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Who Were the Last Pagans of Europe · Abide Meditation App

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  Speaker 1: Learn more about modern paganism by joining our upcoming seminar
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  Speaker 1: with scholar Thorn Mooney. Go to Religion Department dot com
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  Speaker 1: slash contemporary Paganism. The year is seventeen eighty nine. The
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  Speaker 1: French Revolution is erupting in Paris, George Washington has just
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  Speaker 1: become the first President of the US, and the Enlightenment
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  Speaker 1: is in full swing, reshaping Europe's intellectual and religious landscape.
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  Speaker 1: And yet on the eastern edge of the continent, something
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  Speaker 1: else is happening. In Estonia, a Lutheran pastor named August
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  Speaker 1: Wilhelm Hoope recorded a local religious practice he recently witnessed
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  Speaker 1: in his perish. Among other things, the peasants had the
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  Speaker 1: habit of fencing in some old tree, an empty space,
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  Speaker 1: or a small pile of stones, and then from time
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  Speaker 1: to time they would bring offerings to the Earth goddess milk, butter, wool, money,
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  Speaker 1: and they would also kill a black rooster in her
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  Speaker 1: honor around April twenty third. For this reason, these places
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  Speaker 1: had a special sacrificial stone. Wait wait, wait, wait, hold
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  Speaker 1: on an Earth goddess in Europe in seventeen eighty nine, apparently, yes,
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  Speaker 1: while revolution was sweeping through Europe and the America. Some
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  Speaker 1: Estonian villagers were still honoring pre Christian gods with live
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  Speaker 1: animal sacrifice, and they were not alone. Today we're rethinking
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  Speaker 1: a common assumption that Europe was fully Christianized by the
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  Speaker 1: Middle Ages, and that Paganism disappeared long ago, leaving behind
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  Speaker 1: only faint echoes in folklore and folk practice. But as
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  Speaker 1: the historian Francis Young argues in his book Silence of
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  Speaker 1: the Gods, the reality is much more complex. Christianization did
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  Speaker 1: not sweep across Europe like an unstoppable wave. In some regions,
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  Speaker 1: Christianization just stalled, even where churches were being built and
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  Speaker 1: baptisms being performed. Many communities continued practicing older forms of
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  Speaker 1: religion well into the modern period. So who are we
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  Speaker 1: talking about here? Broadly speaking, we're talking about the indigenous
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  Speaker 1: peoples of Europe's northern and eastern frontiers, groups who lived
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  Speaker 1: outside the political and cultural centers of medieval Christendom, from
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  Speaker 1: the Arctic Circle down through the Baltic coast and into
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  Speaker 1: the vast western interior of Russia. This included peoples such
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  Speaker 1: as the Sign, the indigenous people of northern Fenescandia today's Norway, Sweden, Finland,
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  Speaker 1: and Russia's Cola Peninsula. The Sami retained elements of their
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  Speaker 1: pre Christian religion well into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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  Speaker 1: There were religious specialists to use drums and trans states
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  Speaker 1: to mediate between humans in the spirit world, sometimes called shamanism.
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  Speaker 1: Sami cosmology was deeply tied to the land, and many
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  Speaker 1: continued their traditional sacrificial rights even after their nominal Christianization.
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  Speaker 1: Next are the Baltic peoples, especially the Lithuanians, Latvians, and
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  Speaker 1: the Old Prussians. Lithuania's elite technically converted to Christianity in
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  Speaker 1: thirteen eighty seven, but pre Christian religion continued for generations
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  Speaker 1: even into the early modern period. Church and court records
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  Speaker 1: described locals refusing Christian burial and continuing to honor older gods.
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  Speaker 1: In seventeen eighty nine, Hoople mentions Latvian farmers honoring a
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  Speaker 1: household god called mayas Kum's Lord of the house. On
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  Speaker 1: Saint Michael's Day on September twenty ninth, they'd make a
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  Speaker 1: pile of rocks and then sacrifice a rooster there and
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  Speaker 1: pour out a libation of beer for the spirit's protection.
