We can expect that the indigenous belief system and associated ritual was extremely important in day-to-day life of Scandinavians in the pre-conversion period. Knowing is another matter, since there is little evidence. And yet, internationally, people developed ways to handle the supernatural and to keep harm at bay while also hoping to attract benefit from their acts that were intended to deal with the powerful forces that lurk beyond the shadows.

There is a problem with the term "religion," however. That implies to the modern mind an organized, dogmatic institution with a hierarchy of priests and an established, accepted text and ritual associated with belief and practice. This is not what existed in pre-conversion Scandinavia: there is simply no evidence for this sort of institutionalization of belief and ritual. So what likely existed was highly personal and inconsistent, differing from person to person, and place to place.