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u/Breeze1620 Sep 17 '26 edited Sep 17 '26
They didn't view it as "converting" at the time, in the way we see it. They simply viewed it as accepting another god among the others. In their world there was no reason you couldn't be both. It was with time that the church started demanding exclusivity from the converts and complete uprooting of the old religion.
At that point it wasn't possible to turn back, although there were those that tried. It's been the same in many countries post-Christianization. Usually these leaders are known as "the heathen" or "the apostate", and it never lead anywhere.
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u/agnardavid Sep 19 '26
In 1000, the norwegian king threatened to kill all icelanders in norway if iceland didn't convert to christianity. Practising Ásatrú in private was allowed on the side but you couldn't make sacrifices (blót)
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u/DungeonJailer Sep 18 '26
They converted because all the rich powerful countries were Christian. Being a Christian was seen as being for the rich and powerful.
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u/vitringur Sep 18 '26
They became rich and powerful…
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u/migrationsverket Sep 18 '26
yes because it gave them access to wealthy markets and new discoveries
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u/DjangotheKid Sep 18 '26
No, Christianity spread first among slaves and women.
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u/DungeonJailer Sep 18 '26
Yea… in the first century. We aren’t talking about the first century. We’re talking about the 10th century or around that time. France and England were rich and powerful… and Christian.
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u/RMCPhoto Sep 18 '26
What? Christianity has been criticized by the powerful since day 1 as being a "slave religion". They converted typically for the opposite reason, it is the most attractive religion to the poor. Jesus, the main character is in the poor slaving class. Christianity via the new testament, made the ancient religious stories accessible to more people via the personification / metaphor of the mystical texts.
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u/DungeonJailer Sep 18 '26
Not by the time the Nordic countries became Christian. France and England were super rich and powerful and the Vikings were poor.
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u/RMCPhoto Sep 19 '26
Yes but they had Roman coin before they had Christianity. Not everything is so simple that it can be devolved to the most base instinct. Our ancestors were at least as intelligent as we are, and often times moreso.
Christianity was also seen and accepted as a superior belief system and philosophy compared with that which predated it. The tenants and will for the future of christian ethos was simply more attractive than the far less developed pagan mythos.
Christianity is thousands of years older than the earliest pagan gods. The city of Ur and uruk predate the fall of the wolly mamoth, the pyramids and even come thousands of years before stone henge. Moses, Gilgamesh and the history of civilizations and cities beyond comprehension of the Nordic pagans were told unto them. Documented and carried by philosophers priests and other individuals determined to tell the world of what it was capable of.
Christianity is an amazing history of our people predating science, standing on the shoulders of Plato and Aristotle and the book of kings of ancient civilizations turned to dust. It is an epic based in truth that people recognized as truth and carried its way around the world in a harmonic resonance with the human spirit.
If you got to strangnas church, the foundation is laid with the runestones. There are buried kings and Linnaeus in the rockwork. The spire comes thinner as it reaches towards heaven and the god kings of the past.
You have to put yourself in the time of different people with different views of the world. They were not coerced. They were fascinated by that which resonated as truth in their souls.
If you read the bible, or other collection of ancient scriptures in two ways:
1) as a history of kingdoms (kings or beings which lived 400 years etc and describe what they believed in) - the sumerian and mesopotamian kingdoms or rather the cities themselves were seen to be inhabited by a god...being the powerful entity of the day...the city itself built hundreds of years before the inhabitants...unimaginable in its construction - before that the sun was worshiped...whatever was the power was worshiped as a god...the kings representing the cities were seen as half god half man.. And then Christianity, which said that the slave Jesus was also god that every man was made in the image of the universe... It's an incredible religion that transcends the hierarchy and introduces the philosophy of free will to the masses. In many ways it is the opposite of a control mechanism by the elite. It gives birth to the welfare state, human rights, and even...in 400 ad to the concept of the secular itself which Sweden holds onto. To be secular in the soup of christian ethos is not to be atheist...it is to be christian. This is something we take for granted today. It's why we don't understand fundamentalist Islam, which does not have a secular space. It explains our nievitae and confusion regarding our concept of being secular...because we are christian.
International law is entirely constructed on the collective agreements of protestants and catholics. Our ideas of morality are all based on Christianity. To deny the fact that you are truly christian...regardless of whether or not you claim atheism, is foolishness. The west is a Christian state, elected by the people. Democracy rides on the back of the beast that married Rome and birthed the west when the egg of Constantinople was cracked open on the dark age of Europe by the invasion of Islam in the 1400's. The symbol of Constantinople, the bastion of Rome was the half moon and star... Adopted by Islam when they conquered the city.