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  Speaker 1: Then we have the Finnic and Yugrik peoples northeastern Europe
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  Speaker 1: in the Volga ural region. This includes the Estonians, the Mari,
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  Speaker 1: the Mordvins, and the Komi. These non Slavic peoples lived
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  Speaker 1: on the peripheries of the expanding Russian Orthodox and Lutheran
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  Speaker 1: empires and were often targets of missionary campaigns, but Christianization
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  Speaker 1: here was slow and uneven. The Mari, for instance, openly
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  Speaker 1: continued animal sacrifices into the eighteen hundreds. From that point onward,
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  Speaker 1: revivalist movements produced a distinct form of Mari traditional religion
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  Speaker 1: that has continued to this day. In fact, in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: ninety two, the president of the Mari l Republic in
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  Speaker 1: Russia was inaugurated both by an Orthodox priest and an
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  Speaker 1: Animist priest. The Estonians, as well, who will examine as
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  Speaker 1: the main case study, maintained a rich landscape of sacred
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  Speaker 1: natural sites woven into everyday religious life. For example, check
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  Speaker 1: out this catechism from northern Estonia dating to sixteen ninety four.
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  Speaker 1: It was used to instruct students on violations of the
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  Speaker 1: first commandment. You shall have no other gods before me.
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  Speaker 1: The catechism warns not to give honor, which is meant
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  Speaker 1: only for God, to figures like the Earth mother beings
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  Speaker 1: called under Earth's as well as to hills, stone, own springs,
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  Speaker 1: steam of sauna, groves or trees and forests considered to
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  Speaker 1: be holy, bringing them sacrifices, or in some other ways,
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  Speaker 1: serving idols. The tone is unmistakable. This catechism is warning
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  Speaker 1: against practices that are still familiar enough to need explicit
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  Speaker 1: instruction against them. In sixteen ninety four Estonia, the author
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  Speaker 1: clearly expects his readers to recognize these behaviors from everyday life.
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  Speaker 1: Although these groups are often labeled the last Pagans of Europe,
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  Speaker 1: a phrase that sounds dramatic but needless to say, raises
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  Speaker 1: an eyebrow among the many contemporary Pagans of Europe who
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  Speaker 1: are alive and well today, Doctor Young, like many scholars,
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  Speaker 1: tries to avoid using the word pagan to describe these
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  Speaker 1: people groups. Now. On one hand, it's a convenient, public
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  Speaker 1: facing term that most people recognize, which is why he
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  Speaker 1: uses it in the title of his book and why
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  Speaker 1: I used it in the title of this YouTube video.
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  Speaker 1: On the other hand, paganism functions as an overly vague
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  Speaker 1: umbrella category that lumps together radically different traditions. You worship
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  Speaker 1: Zeus pagan, You offer milk to a sacred rock in
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  Speaker 1: seventeenth century Estonia also pagan. But these two examples have
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  Speaker 1: of basically nothing in common except that they're not Christian.
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  Speaker 1: Many of these peoples practice what scholars today call animism,
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  Speaker 1: which itself has a very complicated history. European anthropologist like E. B.
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  Speaker 1: Tylor used it dismissively to describe so called primitive beliefs
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  Speaker 1: and spirits or magical thinking, but more recent scholarship has
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  Speaker 1: redefined animism as a relational worldview, one that understands humans
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  Speaker 1: as living in ongoing relationships with the material and natural worlds.
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  Speaker 1: In this view of animism, personhood is not limited to humans,
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  Speaker 1: but can extend to landscapes, animals, objects, natural phenomena, and
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  Speaker 1: natural features like a mountain or river. As the scholar
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  Speaker 1: of religion Graham Harvey puts it, animism is a worldview
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  Speaker 1: in which the world is full of persons, only some
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  Speaker 1: of whom are human. Using this definition, scholars often describe
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  Speaker 1: the religions of the Sami, the Estonians, the Marii, and
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  Speaker 1: others as animists, even though their practices varied widely across
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  Speaker 1: time and space. Though doctor Young points out in his
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  Speaker 1: book that nothing about this definition of animism necessarily requires polytheism, sacrifice, temples,
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  Speaker 1: cult images, and so forth. Indeed, it's not altogether clear
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  Speaker 1: from this definition that animism need to be considered religion
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  Speaker 1: at all. That's part of the reason why doctor Young
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  Speaker 1: prefers terms like Unchristianized peoples. It focuses on what these
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  Speaker 1: people groups actually shared, that Christianity had not yet been
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  Speaker 1: deeply integrated into everyday life, without pretending that these groups
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  Speaker 1: all formed a single religious tradition. This phrasing also helps
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  Speaker 1: keep the historical analysis separate from contemporary paganism. These identities
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  Speaker 1: are shaped by very different social and historical conditions living
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  Speaker 1: in what are now largely Christianized societies. Now I've been
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  Speaker 1: using this term Christianization a lot, and this refers to
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  Speaker 1: the process by which a society adopts Christianity politically, culturally,
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  Speaker 1: and socially. That can involve rulers converting to Christianity, churches
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  Speaker 1: being built, kids being baptized with Christian names, calendars being
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  Speaker 1: reorganized around Christian holidays, marriages and burials brought under church
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  Speaker 1: control and clergy becoming the recognized authorities of major life events.
