Thursday 1 April 2021

Anglo-Saxon Paganism: Elves, ents, orcs


What exactly are elves in the Anglo-Saxon pagan belief system? Did Anglo-Saxon pagans believe in an afterlife and Hell? I will answer all these questions in this video which is the second part of a 2 part series - I will also show you what their pagan temple at Yeavering looked like, and explain how the elves, orcs, dwarves, land wights and ents of their belief system were all classed as demons after Christianisation.

Art: 

Thomas Cormack - Elf blot  
Christian Sloan Hall - Hel, orcs, Odin, draugr
Christopher Steininger - Idunn, boat animation, mead-hall
Robert Molyneaux - Yeavering temple animation
 

Sources:


Abram, C. ‘In Search of Lost Time: Aldhelm and The Ruin’, Quaestio (Selected Proceedings of the Cambridge Colloquium in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic), vol. 1, 2000.
Dowden, Ken (2000). European Paganism: The Realities of Cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.
Doyle, Conan. (2018). Dweorg in Old English: Aspects of Disease Terminology.
Gunnel, T., ‘How Elvish were the Elves?’ 2007.
Hall, A., 'Are there any Elves in Anglo-Saxon Place-Names?', Nomina: Journal of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland, 29 (2006), 61-80.
Hall, A., (2004). The Meanings of Elf, and Elves, in Medieval England. 2007.
Lund, J., "At the Water's Edge" in "Signals of Belief in Early England"
Lysaght, P. ‘the banshee: the irish supernatural death messenger’
North, R. 1997 Heathen gods in Old English literature.
Pollington, S. 2011. The Elder Gods: The Otherworld of Early England.
Price, Neil & Mortimer, Paul. (2014). An Eye for Odin? Divine Role-Playing in the Age of Sutton Hoo. European Journal of Archaeology.
Semple. S., A Fear of the Past: The Place of the Prehistoric Burial Mound in the Ideology of Middle and Later Anglo-Saxon England. (1998)

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