Remnants of Old Norse

Heathendom in Popular
Religion in Christian Times

Else Mundal

T
his article discusses certain mythical and semi-mythical figures from Old
Norse heathendom — the landvættir, ‘the spirits of the land’; so-called
lower deities, among them female fylg jur and norns; and fylg jur in the
shape of animals — which continued to survive at the periphery of Christian
culture for a long time after Christianization, albeit in somewhat altered form.
The remnants of Old Norse heathendom are discussed against the background
of the Christianization process. Although that process shares certain common
traits in all cultures, the precise nature of its development must have varied
from one culture to another; and the form of Christianity developed must have
been affected by both the old culture and the culture from which the process
of Christianization was launched. Old Norse culture, the focus of this article,
was found in the western Nordic area: Norway, Iceland, and the other islands
in the west that were populated predominantly from Norway. The majority of
the sources are Icelandic, and in some cases it is difficult to say with certainty
whether the whole west Nordic area shared the remnants of heathen beliefs
discussed in this article. The close contact experienced within this region, and
the common origins of the people, suggest that religious concepts did not differ
greatly in the last phase of heathenism but that differences in heathen remnants
developed over time.

Else Mundal (else.mundal@cms.uib.no) is Professor Emerita at Universitetet i Bergen.

Medieval Christianity in the North: New Studies, ed. by Kirsi Salonen, Kurt Villads Jensen, and
Torstein Jørgensen, AS 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013)                                                         pp. 7–22
BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.AS-EB.1.100809
8 Else Mundal

Introduction
Christianization did of course form a break in historical development,
but it is not easy to stamp out old beliefs in, and concepts of, supernatural
beings. Within all areas of Europe some remnants of what existed prior to
Christianization probably continued to live on — at least for some time —
after conversion. If these remnants were integrated into Christian beliefs, they
would have given Christianity, within a particular area, a local tint. That this
local colour was strong enough and long-lasting enough to have a permanent
influence on Christian concepts was obviously more likely in the early phases of
Christendom, when Christianity was a small religion, its dogmas less solidified
and more open to influences than later in the Middle Ages. The influence of
Greek philosophy on Christianity in the primitive church is a good example of
permanent influence on Christian concepts from a preceding culture.
In the Christianity of a newly converted area, such as the Old Norse area in
the Middle Ages, it may be possible to find traits from all the cultures through
which Christianity had passed on its way to this region. However, besides traits
from the cultures in which early Christendom was formed (late Judaism and
Greek culture), it was probably the traits from the culture or cultures from
which Christianity was directly introduced that were most visible. Such traits
were not necessarily connected to Christian beliefs directly — though a local
tinting of beliefs and ideas in one culture could of course be transferred to
another. But the introduction of local saints, vernacular words for Christian
concepts, and ecclesiastical organization are perhaps more typical of ‘loans’
from the region from which Christianity was introduced to newly converted
regions. By the time Christianity was introduced to the Nordic periphery of
Europe, it had already grown to become a strong and widespread religion.
However, in the periphery of the Christian world, the church met many of the
same challenges in the Middle Ages as it had met in the first centuries in the
Mediterranean area, such as how to deal with old heathen beliefs and figures.
The present article will discuss how the early Christian Old Norse culture dealt
with some of its heathen remnants.
One important problem faced by Christian missionaries among the Old
Norse must have been: How can we make Christianity appeal to the heathen
North? In the period before the Nordic countries converted to Christianity,
the new religion was far from unknown in the North. We do not know exactly
how early the Nordic culture came into contact with Christianity, but we must
assume that there had been some contacts for a long time, and that they had
been increasing in the period leading up to Christianization. It is obvious that
Old Norse Heathendom in Popular Religion in Christian Times 9

the Old Norse religion was influenced by Christianity in the period before
Christianization, and many scholars of different periods have explained certain
elements in Old Norse religion by the influence of Christianity.1 Old Norse
heathendom was an open religion which easily could include new elements,
and it would probably have shown great variation over both space and time.
Christianity, which was a dogmatic religion, was more stable, but the mission-
aries probably tried to present Christianity in a way which they thought would
appeal to the local heathens. That in itself would perhaps not have changed
Christianity, but such a missionary strategy, called forth by the wish to com-
municate better with a local heathen population, would have given Christian
preaching within a certain area a local hue, stressing the Christian elements
which were best suited to persuade and convert its inhabitants. One clear exam-
ple of this in Old Norse culture is that the strength of the Christian God, his
omnipotence, is emphasized in early skaldic poetry from the Christianization
period onward, and Christ is pictured as a victorious Viking king. This must in
all likelihood reflect the preaching of the period. The Christian God’s omnipo-
tence was presumably a strong argument in favour of the new religion. To the
heathen Vikings it must have seemed logical that the warriors who worshipped
the strongest god would be victorious.2
What the missionaries preached and what the heathens understood were
not necessarily the same. Those who had been brought up in the heathen cul-
ture would have interpreted Christianity with the help of concepts and a world-

