Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses Heathens' use of music in religious practices, with a particular focus on ritualization, interpretation, and authority construction. Using a digital survey and interviews, this paper discusses how Heathens talk about some of the most popular music within the religion(s).

Paper long abstract:

Using a digital survey and interviews, this paper discusses how Heathens use and talk about some of the most popular music within the religion(s). How can we understand the relationship(s) between self-identifying Heathens and Norse-inspired music? Do Heathens listen to Norse-inspired music at all? Those who do, how do they use it? What artists and bands appear to have the strongest influence and what kinds of influence do they possess? Are the any differences in how Heathens use Norse-inspired music in the metal and neofolk genres? What determines how they use a specific artist's music in their religious practice?

This paper addresses Heathens' use of Norse-inspired music and the relationship(s) between these practices and Heathens' religious practices, focusing on the incorporation of music into religious interfaces through ritualization, interpretation, authority construction, and ways of hearing. What can we learn about the ways in which Norse-inspired music is technologized, and the Norse past is technologically musicalized if we approach the ongoing and continuing construction of Heathen religious interfaces—individual and shared—as practices of reception and ritualization, and how they intersect in interpretative work and authority construction. Seen in this way, music is discussed as an authority-constructing technology that helps facilitate religious interaction, interfaces, and immersion, development of identity/-ies and social bonds in contemporary Heathenism.

Paper short abstract:

The paper addresses the use and image of Old Norse religion as a symbol for “connectedness” and as a contrast to what is imagined a loss of relationship to nature and history among contemporary Heathens.

Paper long abstract:

A common theme in the forms of spirituality expressed by contemporary Pagan and Heathen forms of spirituality is the idea of reclaiming a sense of connection, be it to nature, culture, history or in more abstract terms. This theme of reclaiming a connection is a central part of the appeal of festivals like Midgardsblot and a recurring theme in the answers participants give as to what draws them to the festival. This paper will present how this is presented often in a form of neo-primitivism that becomes symbolic for a connection that has been lost in the modern world. The paper will address how the neo-primitivism of Heathens, both by artists and audience, are an expression of a cultural critique that addresses a sense imagined lost connection, that reject modern technology yet at the same time are immersed by it, being a movement that is celebrating local identities and yet are a global movement that often transcends local and regional identities. The paper will argue that modern Heathenism in their use of references to “local” cultures are based on a use of the construction of Old Norse culture as a symbol of something “authentic” and connected that appeals to people who have no connection to Scandinavia but for who it becomes a representation of connection. But focusing on the image of Norse culture the paper will seek to address new ways that Heathens relate and address to Old Norse culture.

Paper short abstract:

I explore the phenomenon of rulers’ lists in the context of 9th-century, pre-Christian Scandinavia, focusing on the poem Ynglingatal. I propose that such enumerations of (claimed) ruler successions were technologies of remembrance, linking rulers and their communities to a sacred, primordial past.

Paper long abstract:

The Old Norse skaldic poem Ynglingatal (Enumeration of the Ynglingar) has puzzled scholars for more than a century. This poem, attributed to the skald Þjóðólfr ór Hvini and convincingly dated to the late 9th century, lists a succession of twenty-nine rulers, beginning in the distant mythic past with rulers in the Mälaren region (Sweden) and ending in the skald’s present with Rǫgnvaldr, a ruler in Vestfold (Norway) in whose honour the poem was composed.

Drawing on cultural memory theory and on comparative material concerning the phenomenon of ‘rulers’ lists’ (e.g. in ancient Egyptian and Assyrian cultures), I investigate what function the enumeration of an (actual or claimed) succession of rulers might have had when performed at a ruler’s court in late-9th century Scandinavia. I begin with a brief discussion of the poem’s dating and transmission history. Then, I outline some previous interpretations, which have focussed on the extraordinary deaths, suffered by many of the enumerated rulers. Departing from these, I argue that the poem, in fact, shows little interest in the fate of the individual rulers. Above all, it is concerned with listing: when one ruler dies, a new one follows. With reference to the phenomenon of king’s lists, I propose that this list of rulers is an expression of ‘cold memory’, i.e. an attempt to ‘freeze’ historical change and convey an impression of the stability and durability of rulership – and by extension of the entire community – across generations. As such, the rulers’ list seems to function as a technology of cultural remembrance, linking the succession of rulers and their community to its sacred beginnings in a primordial past.