I warn you: this is not a terribly coherent post. My frustration level is high.
Before I started writing Hild I read a little about Anglo-Saxon cosmology/mythology. It didn’t do me much good. Everyone seems to disagree. No one seems to know anything. They just hem and haw and hedge. So for the first draft I took what I could from philology–from Bede, place names, Norse myth and A-S poetry–and…skated.
Now that I’m rewriting, I find that a hand-waving, don’t-point-at-this-ice approach won’t work. It’s time to get it exactly right. Except, hey, everyone still disagrees. And they’re still just guessing (and timidly at that). So I’m stumped. For example, was there an Eostre or not? If so, what was she god of, exactly? Ditto Hreðe. (The only place these two gods are mentioned is in Bede’s HE. Some scholars insist he was making those names up. I want to know what those scholars have been smoking. Why would Bede make up stuff about a belief system he abhorred?) Where do Tiw and Frig fit? (An older pantheon? A parallel pantheon?) How were they worshipped? (Were they worshipped, in our sense of the word?) What did an Anglo-Saxon grove (or temple, or holy well) look like? Who looked after it? How were those priests/guardians sustained?
So far I’ve made some tentative decisions about two gods, Thunor and Woden.
I think of Thunor as the big Sky Daddy, the one flinging the thunderbolts. A Zeus figure (though less involved in human affairs and, well, completely different). Worshipped in oak groves, most likely. Represented by a hammer. Maybe married to Eorðe (hey, if there was an Eorðe).
Woden is the warrior’s god. The carrier-off of the dead. The god later Anglo-Saxons kings claimed as their ultimate ancestor. (For a variety of reasons–foremost among them the Hey, no one knows anything! excuse–I’m moving those claims up to the seventh century.) I’m positing he would be represented by something triplicate: complicated, confusing, a variation on the valknut (top) or triskele (bottom):
both images from Wikipedia
Woden is the leader of the Wild Hunt. I think of him as being a risky kind of god, a gambler. Impulsive. Unpredictable. A do-or-die, death-or-glory kind of god.
Having said that, it’s possible (if you follow some of the linguistic trails) that Hreðe was also a god of glory, which makes me think she might be some kind of war deity. But she has a month (Hreðemonath, or March) named after her–according to Bede, anyway. So what was that about? And is she connected in any way with Eorðe, an earth mother type? It’s a mystery.
Eostre is celebrated at Easter. April. So if I decide to include her, she’ll be represented by the hare. (Easter. Bunnies. The folk magic that clings to hares–who get v. feisty in spring. Who could resist?)
Ah, you might say, but what about all the Brittonic (Celtic) gods? I think these gods were hyperlocal. Every stream, well, wall, grove, and hill seemed to have some resident deity–though many were probably cognomens (cognomina?) of more widely recognised gods. (See, for example, Esmeralda’s post about Luguwalos.)
Then there’s the more general belief systems. Who believed in what kind of afterlife? Were their gods terrible and wrathful? Capricious? Bargainers or tyrants? Interested in people or not? Where and how does the concept of Wyrd fit in all this?
And what about giants and hægtessan and etins and wights and ælfe?
I’ll just be over here, beating my head bloody. If you know anything about this, please take pity on me and at least point me in the right direction…
Nicola Griffith 
I dropped a note to a Wiccan priestess that I know. We'll see if she can suggest any scholars.
As far as I know, no one knows. We modern pagans just make shit up, just like in ye olde days.
Caryl
I did some amateur research on the topic a few months ago after reading Neil Gaiman's “American Gods.” I've about come to the conclusion that in ancient times that stories handed down primarily through oral tradition was highly subject to variation over the generations and regions. For anyone this day and age to claim any certainty would in my mind be suspect. Should anyone proclaim such expertise or authority, I would certainly ask for their sources. Unfortunately, without documentation or other 'evidence' all else is reduced to legend or folklore, or even more dubious, faith.