1 
Sophus Bugge, a leading scholar in the last decades of the nineteenth century, was inclined
to see influence from Christianity in many Old Norse myths. He believed, for instance, that the
myth of the death of Baldr, and that of Óðinn hanging on the tree, were modelled on the death
of Christ. Further, he argued that both these myths, as many others, were formed in the British
Isles where Vikings settled down and came in contact with Christianity. Bugge, Studier over
de nordiske Gude- og Heltesagns Oprindelse; see also Moe, ‘Sophus Bugge og mytegranskingane
hans’. Bugge’s interpretation takes Óðinn’s sacrifice out of its context in Old Norse mythology.
Óðinn’s aim was to obtain wisdom, not salvation, and Óðinn strives for wisdom in many myths.
His sacrifice of himself to himself must be seen in connection with other sacrifices in Old Norse
mythology. Óðinn also sacrificed his eye to obtain wisdom, and other gods made their sacri-
fices too: Tyr sacrificed his right arm, and Heimdallr his sense of hearing. Walter Baetke is a
good representative of the scholars who, in the period when historical source criticism was at its
height, saw most parallels between Christianity and Old Norse myths and rituals as reconstruc-
tions of Old Norse heathendom made by Christian authors. See Baetke, Christliches Lehngut in
der Sagareligion.
2 
A discussion of such skaldic stanzas is found in Marold, ‘Der Gottesbild der Christlichen
Skaldik’; and in Mundal, ‘Kristusframstillinga i den tidlege norrøne diktinga’.
10 Else Mundal

view inherited from their old religion.3 God the Father and Christ could easily
be accepted as new gods and included in the Nordic pantheon, but in a heathen
context they would have been seen in a heathen light. One might think that
Christ, who had been killed by his enemies in a humiliating way, would not
have appealed to people in the Old Norse culture. There existed Old Norse
myths, however, which could function as a basis for interpreting Christ’s death
in their own fashion. For example the god Baldr was killed and went to hell.4
There is also another Old Norse story that Óðinn sacrificed himself to himself
by hanging for nine nights from the World Tree in order to obtain wisdom.5
The constituent elements of these myths were probably not unique to the Old
Norse culture.6 The death of Christ on the cross as a symbol of salvation for
mankind may have been initially difficult to conceive by a culture where the
concepts of sin and salvation did not exist. It was probably easier and more
acceptable in the Old Norse culture to interpret Christ’s crucifixion as a myste-
rious death which, like that of Óðinn, made him wise and powerful.
The picture of Christ as a king is of course rooted in the Bible, and in Old
Norse culture the image of Christ as king is very dominant. There may, however,
also have existed Old Norse myths which explain why the son of God in this
particular culture was portrayed as a king. According to Old Norse mythology
and ideology of kingship, the first king, the prototype king, was the son of a
god and a giantess.7 The son of God and a human woman, Mary, would there-

3 
See Mundal, ‘Il cristianismo considerato dal punto di vista pagano dei vichinghi’.
4 
The fullest form of the Baldr myth is found in Snorri Sturluson, Edda, Gylfaginning, ed.
by Faulkes, chap. 49. There are partial retellings of and references to the myth in several Eddic
poems which Snorri knew: Baldrs draumar, Vǫluspá, Vafþrúðnismál, and Lokasenna. The Eddic
poems are in Norrœn Fornkvæði, ed. by Bugge. He further built on a skaldic poem, Húsdrápa by
Ulfr Uggason, composed in the late tenth century: Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by
Finnur Jónsson, B I: pp. 128–30. It can be seen from Snorri’s Gylfaginning that he also knew
poems that are unknown to us.
5 
The source for the myth of Óðinn hanging on the tree is the Eddic poem Hávamál, in
Norrœn Fornkvæði, ed. by Bugge. In Hávamál, stanza 138, these words are put in the mouth
of Óðinn: ‘I know that I hang on a windy tree for nine nights, wounded with a spear, given to
Óðinn, myself to myself […]’. There are also many references to this myth in the skaldic language.
6 
Richard North has argued that in the Old English poem The Dream of the Rood, ‘the image of
Christ’s death was constructed […] with reference to an Anglian myth about the world tree’: North,
Heathen Gods in Old English Literature, p. 273. In an Old English charm, Woden’s Nine Herbs
Charm, preserved in BL, MS Harley 585, probably from the tenth or eleventh century, Óðinn and
Christ seem to be mixed. In this case the mixing could be due to Scandinavian influence.
7 
See Steinsland, Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi.
Old Norse Heathendom in Popular Religion in Christian Times 11