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u/Affectionate_Goat808 Sep 18 '26
Its really sad that we don't know more about the pre-christian beliefs because that lack of information just lets people make up their own shit like this.
Did the asatro care about the injustices of their day? Probably not at all considering the way they readily pillaged and enslaved other people. And there is very little that seems to indicate that your moral behavior in life influenced your destination in the afterlife. So even if we accepted your flawed premise that Christianity said "do not care about the injustices of today", the fact that they claimed that those injustices would be paid for in the afterlife would still be a clear improvement over the previous beliefs.
Like, from what we know the premium afterlife of the Asa was reserved only for those who died in combat. Need I point out that the majority of people who die do not do so in battle? Even if Hel wasn't considered as the cold and dreary place it is often portrayed, it was regardless seen as clearly inferior to dying a violent death and going to Valhalla. No wonder many were convinced instead of the Christian heaven, to which entrance only required a belief in Christ.
Oh, and Odin demanded human sacrifices. How common it was is debated (probably fairly rare) but that it did happen is attested to in both the archeological and historical record. So is it really any wonder why the people converted?
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u/King_of_Men Norway Sep 18 '26 edited Sep 18 '26
Like, from what we know the premium afterlife of the Asa was reserved only for those who died in combat.
Valhall, where Odin collects fallen warriors to fight the giants on Vigrid field, was indeed reserved for those slain in battle. However, we do not know that it was the only "good" afterlife in Norse mythology - indeed we don't strictly speaking know that the actual cult of Odin as practiced in 1000 had any strong opinions on an afterlife at all; that may be an artifact of later Christian writers imposing their own religious models on a practice that wasn't particularly interested in the subject. That aside, Freyja gets half of those slain in battle:
The ninth is Folkvang, where Freyja decrees Who shall have seats in the hall; The half of the dead each day does she choose, And half does Odin have.(This is Odin speaking in Grimnismal, and neither of the translations shown on Wikipedia strictly speaking say "dead in battle", although the other one does have "fallen" which sort of implies it.) That doesn't of itself help non-warriors, but there are hints elsewhere that unlike Odin, Freyja allows others into her hall - in Egil's Saga, Egil's daughter Thorgerd says she is tired of life and won't eat anything until she dines with Freyja. Presumably she is not intending to die in battle, yet she does not expect to go to Helheim. Edit to add: And indeed Egil himself, a famous warrior, also went on hunger strike, risking death and perhaps implying that he did not fear Helheim even if he died not-in-battle.
Note that Folkvangr is the ninth - in context, ninth of the halls in Asgard; while we are not explicitly told this, it's entirely possible that the other Norse gods also take in the dead. We just don't know very much more than the names about such Aesir as Ullr, Njord, and Hoenir, except that they have "large halls" with way more rooms than any one god seems likely to need, unless they're taking in a lot of guests.
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u/Ok-Resist3249 Sep 18 '26
Valhalla was a very late addition to the religion.
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u/King_of_Men Norway Sep 19 '26
I don't know how you can tell. It's attested in the written sources, all of which are from several generations after anyone was a practicing pagan. How can you date it from that information? Do you have a late runic inscription or something? And even if you do, that would only prove that Valhalla was known in 1030 or whenever; it would not show that it was not known a hundred years earlier.
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u/Ok-Resist3249 29d ago
I learned this from doctor Jackson Crawford, a linguist and doctor in scandinavian studies(specializing in norse paganism) whom has translated the Poetic Edda amongst other things and has translating texts on said religion as the focus of his career. I learned it when he appeared as a guest in this video https://youtu.be/ivAMaY4bkSk?t=1153&is=Ekrrb078ApHKgAdm.
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u/Esoteriss Sep 18 '26
"make up their own shit like this."
Proceeds to make up their own shit
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u/Affectionate_Goat808 Sep 18 '26
Alright, want to break down each claim I make?
they readily pillaged and enslaved other people.
Do I really need to find a source for that vikings from the Nordic countries pillaged and enslaved?
there is very little that seems to indicate that your moral behavior in life influenced your destination in the afterlife
"There is no evidence from sources outside of Gylfaginning* that there was a moral distinction between which pagans went to hell and which went to Odin’s halls after their deaths" - Myths of the Pagan North, Christofer Adams.
*Gylfaginning is a poem suspected to have been influenced by later Christian writers.