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  Speaker 1: Needless to say, this process involves a lot. Christianization is
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  Speaker 1: often presented as a series of decisive conversion romans. A
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  Speaker 1: ruler converts, an edict is issued, and boom, the kingdom
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  Speaker 1: becomes Christian. Think of Constantine in the fourth century, for example.
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  Speaker 1: But for this topic, the classic example is the Christianization
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  Speaker 1: of Lithuania in thirteen eighty seven. At the time, the
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  Speaker 1: Grand Duke of Lithuania accepted baptism, married the Polish Queen,
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  Speaker 1: and brought Lithuania into a political alliance with Poland. Christianity
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  Speaker 1: became the official religion of the Lithuanian state, and because
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  Speaker 1: Lithuania was the last officially pagan kingdom in Europe, this
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  Speaker 1: moment is often treated as the definitive end of European paganism.
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  Speaker 1: But this is where the model begins to break down.
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  Speaker 1: We really should not consider Christianization as ever a single event.
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  Speaker 1: Like any complex cultural phenomenon, Christianization was a long, uneven
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  Speaker 1: and contested process, a negotiation between missionaries and local cultures,
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  Speaker 1: between institutional authorities and lived religious practices on the ground.
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  Speaker 1: Official adoption often blanketed over deep continuities in ritual life
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  Speaker 1: that persisted for generations. I studied the Late Roman Empire,
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  Speaker 1: for example, you see the same pattern much earlier in
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  Speaker 1: late Antique Egypt. The spread of Christianity there didn't necessarily
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  Speaker 1: erase older religious habits. Now monks and bishops condemned temples
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  Speaker 1: and traditional gods, but practices tied to healing, protection, sacred places,
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  Speaker 1: and local ambiguous spirits continued for centuries, though now sometimes
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  Speaker 1: framed in Christian language. So on paper, Roman Egypt was
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  Speaker 1: Christian and on the ground change was gradual. Doctor Jung
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  Speaker 1: proposes a set of markers to identify an Unchristianized society,
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  Speaker 1: including large numbers of unbaptized adults in the population, ongoing
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  Speaker 1: sacrifices or libations to pre Christian deities, the veneration of
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  Speaker 1: specific gods through their images, the veneration of sacred natural
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  Speaker 1: sites like sacred groves in ways that are not tied
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  Speaker 1: to Christian piety, and in some cases open rejection of
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  Speaker 1: Church teaching or authority. In other words, these were societies
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  Speaker 1: where Christian symbols, beliefs, and practices had not yet meaningfully
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  Speaker 1: shaped religious life, where Christianity remained peripheral or cosmetic. Now,
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  Speaker 1: the tricky thing is we know very very little about
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  Speaker 1: most of these religions, but before they encountered Christianity. Aside
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  Speaker 1: from scattered archaeological remains, nearly all of our evidence was
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  Speaker 1: written down after Christian contact, and usually written down by
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  Speaker 1: outsiders who were confused, hostile, or trying to suppress what
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  Speaker 1: they were observing, like August Wilhelm Hoopl who I quoted
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  Speaker 1: at the start. That means when historians talk about pre
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  Speaker 1: Christian pagan survivals, they're rarely describing untouched remnants of ancient religion.