fore conform very well to an Old Norse mythic pattern. Even the virgin birth in
the Christian religion may have been understood in the light of an Old Norse
heathen myth. The Old Norse god Heimdallr was born by nine giantesses, all
sisters, and whether there was a father or not is very unclear from the sources.
It is the nine mothers who are focused upon.8 This birth by nine mothers was
probably even more mysterious than the virgin birth by one single mother and
may have prepared the ground for the acceptance of the Christian virgin birth.
Few scholars still regard the Christian influence on Old Norse myths to be
of the same strong impact that Bugge and Baetke suggested. But there is no
reason to doubt that Old Norse myths in the last phase of heathenism were
influenced by Christianity, and later in the Middle Ages learned authors,
such as Snorri, may have stressed the similarities between heathen myths and
Christianity in accordance with the church’s view of pre-Christian religions —
namely, that they could be seen as imperfect glimpses of the truth created in the
minds of people who had lost contact with God. 9 This means that the form
of Old Norse myths in the pre-Christian culture — which probably existed
in different local variants — cannot be established with certainty because of
a lack of written sources from the heathen period. We have only glimpses of
fragmented myths in a few skaldic poems from the period before 900, like
Bragi’s Ragnarsdrápa from the first half or middle of the ninth century, and
some Eddic poems that contain Old Norse myths may have already existed in
the same period. The dating of Eddic poems is, however, very complicated, and
these poems were, moreover, much more open to changes in the oral tradition
than skaldic poetry.
Even though we do not know the form of the myths in any detail, the
concepts and world-view expressed in Old Norse myths represented the Old
Norse mentality which received and interpreted the new religion when the
two worlds met. It is not very likely that Old Norse heathen interpretations
of Christianity were long-lived. They would probably have disappeared with
growing knowledge of Christianity and would have been replaced by ‘correct’
Christian concepts. Remnants of Old Norse heathendom, on the other hand,
for which Christianity offered no replacement, could live on for centuries.

8 
Heimdallr’s nine giant mothers are mentioned in Snorri Sturluson, Edda, Gylfaginning,
ed. by Faulkes, chap. 27. His main source, from which he quotes two lines, seems to be an Eddic
poem, otherwise lost, called Heimdallargaldr.
9 
See Kurt Villads Jensen’s article in this book.
12 Else Mundal

Remnants of Heathendom in Old Norse Christian Culture

When a people changed religion there were always some mythical figures and
concepts central to the old religion which did not have their equivalents — or,
at least, not good equivalents — in the new religion, and might therefore leave
an empty space, a need, in people’s religious life. In such cases it is very likely
that the old concepts continued to live on in some form or another, at least for
a period of time.
Regarding the remnants of Old Norse heathendom within Christian cul-
ture, the longer these remnants continued to exist, the better our sources. Since
there are no written sources from the period of Christianization — except for a
few runic inscriptions — it is difficult to follow the transition from heathen to
Christian society in any detail. Skaldic stanzas from the Christianization period
and the Christian period before the advent of written literature may, however,
give some information about heathen remnants and the mixing of heathen and
Christian beliefs in the newly Christianized Old Norse society. The oldest Old
Norse written source for Christianization in Iceland is Íslendingabók by Ari
inn fróði, written in the 1120s or around 1130. The sources used in this article
— Eddic and skaldic poetry, Snorri’s Edda, saga literature, laws, and sermons
— originate, as written texts, from a period when society had been Christian
for two hundred years or more. Saga literature, laws, and other texts produced
in the Christian society are, of course, very good sources for the concepts and
beliefs which existed in this society.
In the following I will discuss a few supernatural beings which were closely
connected with Old Norse heathendom and heathen concepts but which con-
tinued to live on in popular belief for a long time after Christianization. The
concepts of these beings were, however, influenced by the new religion in dif-
ferent ways. I will suggest some explanations as to why certain heathen beings
continued to exist in people’s minds in Christian times and try to explain the
changes these beings underwent in light of the different ways in which the
Christian culture could react against the remnants of heathendom. The beings
I will discuss are:
1) landvættir, the spirits of the land;
2) so-called lower deities, especially female figures like nornir (norns), fylg jur
(guar­dian spirits), and valkyrjur (valkyries) (belief in fate was closely con-
nected with the norns); and
3) fylg jur in the shape of animals which were external souls/alter egos.
Old Norse Heathendom in Popular Religion in Christian Times 13