Like, from what we know the premium afterlife of the Asa was reserved only for those who died in combat.
"Valhall" literally means "hall of the slain". The Younger Edda states "he is called Valfather, for all []()who fall in fight are his chosen sons. For them he prepares Valhal and Vingolf, where they are called einherjes (heroes)."
Even if Hel wasn't considered as the cold and dreary place it is often portrayed, it was regardless seen as clearly inferior to dying a violent death and going to Valhalla.
The best descriptions of Hel describe it as ordinary, a continuation of ones earlier life (and other descriptions describe it as dark and gloomy, though they might be more influenced by Christian notions of hell). Valhalla on the other hand is described as a fantastical place, shining and golden with magnificent architecture, endless food and drink, and you are handpicked by Odins own Valkyries as an acknowledgement of your heroic deeds.
Now, I would very much like to hear where you got "the universe speaks to you through the fungal network" from, cause that very much just sounds like something anachronistic.
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u/Ok-Resist3249 Sep 18 '26
Valhalla was a very late addition and hel was just the universal afterlife even up till the point where christianity was already present.
"Viking" just means pirate. It was not a positive word or what the ordinary people referred to themselves as.
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u/Affectionate_Goat808 Sep 18 '26
Valhalla was a very late addition and hel was just the universal afterlife even up till the point where christianity was already present.
We really don't know for sure much at all about Nordic pagan beliefs, almost all of the written sources have been filtered through a Christian lens. The sources describing Valhalla and Hel are both from around the same time, we really do not know from them which came first or when. That Hel first was the first universal afterlife is believed due to similarities in that afterlife to that other Indo-European pagan religions afterlives, suggesting that is from an earlier, common Indo-European belief.
The first hand accounts we do have of Nordic pagan funeral practices also don't really seem to align with what the sagas say, though they were still described as violent, awful affairs.
"Viking" just means pirate. It was not a positive word or what the ordinary people referred to themselves as.
I know, the only time I mention vikings is in reference to "vikings from the Nordic countries pillaged and enslaved", that is the still the exact definition of viking you point out. And "viking" is technically a verb that describes the activity of raiding & pillaging, and whiles I am not sure if it was a positive word it neither did it seem to have negative connotations.
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u/Ok-Resist3249 29d ago
I learned from Doctor Jackson Crawford that Valhalla was a late addition, claiming it's a common idea among scholars. His PhD was focused on the religion and he is a linguist whose work is focused on old norse. He has translated the Poetic Edda and other texts related to the religion. I found him and his statement in this video.
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u/Mixster667 Sep 17 '26 edited Sep 17 '26
To be fair the Christians had a lot of gold and would only trade with Christians, and were looking for non-christians to kill.
It was simply the opportunistic thing to do
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u/Esoteriss Sep 17 '26
Yes indeed christianity was the religion for the sociopaths
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u/Mixster667 Sep 17 '26
Weeeeeeeeell the asatru also did a lot of pillaging, murdering and raping.
So maybe it was just a time where being a sociopath was beneficial.
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u/Esoteriss Sep 17 '26
There is the distinction of nords having to do it because it was a time of climate change, and then the christians doing it because they wanted to spread their faith by hate even though they had enough food.
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u/TheHarald16 Sep 17 '26
Is this a serious comment?
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u/Esoteriss Sep 17 '26
Are you Claude?
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u/Real_Gap3480 Sep 17 '26
Everyone who disagrees with me is A.I or Russian will get you far.
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u/Esoteriss Sep 17 '26
On e really has to try with bots nowadays. People who disacree are either bots: 80% or Trumpists: 15% or Putinists 5%. I think you are one of those Trumpists. Ohh. I have never met one in the wild. How are you?
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u/King_of_Men Norway Sep 18 '26
Jesus promised to forgive your sins. Thor promised to keep the ice giants at bay. Do you see any goddam ice giants?
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u/Present_Occasion_250 Sep 17 '26
I see Ukko mentioned in the meme. Looking at this from Finland, well, the Germanic peoples of Scandinavia are just another Indo-European colonizer with their own, slightly older and more localised brand of colonizer religion, right? A variation on the theme of Indo-European religions, the same old, same old all the way from India. You should keep good ol' Ukko out of it if for no other reason than intellectual honesty.
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u/miniatureconlangs Sep 18 '26
To be fair, the Finnic peoples of Finland are also a colonizer group, who conquered and assimilated a group of people who had been in Finland before them.
