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Norse religious worship is the traditional religious rituals practiced by Norse pagans in Scandinavia in pre-Christian times. Norse religion was a folk religion (as opposed to an organized religion), and its main purpose was the survival and regeneration of society.
Norse clothing. In modern scholarship, Vikings is a common term for attacking Norsemen, especially in connection with raids and monastic plundering by Norsemen in the British Isles, but it was not used in this sense at the time.
It is uncertain whether they were worshipped. [134] The landvættir, spirits of the land, were thought to inhabit certain rocks, waterfalls, mountains, and trees, and offerings were made to them. [135] For many, they may have been more important in daily life than the gods. [136] Texts also mention various kinds of elves and dwarfs.
The spread of Christianity in Denmark occurred intermittently. Danes encountered Christians when they participated in Viking raids from the 9th century to the 1060s. Danes were still tribal in the sense that local chiefs determined attitudes towards Christianity and Christians for their clan and kinsmen.
The history of Christianity in Norway started in the Viking Age in the 9th century. Trade, plundering raids, and travel brought the Norsemen into close contacts with Christian communities, but their conversion only started after powerful chieftains decided to receive baptism during their stay in England or Normandy .
During the Viking Age, there is evidence for continued Irish mythological and Insular Celtic influence on Norse religion. [ 46 ] During the Roman period, Germanic gods were equated with Roman gods and worshipped with Roman names in contact zones, a process known as Interpretatio Romana ; later, Germanic names were also applied to Roman gods ...
There is a long tradition of understanding Dubgaill as Danish Vikings and Finngaill as Norwegian Vikings. This interpretation has recently been challenged by David N. Dumville and Clare Downham , [ 5 ] who, building on Smyth's conclusions, propose that the terms may not be related to ethnicity or origin of the different groups of Vikings.
Fascination with the Vikings reached a peak during the so-called Viking revival in the late 18th and 19th centuries as a form of Romantic nationalism. [239] In Britain this was called Septentrionalism, in Germany "Wagnerian" pathos, and in the Scandinavian countries Scandinavism. Pioneering 19th-century scholarly editions of the Viking Age ...