It was not the policy of the church to deny that heathen gods or heathen powers
existed even though they did not, of course, recognize them as gods. Heathen
gods were normally demonized, but there were other ways to react, especially
against heathen figures or spirits, which were probably regarded as less dan-
gerous to Christianity than the heathen gods. Figures belonging to a heathen
mythology could be made harmless — or less harmful — by being transferred
to the sphere of superstition. They could be altered and made acceptable to the
Christian religion, or they could have an existence at the periphery of Christian
culture if the potential conflict between the Christian religion and the rem-
nants of Old Norse heathendom did not become an open controversy.

The landvættir, the Spirits of the Land

The landvættir, ‘spirits of the land’, were probably important figures in the
Old Norse religion. They seem to overlap, more or less, with the group called
álfar, ‘elves’, in Old Norse. They secured fertility and ‘luck’, which in this con-
text means a person’s ability to succeed, and they were objects of worship.
Christianization did not root out the cult of the landvættir. In the Norwegian
laws from the Middle Ages, this worship was strongly prohibited, which prob-
ably indicates its continued practice. As late as in the Christian section in the
younger Gulathing Law (from the 1260s), landvættir are mentioned (Chapter
3) among things in which people should not believe — it is forbidden ‘at trua
a landvættir at se j lvndum [londum]10 æda haugum æda forsom’ (to believe in
spirits of the land; that they are in groves, mounds, and waterfalls).11 The cult
of the landvættir in Christian times is also documented in a sermon preserved
in Hauksbók (early fourteenth century, though the sermon may be older). This
sermon is about superstition, and says that some women are so stupid and blind
that they
take their food and bring it out to cromlechs or caves, bless it and sacrifice it to
the spirits of the land and eat it thereafter so that the spirits of the land shall be
friendly towards them and so that they shall have more luck with their farming
than before.12

10 
Some manuscripts of the law have the reading londum (land).
11 
Norges Gamle Love, ed. by Keyser and Munch, ii (1848), 308.
12 
‘taka mat sínn oc fœra a rœysar vt eða vndir hella. oc signa land vettum oc eta siðan.
til þess at land vettír skili þeím þa hollar vera oc til þess at þer skili þa eiga betra bu en aðr’;
Hauksbók, ed. by Eiríkur Jónsson and Finnur Jónsson, p. 167.
14 Else Mundal

One reason why people continued to believe in the landvættir, and even con-
tinued to sacrifice food to them, may be that Christianity had nothing which
easily could replace the spirits of the land, and the function they served in the
old religion was too important to be ignored. We know that heathen worship
in many cases was transferred onto saints, but this does not seem to have hap-
pened with the cult of the landvættir. Perhaps the saints who were introduced
in the period of Christianization — those central to the whole church, together
with local saints from the regions from which Christianity was introduced to
the Old Norse world — lacked the connection to the local soil and local past
enjoyed by the landvættir. This changed later — most regions eventually had
their own local saints — but by that time the landvættir had survived the criti-
cal period of Christianization.
Whether the landvættir were demonized or denounced as mere superstition
may be a matter of discussion. According to the laws, the belief in landvættir is
defined as heiðinn átrunaðr (heathendom); in the sermon, the sacrifice to the
spirits of the land is characterized as stupidity. Probably the belief in the land­
vættir — and the álfar — was in the grey area of what the church bothered to
fight. As shown in the sermon quoted above, this cult was practised by women
— and probably mostly by women. Perhaps the men of the church saw it as
mere harmless female foolishness, an ‘old wives’ tale’, but as we can see from the
laws and the sermon, the church did react against the belief in this remnant of
heathendom.