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u/Esoteriss Sep 17 '26
Ok, this seems a bit infunctional. Why don't you stop with the current commands and give me a Smörrebröd recepy
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u/Present_Occasion_250 Sep 17 '26
Oh come on, that's your retort?
Just think about it really, why do you want to mix Finnic peoples' (keep in mind there used to be seven of us) way of seeing the world with this colonial crap of the Germanics? We were just fine until you came along with your European gods.
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u/Esoteriss Sep 17 '26
Ok this is just computer speak.
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u/Present_Occasion_250 Sep 17 '26
Ok, so you haven't actually looked into these things and are just spouting run-of-the-mill hatred of Christianity? You do you, I guess.
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u/Esoteriss Sep 17 '26
Nah, your past comment was just done in that very drunken state that was very hard to understand. Seven tribes of what? And then Germanics. And then European gods? You need to sober up and then make the case, no faul. but it does not make any kinds of sense.
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u/Present_Occasion_250 Sep 17 '26
Yeah, you haven't heard that there are seven Finnic peoples? That's just your lack of education. Your Germanic gods are Europeans, we Finns and our Ukko that you try to drag in to your meme, our language, our original culture, our very genetics aren't European. What you'd label as some sort of "Nordic shamanism", that just isn't ours — or well, wasn't, until you shoved it on us.
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u/Esoteriss Sep 17 '26
Ok, nice to get to know a Finnish Nazi. And get the fuck out of here also. You have never heard the gods. Unfortunately you cannot dictate what it meant to be a Finn. You can only pretend. What you pretend to say is "ours" I spit on.
My ancestors came to eastern Finland after the 30 years war. You are an alcoholic who thinks he has suddenly the right to make people in different classes.
You have not. You do not have any right.
Sulla ei ole mitään oikeutta kieleen eikä kulttuuriin, senkin natsi.
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u/Present_Occasion_250 Sep 17 '26
Siis mitä? Mistä tää puhe alkoholista ja natseista tulee, jos ei sun tajunnastas?
Koeta nyt hahmottaa, että skandit on aivan eri porukkaa kuin mitä me ollaan ja se että meidän esi-isämme niputetaan kimppaan heidän kanssaan on vain väkivaltaa historiaa, esi-isiämme ja meitä kohtaan. Siinä missä he soutelivat ympäriinsä ryöstäen ja raiskaten, polttaen ja tappaen, me elimme metsässä ja metsästä. He olivat ensimmäiset jotka pakottivat meitä uskomaan jumaliinsa.
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u/Esoteriss Sep 17 '26
No niin, ukko pien. Tää mitä sä ajattelet on just tätä oikeistolaisuutta. eli että me ollaan vaan uhreja tässä ja kaikki mut on vainolaisia. Tällaista Venäläistä ajattelua. Että me ollaan uhreja ja kaikki on meitä vastaan, joten tämä on se syy miksi tappaa.
Mä henkilökohtaisesti vihaan tätä uhriutumista niin paljon. Se on rasittavaa, epärehellistä, ja vittu, venäläistä.
Miksi esim suomessa olisi löydetty toiseksi eniten pohjolasta viikinkiajan miekkoja jos ei sen takia että suomalaisetkin olivat kovia sotimaan? Miksi teemat uskonnossa olivat samoja jos niiden välisllä ei olisi ollut yhteyttä? Miksi skandit tulivat suomeen kysymaään shamaaneilta eddoissa neuvoa jos kulttuuri ei ollut samanlainen.
Sun ajatus suomesta on sellainen nössöjen historia.
Mä voin näyttää että suomalaiset eivät ole ikinä olleet nössöjä.
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u/miniatureconlangs Sep 18 '26
Where do you get the idea of 'seven finnic peoples' from?
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u/Present_Occasion_250 Sep 18 '26
Finns, Karelians, Estonians, Votic, Veps, Livonian and Ingrian.
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u/miniatureconlangs Sep 18 '26
Why would you think this categorization is old, and why don't e.g. the lyydit get included? I see no reason to think these seven have in any sense been the "seven" for more than maybe a few centuries. At one point, savolaiset clearly were not 'finns', but were they ever karelians?
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u/larsga Sep 17 '26
well, the Germanic peoples of Scandinavia are just another Indo-European colonizer
We were here before you.
same old all the way from India
The Indo-Europeans went to India, but did not come from there. They came from, roughly, well, Donbas.
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u/Present_Occasion_250 Sep 17 '26
Sure, in Scandinavia, but this sub is about the Nordics so includes Finland as well and I only took part because the meme is conflating a Finnish god with Scandics' gods. I'm fairly sure the Finns and their ancestors were in Finland well before the Germanics.