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  Speaker 1: More often their describing beliefs than practices already in the
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  Speaker 1: midst of being Christianized, reshaped by centuries of contact, pressure,
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  Speaker 1: and reinterpretation. A vivid example is the Latvian goddess Dekla,
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  Speaker 1: whom the seventeenth century Latvian and Lutheran pastor Paul Einhorn
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  Speaker 1: describes as a protector of children. She when a child
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  Speaker 1: is born, rocks them, for it is her duty to
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  Speaker 1: rock and protect little children. Though there's a strong possibility
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  Speaker 1: that Decla is not a pre Christian deity, but rather
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  Speaker 1: a paganized transformation of the famous Christian saint Theckla. As
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  Speaker 1: doctor Young writes, apparently so called pre Christian beliefs and
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  Speaker 1: rights were sometimes a risk responds to Christianity rather than
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  Speaker 1: something pre dating its introduction. To make sense of this,
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  Speaker 1: Young uses the concept of creolization. The term originally comes
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  Speaker 1: from linguistics, where refers to a new language that develops
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  Speaker 1: from the interaction of two or more parent languages. Haitian Creole,
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  Speaker 1: for example, is not French with African influences, but it's
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  Speaker 1: also not an African language with French influences. It's a
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  Speaker 1: distinct language that evolved from prolonged contact between French and
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  Speaker 1: various West and Central African languages, eventually stabilizing into a
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  Speaker 1: fully distinct language. Religions can do this too. Enslaved Africans
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  Speaker 1: and European colonies in the Caribbean and Latin America brought
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  Speaker 1: their traditional West and Central African religions into direct contact
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  Speaker 1: with their Enslaver's Catholicism. Over generations, this produced religions like
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  Speaker 1: Haitian Vodu in Santa Ria. In Haitian Vodu, practitioners interact
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  Speaker 1: with spirits known as law who have distinct personalities, domains,
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  Speaker 1: and ritual expectations. These law are often identified with specific
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  Speaker 1: African deities as well as Catholic saints, and many practitioners
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  Speaker 1: may describe themselves as Catholic and attend church or use
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  Speaker 1: Christian symbols. But Vodu functions as its own religion, with
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  Speaker 1: its own cosmology, ritual specialists, and modes of engagement with
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  Speaker 1: the divine Doctor. Young argues that something similar happened in
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  Speaker 1: North and northeastern Europe, where Christianization either stalled or remained shallow.
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  Speaker 1: Local communities continue their traditional practices, but they evolved and
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  Speaker 1: adapted in response to Christian influence, creating creole religions that
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  Speaker 1: were neither fully Christian nor fully pre Christian. Another example
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  Speaker 1: was recorded by a Lutheran pastor in Latvia dating to
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  Speaker 1: seventeen seventeen, when an innkeeper put out an offering to
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  Speaker 1: a non Christian deity on Christmas Eve. Late in the evening.
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  Speaker 1: He lit four fires at some distance from the four
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  Speaker 1: corners of the barn, and on the table in the
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  Speaker 1: barn he put a bunch of hay, a loaf of bread,
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  Speaker 1: and a lamp, singing and praying with his people. When asked,
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  Speaker 1: he explained that it happens to honor the blue qu deity.
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  Speaker 1: The name Bluqu appears to be connected to the word
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  Speaker 1: for a log. May be the large log traditionally burned
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  Speaker 1: on Christmas across Europe. Now, while the Yule log is
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  Speaker 1: often described today as a pagan survival, the earliest evidence
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  Speaker 1: we have for this practice comes from Christian sources, linking
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  Speaker 1: the practice explicitly to Christmas. So, like the Goddess decla,
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  Speaker 1: we might be seeing an example of creolized religious practice,
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  Speaker 1: in this case a Christian folk practice. The Yule log
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  Speaker 1: being reread through the lens of pre Christian animism see
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  Speaker 1: Rituals involving a sacred log are actually well documented in
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  Speaker 1: the Baltic region. In Latvia and Lithuania, Christmas celebrations to
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  Speaker 1: this day sometimes involved dragging a large log called a blucus,
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  Speaker 1: through the village before finally burning it in a communal fire.