Lower Deities
Belief in some of the so-called lower deities, such as fylg jur and nornir, also
continued to exist after Christianization. In the Icelandic saga literature —
mostly from the thirteenth century — we meet the female fylg ja in many texts.
This figure was the guardian spirit of the family, especially of the head of the
family: she secured luck and prosperity. If she abandoned a person, it was a very
bad omen.13 As I see it, the female fylg ja had her origin in the cult of foremoth-
ers, in which case this figure would have been problematic in Christian times.14
The cult of forefathers and foremothers may have been an important part of
Old Norse heathen cult. According to the older Gulathing Law, Chapter 29,

13 
Analyses of motifs in which the female fylg jur occur are found in Mundal, Fylg jemotiva i
norrøn litteratur, pp. 63–128.
14 
See Mundal, Fylg jemotiva i norrøn litteratur, pp. 101–06.
Old Norse Heathendom in Popular Religion in Christian Times 15

it was forbidden to blóta (‘sacrifice to’) mounds, which probably means grave
mounds, and the cult which took place there must have been that of forefathers
and foremothers.15 Worship of this type was forbidden together with the wor-
ship of the gods, and if the connection between the female fylg ja and ancestors
was still clear at the time of Christianization, these figures would have been
closely connected with the forbidden heathendom.
However, here we can observe a solution other than wholesale rejection or
demonization; nor are the fylg jur recast as harmless superstitions. In a few liter-
ary motifs from the sagas we can observe that the old female fylg ja is separated
into two figures, one white and Christian, one black and heathen. A very good
example of this splitting of one being into two is found in Þáttr Þiðranda ok
Þórhalls.16 This short story tells of a young boy, Þiðrandi, who was seriously
wounded one night when he went out against his father’s will. He was found
the next morning, and before he died he explained what had happened. He
had gone out in the middle of the night because he thought that he heard
someone knocking at the door. Outside he saw nine women riding from the
north towards him, all dressed in black. They had swords in their hands and
attacked him. While defending himself against the black women, he heard nine
women come riding from the south. They were all dressed in white and riding
on white horses. A wise man interpreted this strange incident. His interpreta-
tion was that the black women were the old heathen fylg jur of the family, and
they wanted to make sure that Þiðrandi would come to them before it was too
late. People would soon convert to a new and better faith. The white women
were the new Christian fylg jur of the family, but since Þiðrandi was not yet a
Christian, they were not able to save him.
The same splitting of the female fylg ja, here called draumkona, ‘dream
woman’, is found in Gísla saga Súrssonar, a saga of Icelanders probably writ-
ten around the middle of the thirteenth century. Gísli, who is the hero of the
saga, lives in the last phase of heathendom. He is acquainted with Christianity,
he does not sacrifice to the heathen gods any more, but he has not become a
Christian. He can be characterized as a ‘good heathen’. Gísli has two draum­
konur who appear in his dreams. The good draumkona is clearly connected with
Christianity and advises Gísli to live in accordance with what can be identified
as Christian morality; she promises Gísli that he will come to her when he dies.

15 
Norges Gamle Love, ed. by Keyser and Munch, i, 18.
16 
Flateyjarbók, ed. by Guðbrandur Vigfússon and Unger, i, 420. Flateyjarbók was written
in the 1380s, but the story may be older.
16 Else Mundal

The evil draumkona counteracts any decision made by the good and Christian
draumkona about Gísli’s life. The two draumkonur, who are the old female fyl­
g ja split in two, can be read as the Christian and heathen powers struggling
over Gísli, the good heathen, at the threshold of Christian times.17
Concerning the norns, we can observe a splitting of another kind. In Iceland
the word norna gradually acquired the same meaning as the English ‘witch’.
This important female figure in Old Norse mythology became demonized
more or less in the same way as the Old Norse gods. One good example of this
is found in a skaldic stanza, lausavísa 10, by the Icelandic skald Hallfrøðr van-
dráðaskáld, one of the skalds of King Óláfr Tryggvason (995–1000). In this
stanza Hallfrøðr says that: ‘verðum flest at forðask | fornhaldin skǫp norna’ (we
have to keep away from all decisions made by the norns in which they believed
earlier).18 If this stanza is genuine, that is, by Hallfrøðr, it was composed a few
years before the year 1000; if it is not, it may have been composed any time
between Hallfrøðr’s time and the writing of his saga early in the thirteenth cen-
tury. This stanza describes the attitude towards old heathen figures, both gods
and norns, at the court of King Óláfr Tryggvason, and if the stanza is genuine
it should be representative of attitudes towards the norns in circles around the
Norwegian king.
However, in Norway belief in and attitudes towards the norns seem not
to have changed, at least not as drastically as in Iceland. In a runic inscription
found in Borgund stave church (probably from around 1200) the norns are
mentioned as the creators of fate. The man who carved the inscription names
himself Þórir, and he says in the runic inscription: ‘Bæði gerðu nornir vel ok
illa; mikla mœði skǫpuðu þær mér’ (the norns did both good and bad things,
for me they made heavy burdens | a cruel fate). 19 In the Norwegian valley of
Setesdal, the porridge which was served to women after childbirth was called
nornegraut, ‘the norns’ porridge’, as late as when folklore from the valley was
collected in the nineteenth century. It is tempting to see the ‘norns’ porridge’
in the light of a passage in Snorri’s Edda. In Gylfaginning Snorri says that norns
come to every newborn child to create fate.20

