ABSTRACT
One of the most striking aspects of the Viking-Age Scandinavian cultures, both now and in the past, was their unique world-view and the complex ideas that underpinned it, combining to form a concept of reality that differed quite sharply from those of their neighbours. Going far beyond the restrictive notion of ‘religion’, this chapter explores the beliefs and practices relating to the Norse gods and the many other beings with whom the Vikings shared their world. Through a consideration of cult sites and sacred spaces, and the ritual specialists who served them, we also enter the arena of mortuary behaviour. Viking-Age death rituals were infinitely complicated and varied, connecting to an organic world of stories that have since become fossilised as the ‘Norse myths’, which in turn encoded ideas about a range of afterlives and arguable notions of morality.
