I’ve been meaning to blog about this presentation by Luke Murphy for quite a while. It shifts the emphasis away from the grand public cults toward the localized household cult. I wish I could find a better link, but this seems to be the only option.
- Murphy, Luke John. “The Home as Cult Place in Pre-Christian Scandinavia: Domestic and Household Religion in the Pre-Archaic North“. 2017 Nordic Research Network Conference “The North as Home”, University of Aberdeen (Aug. 24, 2017): Panopto. Retrieved Nov. 6, 2019.
If you prefer reading, here is another of his papers on the same topic, but in written form.
“I believe we now have enough information to propose a working model of pre-Christian household religion in the Nordic Late Iron Age: on the basis of the evidence examined in this article, such cult is best regarded as expressing the religiosity of a particular small-scale, localised social unit – the household (see Figure 2). It was typically, but not always, performed in or near the dwelling of this household; appears to have been dedicated more often to localised supranatural beings (including ancestral spirits) than to more widely-known deities; seems to have offered more significant roles for women as cult specialists and leaders than other pre-Christian Nordic religion\s; and seems to have been more common in the autumn and winter than during the spring and summer.“
- Murphy, Luke John. “Familial Religion in Pre-Christian Scandinavia? Ancestor-Worship, Mother-Priestesses, and Offerings for the Elves“. Family in the Premodern World: A Comparative Approach Workshop, Princeton University, USA, Apr. 2017: Academia.edu. Retrieved Nov. 6, 2019.
More Information
- Härger, Arith. “Hearth Cult – Indo European Domestic Fire“. YouTube, Dec. 19, 2018. Retrieved Nov. 14, 2019.
