Ur-Folk

Cover to Waldteufel ‎"Der Grosse Rausch" seven inch record, Volkways, 1995.

Image from "The story of Norway" (1886) by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

page from "Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde" (1911) by Johannes Hoops

The cover depicts an image of Zapfenmandl (“pinecone man”). In the book "The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas", Al Ridenour explains that a Zapfenmandl “presence is intended to bestow symbolic protection upon woodcutters and forest workers, and guard their trees from fire, wind, disease, and infestations.” (P. 210)

Wongraven "Fjelltronen" (1995) flyer from Moonfog Productions. Artwork on cover of CD by Theodor Kittelsen.

"Hermod before Hela" by J.C. Dollman (1909)

Norway

Wotan and Brünhilde by Hans Thoma (1876)

image of Rök runestone from book "Svenska Folkets Underbara öden" by Carl Grimberg (1916).

My copy of Hellig Olaf: Historisk Fortælling by Elisabeth Schøyen, published in 1897. This edition features illustrations by Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen.

"Thor has been seen as the god protecting households and the hearth. Following folklore, fire originated from Thor's lightning, and therefore lighting would never harm a house where the fire was burning in the hearth or the stove."

"The early medieval Germanization of Christianity, in most cases, was not the result of organized Germanic resistance to Christianity, or of an attempt by the Germanic peoples to transform Christianity into an acceptable form. Rather, it was primarily a consequence of the deliberate inculturation of Germanic religiocultural attitudes within Christianity by Christian missionaries. This process of accommodation resulted in the essential transformation of Christianity from a universal salvation religion to a Germanic, and eventually European, folk religion. The sociopsychological response of the Germanic peoples to this inculturated form of Christianity included the acceptance of those traditionally Christian elements which coincided with Germanic religiosity and the resolution of dissonant elements by reinterpreting them in accordance with the Germanic ethos and world-view."

Below text from Indo-European Fire Rituals: Cattle and Cultivation, Cremation and Cosmogony (Routledge, 2022) by Anders Kaliff and Terje Oestigaard: "Traces of fire rituals in the archaeological material are much more common than just in funeral contexts. Remains of fire altars with traces of sacrifices, seasonal fires linked to agriculture as well as ritual activities connected to the hearth of the home, are other find categories that are included which indicates a much more general and widespread use of various fire in cult and cosmology. These rituals have been deeply rooted and integrated in culture and society and thus represent very long continuities and historic trajectories. This in turn has resulted in the fact that in many cases the traditions have been preserved until recent times, even if in a partially modified and Christianised form, in the form of folk beliefs, including notions of the magical and healing power of fire, sacrifices to the hearth of the home and not least seasonal fires."

Image by Johan Christian Dahl (1837) Below text from Tree of Salvation: Yggdrasil and the Cross in the North (Oxford University Press, 2013) by G. Ronald Murphy S.J. “My suggestion is that the stave church is a Christian Yggdrasil, based on the poetic insight that there is an appropriate analogue in the North by which to express the concept of the place of salvation: it is to translate salvation as the inner space of Yggdrasil, the holy wooden place of protection at doomsday, and that at the heart of the evergreen tree’s space is Christ on his wooden tree, the cross.”

Above artwork by Theodor Kittelsen from book Hellig Olaf : Historisk Fortælling (1897) by Elisabeth Schøyen

"Even a few generations ago, the common folk of Wärend used to sacrifice or give to Odin’s horses. This occurred in such a way that during the hay-mowing in the meadow, one either left behind a few green stalks of grass, which were bent down and covered with moss so they would not be touched by the cattle, or else on every bredestad [row of mown hay] left a fresh tuft of hay, protected in the same manner against disturbance. On these occasions, the farmer always expressly announced or commanded that "this Odin shall have for his horses" or "this shall be for Odin’s horses." Should anyone neglect this offering to Odin’s horses, it was believed he would be punished by receiving a poor grass harvest in his meadow the following year."