Even contemporary religions, the big ones, vary in interpretation from place to place, culture to culture. Do Christians handle snakes? Is their god one or three? What does their heaven look like? their hell? Is there earthly reward or not? Transubstantiation anyone? Is that the Blessed Virgin Mary on my pancake?
Another example of variation of ancient beliefs can be found in another isloated island nation, Japan. Shinto is an amalgamation of many, many long-held local traditions. No central figure, no supreme authority. Similarities exist between those ancient 'denominations' but that's about all. It seems very much like local 'priests' held the stories and as eventual interaction occurred with other 'tribes' variations and deviations came into being. Like Christmas trees in as part of the Christian celebration of that holiday. Wreaths, rabbits, eggs, etc.
Then add tribal wars, politics, etc. the physics/evolution of anthropology kicks in. History, even religious history is written by the winners.
If even contemporary religions vary over place and time, culture to culture, It's easy for me to deduce that this was also the case in ancient times, including amongst the Anglo-Saxon varieties.
But I'm no expert.
Not illuminating of your issues, but when I was at the Danish National Museum, they had a great section on Viking life (natch!) with original artifacts, including a jeweler's mold, carved from stone, I think, intended for the casting of religeous pendants. One side of the mold was a cross, the other side a Thor's hammer, neatly covering both sides of the cultural issue of the time!
The symbolism of the valknut, also known as Hrungnir's heart, is that each corner of the triangle's vertices represent the 9 worlds, and their entanglement with each other as constituent parts of a coherent whole.
The number 9 is significant to the Germanic/Teutonic/Norse traditions, being the number of “worlds” which were set aside for Gods, etins (jotuns) and the spirits of the dead, whether Alfar (elves), wights, ancestral spirits or various other supernatural entities (such as trolls or draugr). A more in-depth explanation is here:
http://www.odinsvolk.ca/O.V.A.%20-%20COSMOLOGY.htm
You would do well to check into the Proto-Indo-European language family origin, the culture of the people who spoke its common root ancestral language and its gods, (Thuronaz, Wodanaz, Tiwaz, etc.)
Caryl, thanks.
Dennis, all belief systems are illogical and muddled palimpsests. For example, how do ghosts fit with Christianity? Which version of Santa/Father Christmas/St. Nick do you subscribe to? How do you explain Tinkerbell? So, yep, I can make up a lot. But I want to make sure nothing clashes subconsciously for the reader.
Astrid, us northfolk have always been pragmatical beasts.
A friend told me:
“Not a medievalist, but there really is not an “authoritative source” that is untainted by Christian dogma. The Northern countries and their relative isolation preserved some of the old pagan writings, but mainland Europe was far too crushed under the boot of conversionary Christianity to maintain untainted history (I've been looking for Icelandic sagas that were not thus tainted; unfortunately, the largest group of extant sagas were written down in the post-Christian era, and thus display the bias of the alien religion in the writing itself…).”
So, while Bede might have tried to get it right despite his biases, others would have had less compunction about removing references to old gods or tempering them somehow as sagas and oral histories got transcribed, translated, etc.
Justy, sadly, yes, I know. Sigh.
Have you checked out info from ADF? (http://www.adf.org/articles/cosmology/, for example) They're gung-ho about being as scholarly as possible about Indo-European religions, and might at least have a handle on the best sources.
Phoenix, no, I hadn't seen that. Thanks.
The triskele symbols reminded me that christianity is a hodge-podge of borrowed motifs and the idea of the trinity was not an original notion. Insofar as the Anglo-Saxons derived much from the Celts, there's also the horse motif which was worshiped across northern Europe—a horse hung on a tree, which, if you squint, looks like a crucifix.
I've read one book on the Celts and parts of others and the muddle is frustrating because the chroniclers were, first, Roman then, later, christians. And why wouldn't Bede make up things about a system he hated? That seems par for the course—demonize that which is despised and, oh yeah, we'll lump this part in while we're at it. But “making it up” might not even be the case—these would all have been largely oral traditions.