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  Speaker 1: Early modern observers occasionally describe the log being treated almost
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  Speaker 1: like a living being. Beer might be poured into a
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  Speaker 1: hole carved into it, food offerings such as bread or
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  Speaker 1: hay were placed nearby it before it was burned, and
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  Speaker 1: sometimes a human face was even carved into it. At
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  Speaker 1: the same time, the word blucus seems to come from German,
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  Speaker 1: so some historians think that the custom itself spread from
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  Speaker 1: a German Christmas tradition invented by German Christians, rather than
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  Speaker 1: preserving a purely pre Christian Baltic ritual. Doctor Young admits,
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  Speaker 1: while the Yule log may have pagan origins, it is
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  Speaker 1: perhaps better understood as the wooden equivalent of a goose
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  Speaker 1: or turkey, a special treat for the Christmas season. Hence
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  Speaker 1: why I call it a Christian folte practice and not
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  Speaker 1: necessarily a pre Christian pagan practice. So to return to
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  Speaker 1: the Blue que example again, we can envision Latvian villagers
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  Speaker 1: first encountering this new ritual calendar of Christianity. Christmas is
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  Speaker 1: now marked as a powerful and sacred knight. A massive
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  Speaker 1: log is burned, people gather, sing, and they pray to
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  Speaker 1: someone whose religious world is already populated by spirits and
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  Speaker 1: personified ritual objects. It's not a huge leap in logic
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  Speaker 1: to interpret this log as a being with its own
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  Speaker 1: presence and agency. In that sense, an eighteenth century report
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  Speaker 1: of a Latvian deity called Blue Queu isn't necessarily evidence
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  Speaker 1: of an ancient God surviving unchanged beneath Christianity. It could
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  Speaker 1: be a sign of a new pagan practice responding and
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  Speaker 1: evolving in response to Christianity. This process is often described
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  Speaker 1: as syncretism, but we shouldn't think of syncretism or creolization
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  Speaker 1: in the sense of two big religious systems merging into
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  Speaker 1: a hybrid. It's more accurate to think of it as
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  Speaker 1: a process when people encounter a new religious belief or
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  Speaker 1: practice but rework it relying on familiar ways of understanding illness, fertility, misfortune,
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  Speaker 1: or the divine saints take over the roles once filled
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  Speaker 1: by local gods or spirits. Sacred places remain sacred even
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  Speaker 1: as the stories change around them. It's basically religious brickolage,
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  Speaker 1: a word meaning putting something together using whatever materials happen
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  Speaker 1: to be available, which makes syncretism a form of religious
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  Speaker 1: innovation under pressure. Syncretism or crealization also helps explain that
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  Speaker 1: it might miss the point to try to classify communities
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  Speaker 1: like the Latvians or the Sami in the seventeen hundreds
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  Speaker 1: as either pagan or Christian. Framing what we see here
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  Speaker 1: is either failed conversion or stubborn survival assumes that religion
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  Speaker 1: only changes through replacement, but pagan cultures themselves are dynamic
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  Speaker 1: and they're changing. What the evidence points to then is
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  Speaker 1: the emergence of new religious forms shaped by Christian contact,
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  Speaker 1: pressure and coercion, but rework through older religious habits. Now,
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  Speaker 1: we could spend an entire video on any of the
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  Speaker 1: peoples we've mentioned so far, the Sami, the Lithuanians, or
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  Speaker 1: the Mari, but for this episode we're going to zoom
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  Speaker 1: in on the Estonians as our main case study, because
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  Speaker 1: by some measures, the Estonians are one of the last
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  Speaker 1: peoples to worship pre Christian deities, perhaps into the early
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  Speaker 1: twentieth century. The Estonians are a Finnic people, culturally and
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  Speaker 1: linguistically distinct from their Indo European neighbors. Their languages closely
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  Speaker 1: related to Finnish, and their geographic position puts them at
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  Speaker 1: the crossroads of the Baltic and Fenescandia. Now, Christianity did
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  Speaker 1: arrive in Estonia relatively early by Northern European standards. Beginning
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  Speaker 1: in the early twelve hundreds, Estonia was forcibly incorporated into
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  Speaker 1: Latin Christendom through a series of German and Danish crusades,
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  Speaker 1: stretching roughly from twelve oh six to twelve twenty seven.
