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Norse pagan worship is the traditional religious rituals practiced by Norse pagans in Scandinavia in pre-Christian times. Norse paganism was a folk religion (as opposed to an organised religion), and its main purpose was the survival and regeneration of society. Therefore, the faith was decentralized and tied to the village and the family, although evidence exists of great national religious festivals. The leaders managed the faith on behalf of society; on a local level, the leader would have been the head of the family, and nationwide, the leader was the king. Pre-Christian Scandinavians had no word for religion in a modern sense. The closest counterpart is the word ''sidr'', meaning custom. This meant that Christianity, during the conversion period, was referred to as ''nýr sidr'' (the new custom) while paganism was called ''forn sidr'' (ancient custom). The centre of gravity of pre-Christian religion lay in religious practice — sacred acts, rituals and worship of the gods.〔Steinsland (2005) p. 268〕 Norse religion was at no time homogeneous but was a conglomerate of related customs and beliefs. These could be inherited or borrowed,〔Steinsland (2005) p. 347〕 and although the great geographical distances of Scandinavia led to a variety of cultural differences, people understood each other's customs, poetic traditions and myths.〔Roesdahl (1998) pp. 35-36〕 Sacrifice (''blót'') played a huge role in most of the rituals that are known about today, and communal feasting on the meat of sacrificed animals, together with the consumption of beer or mead, played a large role in the calendar feasts. In everyday practice, other foodstuffs like grain are likely to have been used instead. The purpose of these sacrifices was to ensure fertility and growth. However, sudden crises or transitions such as births, weddings and burials could also be the reason. In those times there was a clear distinction between private and public faith, and the rituals were thus tied either to the household and the individual or to the structures of society.〔Steinsland (2005) p. 265〕 It is not certain to what extent the known myths correspond to the religious beliefs of Scandinavians in pre-Christian times, nor how people acted towards them in everyday life. The Scandinavians did not leave any written sources on their religious practice, and Christian texts on the subject are marked by misunderstandings and negative bias, since the Christians viewed the Nordic beliefs as superstition and devil worship. Some archaeological evidence has been discovered, but this is hard to interpret in isolation from written material.〔Kofod & Warmind (1989) p. 66〕 ==Worship of the gods== Recent research suggests that great public festivals involving the population of large regions were not as important as the more local feasts in the life of the individual. Though they were written in a later Christian era, the Icelandic sagas are of great significance as sources to everyday religion. Even when the Christian influence is taken into account, they draw an image of a religion closely tied to the cycle of the year and the social hierarchy of society. In Iceland the local secular leader had the title of gothi, which originally meant priest but in the Middle Ages was a term for a local secular leader.〔Sigurdsson (1993) pp. 133-136〕 Ceremonial communal meals in connection with the blót sacrifice are mentioned in several sources and are thus some of the most described rituals. Masked dancers, music, and singing may have been common parts of these feasts.〔Kofod & Warmind (1989) p. 38〕 As in other pre-Christian Germanic societies, but in contrast to the later situation under Christianity, there was no class of priests: anyone could perform sacrifices and other faith acts. However, common cultural norms meant that it was normally the person with the highest status and the greatest authority (the head of the family or the leader of the village) who led the rituals.〔Hansen, Lars Iver (1999) pp. 105〕 The sources indicate that sacrifices for fertility, a safe journey, a long life, wealth etc. were a natural and fully integrated part of daily life in Scandinavian society, as in almost all other pre-modern societies across the world.〔Näsström (1999) p. 161〕 The worship of female powers is likely to have played a greater role than the medieval sources indicate, because those texts were written by men and pay less attention to religious practices in the female sphere.〔Steinsland (2005) p. 301〕 A trace of the importance of goddesses can be found in place-name material that has shown that there are often place names connected to the goddess Freyja near place names connected to the god Freyr.〔Brink, Stefan (1999) p. 46〕 Fertility and divination rituals that women could take part in or lead were also among those which survived the longest after Christianisation.〔Ellis Davidson (1990) p. 121〕 Different types of animals or objects were connected to the worship of different gods; for instance, horses and pigs played a great role in the worship of Freyr. This did not mean that the same animal could not also play a role in the worship of other deities (the horse was also an important part of the Odin faith).〔Ellis Davidson (1990) p. 97〕 One of the most important objects in Norse paganism was the ship. Archaeological sources show that it played a central role in the faith from the petroglyphs and razors of the Bronze Age to the runestones of the Viking Age. Interpretation of the meaning of the ship in connection to the mythological material is only possible for the late period,〔Crumlin-Pedersen (1994) pp. 143〕 when it was mainly associated with death and funerals.〔Ellis Davidson (1990) p. 135〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Norse rituals」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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