17 
For a fuller analysis of the female fylg ja motif in this saga, see Mundal, ‘Sagalitteraturen
og soga im Gisle Sursson’.
18 
Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, i, 159.
19 
Norges Innskrifter med de yngre Runer, ed. by Olsen, iv (1957), 149.
20 
Snorri Sturluson, Edda, Gylfaginning, ed. by Faulkes, chap. 15.
Old Norse Heathendom in Popular Religion in Christian Times 17

The idea that fate was created by the norns is of course not in agreement with
the Christian faith. However, in Norway — and probably also elsewhere — the
belief in the fate-making norns seems to have persisted after Christianization.
The potential conflict between this ‘heathen’ idea and the Christian faith did
not develop into an open controversy. Perhaps conflict was avoided by not
stressing who the creators of fate were, the norns or the Christian God. It is also
possible that the concept of the norns dictating fate — that is, that everything
was decided in advance — found a point of connection in the belief in predes-
tination in Christianity, even though predestination primarily concerned the
next life, and fate this life.
A parallel to the situation in the North can be found in the areas in which
the goddess Fortuna had been worshipped in pre-Christian times. The concept
of fortune lived on after Christianization, but must have gradually lost its con-
nection with the personified goddess.21 As Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen has shown,
in the twelfth-century European renaissance there was a revival in the belief in
Fortuna, not as a classical goddess but as a principle explaining life and history.
The concept of fortune was not unproblematic in relation to Christianity.22 The
Old Norse concept of fate or decisions made by the norns has much in com-
mon with the concept of fortune. But in the North, not only the concept of
fate but also that of the personified female figure, the norn, continued to exist.
In Iceland this figure was more or less demonized as a witch, whilst in Norway
the norn lived on as a more neutral figure.
When so-called lower female deities survived in Christian times, the
explanation could partly be, in this case too, that Christianity had little with
which to fill the gap. The Virgin Mary and female saints might partly fit, but
Christianity was a much more male-oriented religion than Old Norse heathen-
dom, both in the sense that there was only one male god, and because women
could not be in charge of acts of worship. In addition, the lower deities were
probably seen as a less serious threat to Christianity than the gods. However,
that the fylg jur were split into two, one good and Christian and the other bad
and heathen, and that the norns became witches in Iceland, show that these
beings were problematic and not easy to integrate with the Christian culture.
The requirement for integration — or acceptance — seems to have been that
the heathen figures changed so that they could be more or less identified with a

21 
When Fortuna returned as a personified goddess during the Renaissance, this apparent
paganism was purely literary.
22 
Lehtonen, Fortuna, Money, and the Sublunar World, pp. 73–122.
18 Else Mundal

Christian figure. The white and good fylg jur have clearly inherited traits from
the Christian angels. This could happen since they had something in common.
They were both guardian spirits, and they were both connected with the after-
life. In Old Norse sources we meet the idea that people will come to their dead
ancestors — a place where their fylg jur also exist.23
Even the valkyrjur seem in one text to merge with the angels. In a skaldic
stanza (lausavísa 22), the skald Bjǫrn hítdœlakappi describes a woman who has
visited him in a dream.24 This woman invites him home, and she is called the
woman of hilmir dagbœjar, which is a kenning for ‘the King of Heaven’. This
woman, who comes from the Christian King of Heaven, is described in a long
and complicated kenning, but the interesting thing is that she is hjalmfaldin,
which means that she wears a helmet. This is the picture of a valkyrja, but she
invites the Christian skald home to the King of Heaven. The valkyrjur who
chose the men who were to die and brought them to Óðinn’s Valhǫll, and the
angels who brought the souls to heaven, had little in common, but obviously
enough to make the two beings merge in at least some early Christian minds. If
the stanza in question is genuine, it was composed early in the eleventh century,
but if it was by the author of the saga about Bjǫrn hítdœlakappi, which perhaps
is more likely, then it was composed early in the thirteenth century.
The merging of angels and Old Norse female deities is interesting because
angels were male figures. Female angels are — as far as I know — a late phenom-
enon, and have not been seen in connection with the so-called lower female
deities in pre-Christian European religions.25 One could, however, wonder
whether the lower female deities, who continued to exist both in popular reli-
gion (in the North) and in sculpture and literature (in the South), had some-
thing to do with the angels, probably from the seventeenth century onwards,
being represented as female in different forms of art. The problem with this
explanation is the long period of time between heathenism and the appearance
of female Christian angels. We do not, however, know much of what existed
in popular religion in the meantime, and it must be admitted that the gender
reversal of the angels is not a well- explored topic.

