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Paper short abstract

This paper explores how dreams, visions, and altered states were linked to caves, tombs, rivers, and fountains in Northwestern Europe. Drawing on Classical, medieval, and folkloric sources, it shows how rituals like incubation and offerings marked these sites as enduring portals to the Otherworld.

Paper long abstract

In the practice of incubation, an individual seeks aid or advice from Otherworldly entities by sleeping in a place dedicated to them. In Roman times, people practised formal incubation at the temples of healing deities (Asclepios, Amphiaros), and expected such encounters at the natural homes of water nymphs and goddesses. In Northwestern Europe, as elsewhere, these Classical practices formalised and merged with local belief-structures, later Christianised and adapted in various ways. This paper explores the evidence for ties between dream-experience (including altered states of mind, prophetic visions and nightmares) and specific kinds of natural places. Evidently NW Europeans and Scandinavians did expect encounters with the supernatural world at certain sites – such as caves, tombs, riverbanks and fountains – and could on occasion use ritual means for attracting (or repelling) this kind of experience. These means might include incubation, offerings, attendance (or avoidance) at particular liminal times or seasons. Looking at visual and narrative materials from late Classical, medieval Norse, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic sources, together with folkloric and ethnographic evidence, the paper considers what patterns can be seen here, how they reflect/express social distinctions (such as gender and class), and what they might tell us about how and why certain kinds of “sacred ground” were ascribed, created and maintained over very long periods, as portals to the Otherworld.