Hey all. I'm currently in a English Medieval class for school and I've been wondering due to learning about the Danelaw and the Norse raids into England about the native religion of the Anglo Saxons before Christianity. So my question is: how closely related were the beliefs of the Anglo Saxon pagans and the Norse pagans. Were they close enough that Norse raiders would have recognized the early Anglo Saxons as having the same beliefs, or were they very different, only sharing some of the same Gods?
Thanks in advance for the answers, my professor is more focused on English ecclesiastical law than pre-Christian England so he kind of rushed through the early Anglo Saxons.
Its a bit of an open question. There's not as much known about Norse paganism as a quick glance on wikipedia or several pop history books might suggest to you.
A quick glance at wikipedia would suggest that there were clear analogues between the societies. Donar and Thor, Wodan and Odin (Othinn) and s on. However this is a vastly over-simplified view on the topic. Part of this is an issue that has become quite ingrained in popular depictions of Norse mythology.
If I were to ask you the basics of Norse mythology, you'd likely be able to tell me about the Giants rivalry with the Gods, Loki as a trickster, and the end of the Gods with Ragnarok. The way that these examples are bandied about would have most people think that they were universal and constant throughout the Norse world and perhaps applicable to other Germanic societies such as the Anglo-Saxons pre-conversion.
This is due to two main issue, the lack of indigenous sources on their own beliefs before conversion, and Christian biases after-conversion in the accounts that we do actually have.
The most famous sources on Norse mythology are of course the sagas. However the sagas are not a pure version of the Norse corpus that has come down to us unadulterated. The sagas were written in Iceland by a society that was several centuries after conversion. They only reflect a certain amount of pre-conversion pagan belief and certainly should not be used to extrapolate across the entire Norse world much less across the entire Germanic world.
So given what limited knowledge we do have of Norse mythology, how does that compare to what we have available on Anglo-Saxon paganism? In short its a veritable treasure trove compared to the measly bits that come down to us on Anglo-Saxon paganism.
The literary evidence that is available is incredibly skimpy even by comparison to other native pagan writings. There are some sprinklings in some texts that have come down to us, for example Bede mentions some pagan practices (not in any great detail but it IS there) and linguists, historians, and other scholars have attempted to piece together other pagan references in other writings that have come down to us. The famous leech book comes to mind for this.
Would the Norse be aware of this pagan past of the Anglo-Saxons? Its unlikely. The Anglo-Saxons themselves went to great lengths to portray their own conflicts as a Christian force against the pagans, and the Norse in response weren't exactly known for preserving and cultivating knowledge and education (at this point). It is difficult for me to imagine Norse raiders being aware of the cultural heritage of the Anglo-Saxons. It is possible that there was a certain degree of mutual intelligibility between Old Norse and Old English, but by the time the Norse were raiding England, the Anglo-Saxons had been Christian for nearly a century.
If you're curious about this topic, there's a few question in our FAQ that I think might be of interest to you.
/u/bloodswan on the intelligibility of Old Norse and Old English https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5r8src/did_the_vikings_learn_english/dd6cxnh/?context=3
and /u/bristoneman on the shared cultural connections of the Norse and Anglo-Saxons
If you're more interested in Anglo-Saxon relations with their own homelands, I have an answer that might be of interest to you.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/775pwz/what_was_the_cultural_connection_between_the/
Sources:
I've mentioned both Bede's history of the English and the "Leech book" and both are works with a plethora of translations and a great deal of secondary literature.
If you're interested in Britain specifically, my go to recommendation is Robin Fleming's Britain after Rome
For a more general overview, I'd suggest Peter Heather's Empire and Barbarians
/u/Steelcan909 has already linked to the answer I would have linked you to, so I'd just like to linger a little bit on the end of your question:
my professor is more focused on English ecclesiastical law than pre-Christian England so he kind of rushed through the early Anglo Saxons.
It's quite difficult to rush pre-Christian England from a legal or literate perspective, because (discounting the rich archaeological record) we know very, very little about it. Bede discusses the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, and sources his history from Gildas' earlier writings, but much of the intervening period is left largely unrecorded. In a similar way to the Icelandic sagas, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's histories for the 6th century in particular are pieced together largely from Welsh chronicles, and a collection of oral and folk memories, all of which could have been, and indeed were, editorialised heavily for political gain. The first Anglo-Saxon laws we know of come about because of the conversion of 597, although they do illustrate the form that pre-conversion law is likely to have taken.
It's also worth noting that before the bureaucratic and political overhaul brought on by the coming of the Church, the legal code would have been likely much different, limited by the scope of the immediate, physical control of the legislative warlord or petty king.