"This book is written as an attempt to describe the traditions and beliefs of the Ancient Europeans" -- p. 6.

Surveys the pre-Christian beliefs of the Scandinavian and Germanic peoples. Provides an introduction to this subject, giving basic outlines to the sagas and stories, and helps identify the charachter traits of not only the well known but also the lesser gods of the age.

Thomas DuBois unravels for the first time the history of the Nordic religions in the Viking Age. "A seminal study of Nordic religions that future scholars will not be able to avoid."—Church History

The study of Old Norse Religion is a truly multidisciplinary and international field of research. The rituals, myths and narratives of pre-Christian Scandinavia are investigated and interpreted by archaeologists, historians, art historians, historians of religion as well as scholars of literature, onomastics and Scandinavian studies. For obvious reasons, these studies belong to the main curricula in Scandinavia but are also carried out at many other universities in Europe, the United States and Australia a fact that is evident to any reader of this book. In order to bring this broad and varied field of research together, an international conference on Old Norse religion was held in Lund in June 2004. About two hundred delegates from more than fifteen countries took part. The intention was to gather researchers to encourage and improve scholarly exchange and dialogue, and Old Norse religion in long-term perspectives presents a selection of the proceedings from that conference. The 75 contributions elucidate topics such as worldview and cosmology, ritual and religious practice, myth and memory as well as the reception and present-day use of Old Norse religion. The main editors of this volume have directed the multidisciplinary research project Roads to Midgard since 2000. The project is based at Lund University and funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.

The religion of the Viking Age is conventionally identified through its mythology: the ambiguous character Odin, the forceful Thor, and the end of the world approaching in Ragnarök. But pre-Christian religion consisted of so much more than mythic imagery and legends, and lingered for long in folk tradition. Studying religion of the North with an interdisciplinary approach is exceptionally fruitful, in both empirical and theoretical terms, and in this book a group of distinguished scholars widen the interpretative scope on religious life among the pre-Christian Scandinavian people. The authors shed new light on topics such as rituals, gender relations, social hierarchies, and inter-regional contacts between the Nordic tradition and the Sami and Finnish regions. The contributions add to a more complex view of the pre-Christian religion of Scandinavia, with relevant new questions about the material and a broad analysis of religion as a cultural expression.