Germanic Religion and the Conversion to Christianity

Summary

Of All The Fields of early Germanic culture and literature, none has been as badly marred by ideological controversies as the study of the pre-Christian heathen Germanic religion. The great interest taken by the political and cultural leaders of the Third Reich in this field was unfortunately shared by many university teachers at the time. They saw this interest as a unique chance to promote their fields and themselves. This led to a nearly total lapse of interest after 1945. For almost thirty years after the Second World War, work in this field restricted itself either to minor studies or to the reprinting of the old handbooks with only cosmetic changes to hide the political flaws. There were, of course, exceptions too: the studies by Walter Baetke in the former GDR, by several Scandinavian scholars, or the excellent, if now outdated handbook by Derolez. But both among the public and the academic world, early Germanic religion was not a popular topic of study.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, this situation changed dramatically, and for the better. One reason for the renewed interest in this neglected area of research is the general fascination with non-Christian mythologies, whether of living religions or dead ones, particularly in the western world, and another may be the distinct upsurge in socalled new pagan religions. A more important factor may be that many aspects of the predominant religion of northwestern Europe for at least the whole first millennium A.D. are still unknown to a wider public or as yet unsolved altogether. Such aspects include the resistance of the old religion toward advancing Christianity, the role of heathendom for the early Germanic literatures, or even the question of continuity versus change within the pre-Christian Germanic society.

It is impossible in a single essay to provide a full picture of the research on a religion which, at least in northern Europe, had a longer history than Christianity and which, during the period of folk migrations extended into most areas of the European continent with the sole exception of the Peloponnese, and even there Viking travelers left their traces.