The New Pagan Temple In Poland & Religious Freedom (Video)

This video isn’t just about the new project to build a pagan temple to the Slavic gods in Poland. This is also about the importance of Religious Freedom and this project in Poland is just an example of how we need to start to walk towards a world where religious freedom is possible.

Note: In the video I say Poland celebrated in 2016 its 150th anniversary of the christianization of the land. Yeah, obviously not, it was its 1050th anniversary! My bad! 😀

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The Viking Priests and Priestesses of Sandvika

In the year of 1963, a burial ground with 24 graves inside the bay of Sandvika on the eastern side of the island of Jøa, in Central Norway, were discovered. The bodies were buried in a sitting position, and after a close analyses the dating  of the remains go back to the years 650 to 1000 AD. The unusual burial caracteristics showned that these northmen belonged to a specific group of people within the Viking society.

Unlike other graves from the Viking Age, this graveyard was unknown to the human sight, because the bodies were not placed inside a burial mound that is could be clearly visible in the terrain, or marked in any other way but rune stones or anything of that kind. These Vikings were lowered into funnel-shaped shell sand holes. This burial ground is unique in Scandinavia, and these people are the only ones to have ever been found like this - in a  sitting position. So why were they placed like this?

Lets make a quick analyses of the bodies. The people in question must have been dead for at least twenty-four hours so that rigor mortis has made it possible to shape the body into a sitting position. Also, it must have been very difficult to dig out chairs in the porous shell sand, so to go into all this trouble these people were not common folk amongst their community. There is another aspect which must be taken into consideration. In 14 of the 24 graves there were found skeletons and skeletal remains; the other 10 graves were simply empty. The remains were identify has belonging to 7 women and 4 men. Analysis shows that the women in question reached an average age of 47 years. (It has only been possible to determine the age of one of the men, and he died at the age of 40.)

The women had an average height of 157.2 centimeters (5ft 2in), and the men 162.6 centimeters (5ft 4in), which is much lower than the normal height for this period. The men were as much as 10 centimeters (3.9in) lower than the average for the Viking Age (172.6 cm / 5ft 8in).

The dating of the artifacts found here, shows that these Vikings were buried fully clothed in the period between 650 and 1000 AD, (from the Merovingian period to the end of the Viking Age), and it seems like the burial custom ended when Christianity was forced with swords upon the Norse society.

Today, on the other side of the small river Hovselva (the Hof River) is the Hov (Hof) farm located in the northeast – indicating that there was a pagan temple located close to the burial ground. In all of the 24 graves there were found remnants of bonfires, so it is natural to assume that there must have been some kind of ritual that includes bonfire in connection with the funeral.

Another peculiarity is that about half of the bodies were facing north-northeast (facing the Hof itself) and half to the south-southeast. No one was facing directly east and only one body was facing directly to the west. As many as ten knifes were found in 9 different graves. They vary in length, but none of them has a blade more than 20 centimeters and consequently have not been used as Viking combat weapons. The individuals they belonged to must have used these knives for a very specific purpose. There were no other weapons found inside the graves, which is unusual for the Viking Age. However, there were also found beads, brooches, finger rings and keys, but there is no repeating pattern.

Summarizing: these people were buried in a small area close to a heathen Hof, and the dead were put down in a sitting position. There was no marking of the graves but they may have been marked with ornamental shrubs or flowers; almost all of the graves contain remnants of bonfire, and there are no traces of weapons. However, there were found many “regular” cut knives; the bodies were facing north-northeast and south-southeast. No one was facing directly towards the east.

So who were these Vikings? They might have been “hovgydjer” - pagan priests and priestesses. The knives might have been used for sacrifice, or were the tools of these priests and priestesses. If thise is the case, it is very important for the understandment of the people who practiced the magical arts. It was common in Viking Age society that the only ones to practice sorcery, witchcraft, spell-work, divination and so on, were only women. But in this community it might have been different; it's quite plausable that men also did this kind of work.

We also have to take into consideration that these specific men were very small, and possibly very fragile. So it may have been that the community found a way to give them a purpose, a trade, a way to help the community since they might have been to fragile for other harduous works. Or maybe we are in the presence of an old Shamanic custome, where men who had certain feminine qualities were revered and worked as spiritual guides. Well, this remains a mystery.

Pagan Temple Unearthed in Norway

Archaeologists have discovery something truly amazing in Norway, something to give light to the pre-christian scandinavian religion. It seems it's the first of its kind to be found in norwegian soil, but it is so unique for a reason - it was deliberately hidden to avoid its destruction by christian hands.

This archaeological finding is located at the site of Ranheim, to the north of Trondheim. It seems the area where the temple was found had been occupied since the 6th-5th centuries BCE until the late 10th century CE (common Era). There are traces of animal sacrifice obviously, which isn't something that outstanding, for it was a common practice in many cultures of antiquity. This temple was dismantled and covered by peat a 1000 years ago more or less, to protect it from christian invaders as told before. The people of this place fled from the christians but not before safeguarding their place of worship.

The temple may have been built somewhere around the year 400 AD. It was thus used for hundreds of years until the people emigrated to avoid Christianity's oppressive religion. The temple consisted of a stone-set, commonly known as "sacrificial altar", and also traces of a "pole building" that probably housed idols in the form of sticks with carved faces of the gods. Deceased relatives of high rank were also portrayed in this way. Not far from there, the archaeologists also uncovered a procession route.

Being covered by layers of peat the temple was very well preserved. Such places covered by stratigraphic layers of turf and a very wet soil, tend to preserve whatever lies beneath. The altar for instance, where one worshiped the gods and offered animal blood, was preserved and we can have an idea how it was. It consisted of a circular stone setting around 15 meters in diameter and nearly a meter high. The pole building a few meters away was rectangular, with a floor plan of 5.3 x 4.5 meters, and raised with 12 poles, each having a solid stone foundation. The building may have been high and it is clear that it wasn't used as a dwelling. It had no fireplace. Inside the "house" were found traces of four pillars that may be evidence of a high seat where the idols stood between ceremonies. The processional road west of the temple headed straight towards where the pole building was marked with two parallel rows of large stones, the longest sequence at least 25 feet long. 

When archaeologists began their excavations two glass beads were found, and also some burned bones and traces of a wooden box that had been filled with red-brown sand/gravel and a cracked boiling stone. Among the bones, it was found a part of a skull and several human teeth.

The latest dating of the temple is between 895 and 990 CE. Precisely during this period Christianity was introduced by heavy-handed methods into Norway. Probably the people who used the temple were among those who chose to emigrate, either to Iceland or other North Atlantic islands. Posts for pole building were in fact pulled up and removed. The whole 'altar' was carefully covered with earth and clay, precisely at the transition to Christian times. Therefore, the cult site was completely forgotten. There are indications that the people who deliberately covered up the temple at Ranheim took the posts from the stave house/pole building, in addition to the soil from the altar, to the place wherever they  had settled down and raised a new temple. 

The sacrificial altar, a fire pit was found, which lay directly on the prehistoric plow layer. The charcoal from this grave is now dated to 500-400 BC/BCE. Thus, the place could have been regarded as sacred or at least had a special status long before the stone altar was built.