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  Speaker 1: These campaigns are described in detail by the missionary priest
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  Speaker 1: Henry of Livonia, written down in his Chronicle of Livonia,
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  Speaker 1: one of our main narrative sources for the conquest of
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  Speaker 1: the Eastern Baltic So from the perspective of church and Empire,
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  Speaker 1: the story looks decisive. Pagan strongholds were defeated, churches were built,
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  Speaker 1: parish networks were established, and Estonia was folded into the
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  Speaker 1: institutional structure of medieval Christendom. On paper, Christianization had worked,
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  Speaker 1: so to speak, and by the seventeen hundreds, Estonia was
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  Speaker 1: unquestionably Christian in an official sense. By this time, following
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  Speaker 1: in the Great Northern War, it was politically Lutheran and
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  Speaker 1: firmly part of the European Christian world, a Lutheran territory
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  Speaker 1: within the Russian Empire, and yet Christianity apparently had still
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  Speaker 1: not become deeply integrated among the Estonians. Now, before we
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  Speaker 1: talk about what survived into the modern period, we need
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  Speaker 1: to be clear about something upfront. We actually know very
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  Speaker 1: little about pre Christian Estonian religion. There is no equivalent
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  Speaker 1: here to Norse or Greek mythology, or the vast amount
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  Speaker 1: of archaeological evidence we have for Greco Roman paganism. What
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  Speaker 1: we have instead is a patchwork of archaeology, later folklore,
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  Speaker 1: a medieval and early modern ethnography. Like Hoople who I
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  Speaker 1: quoted earlier. What the evidence does suggest is that there
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  Speaker 1: was a strong focus on sacred natural places, groves, stones, springs,
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  Speaker 1: and the ongoing relationships with non human beings understood to
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  Speaker 1: inhabit or personify those places. Now, as I mentioned, this
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  Speaker 1: is often described as a form of animism, in the
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  Speaker 1: sense that agency and personhood were attributed to elements of
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  Speaker 1: the natural world. Our sources also preserve the names of
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  Speaker 1: multiple gods linked with fertility, weather, households in the agricultural cycle,
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  Speaker 1: though we lack any sort of clear idea of how
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  Speaker 1: these beings related to each other in a structured pantheon,
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  Speaker 1: or how they were worshiped before Christian contact. No priestly
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  Speaker 1: manuals again, no mythological epics written down before conversion, no
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  Speaker 1: internal theological explanations. So in other words, we can speak
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  Speaker 1: with some level of confidence about practices in sacred places,
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  Speaker 1: and with much less confidence about theology or myth Complicating
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  Speaker 1: matters even further is the heavy influence of nineteenth century
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  Speaker 1: Romantic nationalism. As Estonian intellectuals in the modern period tried
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  Speaker 1: to recover a pre Christian past, they often heavily relied
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  Speaker 1: on folklore for their reconstructions, folklore which was recorded very
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: late in history and frequently through the lens of nationalist revival.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: For that reason, Estonian scholar is such as Tanno Yonuks,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: who is an expert on Estonian religion, is deeply skeptical
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: of approaches that simply take nineteenth or twentieth century descriptions
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: of sacred growth practices and project them straight back into
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: pre Christian history. As doctor Yonuks puts it, a vision
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: of Estonian pagan religion was formed in the nineteenth century
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: as the cult of Nature Gods, based on a polytheistic pantheon,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: where rituals took place in holy oak groves, sacrifices were
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: brought to gods, and dead people were burned on pyres.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: But this vision rests on very thin evidence. In some cases,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: entire reconstructions were built on almost nothing. For example, the
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: modern revival of the Estonian thunder god Tara ultimately rests
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: on a single word in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: where he mentions Tara in passing. Now, that doesn't mean
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: that pre Christian Estonians didn't worship a god named Tara,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: but it does mean we should not overstate what we
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: know about pre Christian Estonian belief. We know so little
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: because there's so little data. Aside from scattered archaeological evidence.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Most of what we're seeing comes to us indirectly filtered
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: through later Christian sources. That we're not trying to accurately
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: preserve pagan traditions so much as to try to condemn them. Remember,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: as doctor Young argues elsewhere, what we're likely dealing with
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: by the time these sources appear is not a pristine
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: pre Christian religion at all, but a creolized Estonian religion
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: shaped by Christian contact. Now, the firmest evidence we have
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: for pre Christian Estonian religion involves sacred groves called heat
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Some of these sites appear to be very old, probably
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: dating as far back as the Late Bronze Age or
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: pre Roman Iron Age. These early groves tend to sit
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: on visually striking natural features, hills, ridges, cliff edges, places
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: that stand out dramatically from the surrounding landscape and would
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: be impossible to ignore in everyday life. Across Finland, Estonia
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: and Latvia, stones with cut marks, usually for ritual offerings,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: are known to have been used from the Bronze Age
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: all the way up to the twentieth century, which according
