Basque people have unique ancient traditions that they still preserve such as the fox dance "Azeri Dantza" in Hernani where a man wears the skin of a fox and whips people with the inflated bladder of a pig! This derives from ancient Roman pagan traditions of Lupercalia and Bacchanalia.
A Survive the Jive Solstice special. In keeping with the tradition of telling ghostly stories at Yule, here is a special about Odinic sacrifices in Sweden and England during the 19th century. Edited by Wodenwyrd.
Sources:
Higgens, T. W. E. “A Survival of Odin-Worship in Kent.” Folklore, vol. 7, no. 3, 1896, pp. 298–99. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1253238. GUNNAR OLOF HYLTÉN-CAVALLIUS - 1863 Wärend and Wirdarne. An attempt in Swedish Ethnology.
The Hunting of the Earl of Rone is an ancient ceremony in the village of Combe Martin in England which resembles the film “The Wicker Man”. Although local legend has it that the ceremony derives from the capture of the Earl of Tyrone who fled from Ireland in 1607, I demonstrate in this documentary that it has clear parallels in European pagan customs and in Hinduism, which proves that the procession, the hobby horse, the fool, and the drowning of the straw idol originate in pre-Christian seasonal Anglo-Saxon rites.
Sources:
-Ashe, R., Ashe, G., ‘Folklore, Myths And Legends Of Britain’ 1973
-Fern, Chris ‘Early Anglo-Saxon Horse Burial of the Fifth to Seventh centuries AD’ in Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 14, (Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, 2007).
-Frazer, James George. ‘The Golden Bough; a Study in Magic and Religion’, 1935.
-Walker, C. ‘Strange Britain’ 1989
-Tacitus, Cornelius, The Agricola; and, The Germania, H. Mattingly (trans) - Sources for Earl of Rone - Marzanna
Dan Capp's Wolcensmen creates heathen hymns from the mists of England. He was originally known as a member of the Anglo-Saxon themed metal band Winterfylleth but his acoustic side project Wolcensmen is now the focus of his work. Dan’s music evokes the persistent paganism in the folk ways of the peasants of England, and breathes life into a natural expression of the English folk soul. In this interview we discuss a few of his songs and the meaning of the pagan themes in his lyrics.
This podcast is also available on Apple podcasts, Spotify and the rest!
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.
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)
This interview was first published on the Folk Horror Revival blog.
Firstly can you tell us a little about yourself – your background, how you ended up as a writer and involved with graphic novels?
I come from a media background; used to be a writer for trendy magazines in London and wanted to be a film maker. I started out directing horror films and music videos with zombies in the English countryside and wrote my dissertation for my Media degree in 2007 on representation of rural communities in horror films of the seventies. In 2011 I quit my media job and went back to University to study paganism of the Germanic peoples and subsequently directed and presented a documentary film on the subject called From Runes to Ruins (2014). I grew up reading graphic novels; 2000 AD and Alan Moore etc. So when I was approached by Christopher Steininger, a Canadian artist asking to collaborate on a comic book project, I was delighted. I immediately suggested a folk horror story for Christmas.
Who are your influences/heroes? (as a writer and in general)
In film making I was very influenced by everyone from Ingmar Bergman to Piers Haggard. My presenting style is based on old pedagogical BBC TV; people like Kenneth Clarke and David Attenborough but mixed with Jonathan Meades’ cheeky humour. My writing for this particular work was deliberately based heavily on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol but also on the old BBC ghost stories for Christmas.
Do you consider your work to fit into the Folk Horror genre and if so what is it about it that you feel fits that label?
Absolutely. I have a personal connection to the genre; my grandfather’s farm was near Kirkcudbright where The Wicker Man was filmed, and I knew all the places from the film. By the time I went to university, I was obsessed with it, which is why I had to include it in my dissertation. It had previously influenced all the horror films I made as a teen, which depicted the English landscape as pregnant with the horror of history. That was over a decade ago and since then I have become more passionate about the genre, although I have not made any horror for a long time. This book was consciously written as a part of the Folk Horror genre, so the terror derives from the pagan roots of the land’s history.
Do you have a particular process (ritualistic or preparatory) when are working on a particular project? Any way in which you get yourself in `the zone’ or work up ideas?
Sometimes I can’t write and sometimes I can. David Lynch says concepts of the sphere of pure ideas come to him from "the unified field" which is an ocean of pure consciousness from which he says "everything comes". I have similar views. I don’t feel like my ideas are my own, and I’m not interested in being original, just communicating ideas from that realm in different ways so they can be understood by different people.
Can you give an outline of the content of Spirit of Yule and how/why you ended up creating it? So the cartoon came out first (almost a year ago) and the book this year. Was that always the plan?
In both the motion comic and the graphic novel, the reader, guided by The Green Knight, travels back through the centuries to learn the pagan roots of Yuletide; from the Dickensian, to the Arthurian and back to the Anglo-Saxons and Norse. The ghost story is set in Victorian England on Christmas Eve, but it teaches the reader all about how pagan people in England used to celebrate Yule 1300 years ago. I based all the pagan practices depicted in the story on contemporary accounts of Yule celebrations among Norse pagans, so this is not only entertainment, but also a kind of educational tool, suitable for all ages (provided they don’t mind a bit of horse blood!). Someone commented on the cartoons saying it ought to be a book, so Christopher grabbed that ball and ran with it. We struggled to get it all ready and self-publish in time for this Christmas though!
What is next?
Christopher and I will work on another graphic novel in future, this time on comparative mythology of different Indo-European traditions; Celtic, Hindu, Greek etc. He is a versatile artist, so I am excited to see what he comes up with for the next project!
The screenplay written by David Rudkin is rooted in the mystical power of rural England. 'Revolt from the monolith, come back to the village' says the Parson to his son in one scene, summing up the message of the film, set in Worcestershire, which seeks to reconcile the duality of England’s pagan and Christian heritage. The central character, a young Protestant, seemingly homosexual, but deeply conservative, is plagued by mystical sexual visions, first of the devil, then of his hero, the composer Edward Elgar who lived close by. The boy comes to learn of the pagan heritage of the land, and that the spirit of the 7th century King Penda, one of the last Anglo-Saxon pagan kings, still haunts the land.
“Our land must live. This land must live. Our deep, dark flame must never die…Cherish our flame. Our dawn shall come”- King Penda