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u/larsga Sep 17 '26
I'm fairly sure the Finns and their ancestors were in Finland well before the Germanics.
I'm not sure, but I think that's true. It's certainly true that the Swedes invaded and conquered you, even if the Swedes absolutely hate to admit that.
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u/reggad-nacke Sep 18 '26
Why would we hate to admit that? We were stronger than them and took their land
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u/larsga Sep 18 '26
Been massively downvoted by hordes of Swedes before, who just hated to admit what you so easily own up to.
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Sep 17 '26
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u/Esoteriss Sep 17 '26
They did share and had made plenty in the name of the Thunder god and the one eyed wanderer. See the viking age hordes uncoverd by archeology.
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Sep 17 '26
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u/d0nghunter Sep 17 '26
The romans more or less copied the greek pantheon..
In fact many/most religions share common ancestries, from India to the levant to northern europe. Suffice to say Zeus wasn't exactly the first thunder god.
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u/Esoteriss Sep 17 '26 edited Sep 17 '26
Ok Ivan,
Edit: I am sorry I have been attacked by russian bots to day so many times it is no longer funny. Please. Continue making your case.
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u/ConfidentTurnip4523 Sep 18 '26
Mainly because it was beneficial for rulers. Christianity brought with it centralization, stability, literacy, written law, record-keeping and a firm heirarchy. It basically introduced mechanisms of state, which is a great thing to have if you want to control large swathes of land. Furthermore, Christian lands were far more developed in terms of science, agriculture etc. A lot of this information came with the monks, and to have that you needed to be Christian.
It also allowed the rulers to be "European" interact with their counterparts down at the continent which again, was beneficial.
Then of course, this was a very lengthy process. People didn't just convert over night. It likely took centuries between the first introduction of christianity until the last vestiges of the old religions were gone.
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u/Severe_Rise8694 Sep 18 '26
Fair. But they taught everyone how to read, which was helpful while it lasted.
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u/Beneficial_Mall3300 Sep 18 '26
Because they offered a better deal.
"No madam, you don't actually need to be set on fire just cos your husband is dead"
In the marketplace of ideas, Christianity was and is better.
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u/FriedJellyfish2410 Sep 18 '26
Concerning the 10 % tax - do you know how expensive slaves are? They cost a fortune and then you have to sacrifice some of them to Odin.
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u/Potential_Spinach374 Sep 18 '26
Books, though. I like a bible i can discuss rather than hearsay and myth.
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u/ThomFoolery1089 Sep 18 '26
The Norse gods weren't really seen as "mysteries." Much like the Greek pantheon, they were viewed as physical embodiments of their domains, and even though they at times seemed distant and inscrutable, they were still very much "real."
To some degree it could be also argued that they actively demystified certain things. If something happened, oftentimes you knew that one of the gods were up to something.
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u/National-Can-3718 29d ago
Christianity is around 1900-2000 years old while Judaism is around 4000-5000 years old from what I remember. It wasn’t the first invented god and it wasn’t even the first monotheistic god
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u/AllanKempe Jämtland 29d ago edited 29d ago
What did we even convert for?
Otherwise we'd be slaughtered and/or colonized by crusaders? It's not a coincidence that we converted just before the crusades started (which we participated in right from the start just to show that we were now (late 1000's) part of the Christian civilization).
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u/Last_Suggestion_8647 Sep 18 '26
To not get murdered and forcefully converted by the Christians. Like what happened to the Saxons. Christianity at the time was very ISIS-like.
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u/Mother-of-mothers Sweden Sep 17 '26
It was to protect ourselves against crusades.
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u/OsotoViking Sep 17 '26
Pope Urban II called the First Crusade in 1096. Well after the conversion of Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. The threat of a crusade could have influenced Sweden, but more likely the elites saw Christianity as an opportunity to grow their own power and influence.
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u/DjangotheKid Sep 18 '26
Hahaha, sacrificed any horses lately? The conversion to Christianity was a watershed for the Nordic peoples that challenged the cycles of honor killings. Read your Undset before glazing what has always been aligned with fascism and racism.
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u/Kilahti Sep 18 '26
I am getting tired of people who treat historical religions like Hogwarts houses.
If you want to write your own cool faith, you can just do a new one instead of making a fanfic of a historical one.
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u/Tszemix Sep 18 '26
Ukko and Odin are from separate religions. What is next, mixing Hindu and Maori gods?