majority of artifacts that have to deal with this time period and with this belief system um I did a walk through of everything else there's so much here there's ancient Egyptian ancient Sumerian Mesopotamian and then 20 different floors I haven't seen or experienced uh so definitely highly recommend coming here it's free it's massive uh and there's lots of really good stuff here the Sutton who helmet definitely being one of the biggest uh things here and for a reason it's really beautiful and again to me they didn't say that it had a connection to Odin but the two eyes one not shining completely connected to Odin you got Spirit answers on there absolutely incredible um so if you like this video please make sure you like And subscribe and all that good stuff honestly today was absolutely exhausting trying to find places to film so if you like the content here please think about supporting me on patreon it's how I'm able to come to these places and share them with all of you so please think about going down below and supporting me there and with that I am off to get some rest of maybe a cup of coffee and I will see you in the next adventure here in northern Europe [Music] thank you

Channel: Jacob Toddson

Views: 7,533

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: PylESPE3F-M

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 22 2023