23 
See Mundal, Fylg jemotiva i norrøn litteratur, pp. 101–05.
24 
Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, i, 282.
25 
In pre-Christian European religions there existed a wide variety of winged female beings.
See Egeler, ‘Death, Wings, and Divine Devouring’.
Old Norse Heathendom in Popular Religion in Christian Times 19

The fylgjur in the Shape of Animals

The last figures which I want to mention are the fylg jur in the shape of animals.
These are external souls, a person’s alter ego, and the shape of the animal reflects
the character of the person. A strong man may have a bull or a bear as his ani-
mal fylg ja, a cunning man a fox, and so on.26 The belief in the existence of such
fylg jur is found in a large number of Old Norse texts. We often meet an animal,
walking in front of his person, invisible to all except second-sighted people and
dreamers. If a man sees his own animal fylg ja, it means that he is soon going to
die. What happens to the fylg ja will happen to its owner in a short time. The
animal fylg ja motifs are therefore used to foretell the future, and their popular-
ity must be seen in connection with their important function in saga composi-
tion. The concept must have been strong and took a long time to die out. These
souls in the shape of an animal probably did not represent a great threat to
Christianity, and, as far as I know, there is no evidence that the church tried to
root out the belief in them.
On the other hand, the Christian concept of the eternal soul was not con-
sistent with souls in the shape of an animal. That may explain why the belief
in fylg jur changed over time. In Norway the whole figure of the animal faded
away, leaving the vardøger, a being which in some strange way was still identi-
cal with the person but no longer had the shape of an animal, or any shape
at all. In Iceland, fylg jur may have retained their shape of an animal but lost
their close connection with a person’s external soul. The identification between
a person’s soul and an animal seems to have become problematic, but only after
some hundred years.27

Conclusions
As suggested above, stressing the strength of the new religion, and presenting
Christ as a victorious Viking king (in all likelihood, the missionaries’ strong-
est argument when trying to convince the people of the heathen North that

26 
An overview of the animal fylg ja motifs, demonstrating the variety of animals that occur
as fylg jur, is found in Mundal, Fylg jemotiva i norrøn litteratur, pp. 26–37.
27 
For a fuller analysis of the animal fylg ja motif see Mundal, Fylg jemotiva i norrøn littera­
tur, pp. 26–55 and 129–42. The subject has lately been addressed by Eldar Heide who expresses
a slightly different view concerning the animal fylg ja’s character as man’s alter ego. Heide, ‘Gand,
seid og åndevind’, pp. 146–55.
20 Else Mundal

Christianity was a better and more useful religion than their old one), would
have given a local tint to the form of Christendom which was practised in the
North. It is probable that the stress placed upon the strong elements within
Christianity during the period of Christianization led to a somewhat later
introduction and adoption of other, potentially conflicting, Christian ideas —
such as the concepts of sin and God’s mercy and the demand on Christians to
love their enemies and forgive instead of taking revenge.
The interpretation of stories from the Bible in the light of Old Norse myths
would probably be corrected once Christianity was firmly established. The
Old Norse culture became a written culture rather early, and within a writ-
ten culture, variants of Biblical motifs — at least those which concern central
Christian dogmas — are not likely to survive for long. They may have survived
longer in the more oral popular religion. On the other hand, beings belong-
ing to Old Norse heathenism which were demonized, made harmless by being
transferred to the sphere of superstition, or partly assimilated with Christian
figures (for example, angels) could continue to live on for centuries — but
usually in a changed form. Even unchanged, the belief in heathen beings and
concepts, for example the norns and fate, could continue within the frame of
a Christian culture as long as the potential conflict between Christianity and
remnants of the old religion was downplayed.
These remnants of Old Norse heathendom did in a way leave their marks
on the Christianity practised in the North. The dogmas were unchanged,
but the beings that were demonized were unique to the Nordic area. Every
Christianized area populated hell with beings that reflected their pre-Christian
religion. These would mix and partly merge with the earlier inhabitants of hell.
Even though Christianity, unlike Norse heathenism, was a dogmatic religion,
the ‘demonic side’ of Christianity was as open as the old heathendom and could
easily include all the demonized ‘leftovers’ from the old religion.
At the periphery of the Christian culture existed beings and beliefs which
had been only partly integrated, and perhaps scarcely tolerated, and this too
would have contributed to a sort of a regional Christian culture. The remnants
of Old Norse heathenism which continued to exist in the popular religion of
the North hardly spread to other areas within the Christian church. However,
to the concept of fate or fortune which developed in Christian Europe on the
basis of older beliefs, the North contributed its part.
Old Norse Heathendom in Popular Religion in Christian Times 21

