ABSTRACT
It would be interesting to review the saga of religion as a consistent and more or less successful struggle for the adequate manifestation and expression of religious experience. Creation and destruction of forms, conservation and revolution, reformation and renaissance—all these are phases in the development of that never-ending struggle. A minimum of theoretical expression is always already present in the original religious intuition or experience. This intuition is often represented in symbolic form, which in itself implies elements of thought or doctrine. This first perception is formulated in more or less well-defined and coherent theoretical statements. It is by now readily apparent that the second category of the expression of religious experience, the cultic or practical, is closely related to the first. What is formulated in the theoretical statement of faith is done in religiously inspired acts. A cursory review of the studies in Nordic folklore and religion is in the respect particularly illuminating.