It sounds like you're attempting to tease apart amalgams, like Candomble and Santeria, which are part Catholic part African…what? I understand the desire to get it as right as possible, but I doubt many would gainsay you if you made some broad assumptions…and you're certainly smart enough to do a good job of extrapolating from the scant traces left behind.
Mark, my problem is that it's all so bloody interesting! I forget that I'm supposed to be doing pragmatic research, and I get into really wanting to know. Can you spell 'avoidance behaviour'??
Have you read the book “Gods and Myths of Northern Europe” by. H.R. Ellis Davidson?
I found it to be one of the best overviews of the problem.
I asked my buddy Chris ( http://wormstunggod.wordpress.com ) to weigh in.
This is a really interesting question, and a supremely sticky one!
I want to mull this for awhile, but here are some initial thoughts:
a) Definitely check out Davidson, if you haven't already. I like that she deals with the Northern gods in their pre-Norse form.
b) On a more primary level, Tacitus's Germania.
c) My hunch on Bede is that his reputation is as being more trustworthy re: paganism than some other Christian authors, but my copy's an hour away from me right now, so that really is just a hunch. It would, of course, be easy for him to try to describe another religion well and just miss — happens all the time.
d) Should Thunor be the husband of Eorthe (sorry, the eth key on my keyboard fell off from overuse) or her husband?
Lagomorph Rex, no, I haven't read the Davidson. I'll hunt it down.
Mordicai, thank you.
Chris, I've read chunks of Tacitus, but not the whole thing. I've read Bede, (More than once.) I'm not sure I understand point d) should Thunor be Eorðe's husband or her husband? Do you mean Woden should be her husband? I'm confused. In my draft, I have Woden and Eorðe as connected, but the more I think about Thunor, the more I think I might have got that wrong.
Hi Nicola – people could swap any number tips on weighty tomes on old gods and not be any more certain to have accessed a 'truth'. As you know, everything we read is through a christian/Roman filter.
The best guess I have is that we, and those christians/Romans, are fundamentally coming at it from the wrong angle, and this is why interpretations are inconsistent and don't 'ring true'. The closer we get to the modern world, the more people have seen humans as the most important thing in their world, even to the extent of having to have gods in their image. Ask a child what 'God' looks like, and we'll get descriptions of beards and dresses!
In contrast, older (western and northern, at any rate) religious beliefs honoured concepts and nature – because they were seen to be more crucial to their continued existence than the acts of humans. They became personified only as time passed, and for shorthand. By this, I don't mean that their beliefs were not of the same supernatural nature as our own idea of 'gods', just that their 'gods' didn't need to be people with supernatural powers!
That probably doesn't help at all, does it?!
PS Thanks for the mention: much appreciated!
Esmeralda, I meant to actually mention you by name (I've just fixed that). But I wrote this is such a froth of frustration lots of stuff I meant to do just flew out of the window.
I hear you on the personification thing. One of the things I've been wrestling with is the apparent lack of A-S Fates. I've decided that wyrd and frith will do instead; that they just don't need to be personified. So, hey, a blow for non-personification! So, yes, in fact your comment does help. It's nice to not feel like the single nail sticking up…
Whoops! I meant to type “Should Thunor be her son, rather than her husband?”
Chris, in one sense, she's everyone's mother I suppose.
Belatedly, I wonder if McNeill's Silver Bough might be of help…
I hardly dare write anything after the seven years since Hild, but have you seen Stephen Pollington’s book The Elder Gods? I’m sure you will have done, but it was also published in 2011. A major authority.
Whilst waiting for Menewood, I shall continue to enjoy Jack and Stephen for the second time.
@Biz: No, I hadn’t read Pollington at the time, and then there wasn’t time to. And then frankly I forgot! So now I’ll go hunt it down and try not to let my toes curl at the understanding of everything I got wrong…