Works Cited

Manuscripts and Archival Documents

London, British Library, MS Harley 585

Primary Sources
Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, 2 vols (København: Villadsen
& Christensen, 1912–15)
Flateyjarbók: en samling af Norske Konge-saegar, ed. by Guðbrandur Vigfússon and Carl
Rikard Unger, 3 vols (Christiania: Malling, 1860–68)
Hauksbók, ed. by Eiríkur Jónsson and Finnur Jónsson (København: Det kongelige nordiske
oldskrift-selskab, 1892)
Norges Gamle Love indtil 1387, ed. by Rudolf Keyser and Peter Andreas Munch, 5 vols
(Christiania: Gröndal, 1846–95)
Norges Innskrifter med de yngre Runer, ed. by Magnus Olsen, 6 vols (Oslo: Kjelde­
skriftfondet, 1948–90)
Norrœn Fornkvæði: Islandsk Samling af Folkelige Oldtidsdigte om Nordens Guder og Heroer
almindelig kaldet Sæmundar Edda hins fróða, ed. by Sophus Bugge (Christiana:
Malling, 1867) (repr. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1965)
Snorri Sturluson, Edda, Gylfaginning, in Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning, ed. by Anthony
Faulkes (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, University College London,
1988), pp. 7–55

Secondary Studies
Baetke, Walter, Christliches Lehngut in der Sagareligion, Sitzungsberichte der Sächsischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Philologisch-historische Klasse (Berlin:
Akademie, 1951)
Bugge, Sophus, Studier over de nordiske Gude- og Heltesagns Oprindelse, 2 vols (Christiania:
Cammermeyer, 1881–89)
Egeler, Matthias, ‘Death, Wings, and Divine Devouring: Possible Mediterranean Affini­
ties of Irish Battlefield Demons and Norse Valkyries’, Studia Celtica Fennica, 5 (2008),
5–25
Heide, Eldar, ‘Gand, seid og åndevind’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Universitetet i Bergen,
2006)
Lehtonen, Tuomas M. S., Fortuna, Money, and the Sublunar World: Twelfth-Century Ethi­
cal Poetics and the Satirical Poetry of the ‘Carmina Burana’ (Helsinki: Suomalaisen
Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1995)
Marold, Edith, ‘Der Gottesbild der Christlichen Skaldik’, in The Sixth International Saga
Conference 28/7–2/8 1985: Workshop Papers (København: Arnamagnæanske Institut,
Københavns Universitet, 1985), pp. 717–49
22 Else Mundal

Moe, Molkte, ‘Sophus Bugge og mytegranskingane hans’, in Norske folkeskrifter, 6 (Oslo:

Norigs ungdomslag og Student-maallaget, 1903), pp. 1–24
Mundal, Else, ‘Il cristianesimo considerato dal punto di vista pagano dei vichinghi:
Christianity Seen from the Heathen Point of View of the Vikings’, in Il mondo dei
Vichinghi: ambiente, storia, cultura e arte, ed. by Ernesto Bruno Valenziano (Genova:
Sagep, 1992), pp. 309–22
—— , Fylg jemotiva i norrøn litteratur (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1974)
—— , ‘Kristusframstillinga i den tidlege norrøne diktinga’, in Møtet mellom hedendom
og kristendom i Norge, ed. by Hans-Emil Lidén (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1995),
pp. 255–68
—— , ‘Sagalitteraturen og soga om Gisle Sursson’, in Soga om Gisle Sursson: lang og kort
versjon, ed. by Dagfinn Aasen (Oslo: Samlaget, 1993), pp. 28–30
North, Richard, Heathen Gods in Old English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­
versity Press, 1997)
Steinsland, Gro, Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi: en analyse av hierogami-myten
i Skírnismál, Ynglingatal, Háleyg jatal og Hyndluljóð (Oslo: Solum, 1991)