ABSTRACT
According to Snorri, in the Nordic countries, the earliest age was called the Age of Burning. From the Bronze Age onwards, a massive fire regime structures life from the cradle to the grave. The master of fire and the metallurgist seem to be a ritual specialist and a key player, respectively, in institutionalising the Indo-European rituals and religion. There are also traces of cremations in furnaces uniting technology and cosmology. In the Bronze Age, cremation became the dominant funerary practice, and the intensive use of fire enabled ritual practice using the dead body and the bones in multiple ways. Intriguingly, the ways cremations were conducted in Scandinavia are remarkably similar to the funeral rites described in the Vedas from the Indian sub-continent. Although the dates are debated, the Vedas are generally seen as composed around 1200–1000 BC, and today Agnicayana and Lakh Batti are two particular Vedic fire rituals.
