Paganism part 4

Thor looked after the free peasants - bondr, and Odin over representatives of the tribal aristocracy. It's hard to say at the moment, how strongly this division was established. However, he was not strong enough, to change the functions of both deities and the universality of their worship. Among other things, this is evidenced by the previously cited chronicle of Adam Bremenski. The human-deity relationship was most visible in the sphere of sepulchral beliefs. Numerous material sources have survived, including written, from which a fairly accurate picture of the Normans' beliefs about death and the afterlife can be recreated. It follows from them, like the whole religious system, they had strong realistic characteristics. It was believed, that the tomb is only a gate between the world of the living and the world of the dead. At the same time, it was the point of contact between the two planes of existence that made contact possible. Any activities of the living referring to the deceased had two basic goals. First of all, efforts were made to facilitate the deceased's path to the kingdom of death by all means and to provide him with the best possible conditions of existence there., and secondly, to protect the living against its unplanned activation. There were situations, in which the interference of the dead was desired. The myth of kings and heroes rising from the grave was widespread, to defend his people from foreign invasion. Its distant echoes can also be heard in Polish legends (e.g.. the legend of Giewont). However, these were exceptional cases, related to the social position of the deceased. For the most part, people of that era were constantly accompanied by the fear of the dead. Conviction, that the dead haunt the world in the form of ghouls, it was very strong. Material traces of these fears can be found in almost all cemeteries of this period in the form of traces of anti-vampire treatments. Despite the clear division of the world of the dead into Niflhel and Valhalla in the sources, the apparent belief in the possibility of choosing the forms of posthumous existence deserves attention.. To some extent, it may be associated with the aforementioned rites of dedicating characteristic forms of the landform to the gods, such as the source, wet, hills, Forests, or even larger boulders.

Scandinavian paganism, despite the later influences of Christianity and its unifying character, has survived in the folk tradition. Contemporary known fairy tales have their original content, and many of their themes became part of pan-European culture, standing on a par with the motifs derived from Greek and Roman mythology.