How similar was Anglo-Saxon paganism to the Norse paganism most people are more familiar with?

by The_Manchurian

Did Wotan have one eye and two ravens? Did Thunor have a magic hammer? Did the Gods fight giants? Was Loki a thing at all (I can't think of the Anglo-Saxon version of Loki)? Did Anglo-Saxons believe in Hel and Valhalla?

Steelcan909

Let's get one thing straight before I dive into the meat of this question. We actually don't know nearly as much about Norse heathenry as it seems at first glance. All of our contemporary and roughly contemporary sources on Norse religious practices are Christian and thus pretty biased against these pagans.

The famous description of Norse sacrifice at Uppsala for example comes from a German bishopwho had a vested interest in playing up their savagery and barbarism.

However when most people think "Norse mythology" they go to the sagas. These books are also pretty unreliable when trying to reconstruct pre-Christian Norse beliefs. They were only compiled centuries after conversion by a Christian society, and so they cannot be held to be the immutable truth of Norse religious practices. Furthermore they're not necessarily reflective of wider beliefs in the Norse world. The version of this religion as seen in the sagas is just a fragment of one society's remembrance of these traditions and practices centuries after conversion. If all of this sounds like it makes the sagas perhaps not the best source, that's because they aren't.

Archaeology is extremely useful but very limited. It can tell us about specific figurines, pendants, burial practices, and so on, but it's impossible to really construct reason and motive. It provides a solid basis for speculation, but cannot provide anything definitive.

Now strip away all of those biased sources and you are left with basically what is left to historians, as far as textual evidence, for Anglo-Saxon paganism. The only source that even touches on possible Anglo-Saxon pagan practices is Bede in his History of the English Church and People.

Much has been dissected from what he mentions. He talks about one instance where a high priest converts to Christianity, and bears arms and mounts a stallion, to destroy the temple he formerly oversaw. However efforts to reconstruct an entire system of religion from this biased mention seems a little....poorly thought out. There's no reason to assume what may have held true in one specific kingdom was true of others. This hasn't stopped historians from trying of course. Robert Chaney lays out some quite plausible ideas on Anglo-Saxon religion, particularly the role Kings may have played in religious life. However much of his work is outdated and under increased scrutiny.

Some aspects of Anglo-Saxon beliefs can still be gleamed though. Kristopher Poole argues quite convincingly for the centrality of horses and horse consumption as a central activity in pre-Christian England. The importance of horses is also quite well attested throughout Germanic cultures, from Tacitus to the Sagas, so this is a reasonable inference.

But, the recongizable aspects of Norse religion are conspicuously absent in what is available about Anglo-Saxon religion. Archaeology only goes so far. It is impossible to know if Woden had two Ravens for example.


Sources: I've used quite a bit of Robin Fleming's Britain After Rome when talking about the archaeological evidence.

Marilyn Dunn's The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England

Kristopher Poole, "Horses for Courses?"

I've also mentioned Robert Chaney's work, but I caution that it is significantly out of date.

Bede's, History of the English Church and People