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: to doctor Young, may make them some of the longest
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: continuously functioning ritual sites in Europe, even as their meaning
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: and significance changed over time. These groves are also often
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: found near ancient stone graves. Doctor Yonuck suggests that in
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: this early phase, groves likely functioned as communal ritual centers
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: connected to ancestors, places where communities reinforce their lineage and
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: their tie to the land. Starting around the fifth century see,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: things began to shift in ancient Estonia. New stone graves
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: stopped being built, and religious life becomes more closely tied
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: to permanent villages rather than to ancestral burial sites. Many
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: of the sacred groves known from later folklore reflect this
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: era of history. In this phase of Ancient Estonian religion,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: groves now seem to function more as village based sacred places,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: places tied to the cycle of the seasons. Village prosperity,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: and rituals for local gods, which happened to be the
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: sort of practices mentioned by medieval writers like Henry of
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Livonia and early modern writers like Hoople. Doctor Young argues
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: that Christianization here in Estonia amounted to failed integration. Christianity
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: arrived through conquest, but it didn't fully reorganize everyday religious
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: life for centuries. Sacred places continue to matter well into
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: the modern period. An early account comes from the aforementioned
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Henry of Livonia, composed in the early thirteenth century. Henry
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: describes Christian priests entering a region in northeastern Estonia and
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: baptizing villages there where there was a hill in a
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: pretty forest where the local people said that the big
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: god of the Ocilians was born, who was called Tara,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: and the other priest went breaking the figures and faces
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: of their gods. If we take Henry even roughly at
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: his word, this episode suggests that saved hills, forested sites,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: and the worship of a polytheistic pantheon were still active
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: parts of the local religious landscape in the early twelve hundreds,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: and when Henry references Tara as the god of the Oscillians.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: He's referring to the people of Sarama, the large island
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: off Estonia's western coast, which doctor Young describes as one
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: of the most resilient holdouts of pre Christian Estonian religion.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: As we move into the eighteenth century, the aforementioned German
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: pastor August Vilhelm Hoopol describes religious practices still taking place
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: at sacred natural sites in central Estonia. He describes an
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: altar where even now, offerings could be found. Under the
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: sacred tree, there is a big granite altar. It is
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: two feet high, of the same length, flat on top,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: oval shaped. It is generally known that the altar comes
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: from Heathen times. About twenty five years later, an Estonian
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: pastor even drew the same place, a presumably pre Christian
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: altar that people continue to recognize and visit in the
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: early eighteen hundreds. Hoople also describes sacred groves scattered across
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the countryside. In some places there is one, in some
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: there are many trees, mostly spruces. These are on hills, fields,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: by the springs, and other places. Peasants who are not
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: afraid of punishment bury their dead people in these places.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: He goes on to describe that people brought offerings to
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: these groves, which were left at stones or placed into
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: tree hollows. What's especially striking is how resistant these sites
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: were to suppression. Landlords apparently tried ordering villagers to cut
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: down these trees, but repeatedly failed because locals refused to
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: do it. Hoople describes one case in which a man
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: who cut down part of an ancient forest became convinced
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: that the forest's protective spirits were now haunting his dreams.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: These beings were known as ma elucid, those who live
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: beneath the earth, and in another case, the landlord had
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: to cut down the grove himself because no one else
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: would touch it. At the same time, Hoople's account show
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: how deeply Christian elements had already become woven into this
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: religious world. Estonians observed Christian saints' days, but often in
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: ways that made sense within older frameworks. In western Estonia,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: a figure associated with Saint Anthony, known as Ton, became
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: linked to household prosperity and life stock, especially with pigs.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: On Toun's feast day, people cooked a pig's head and
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: brought offerings to sacred groves and stones. Again, this looks
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: a lot like the syncretism or crealization we see in
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: traditions like Haitian Vodu, where a Christian saint in a
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: West African deity could be identified with the same spirit.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: In this case, a non Christian spirit is linked with
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Saint Anthony. Hoopa was also struck by how deeply Estonian
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: everyday life diverged from what he understood as Christian European norms,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: especially when it came to sex. According to Hoopole, the
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Estonians did not have a concept of virginity that dominated
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: much of Christian sexual ethics. Premarital sex apparently was not
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: treated as a moral failure or a source of shame.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Some scholars theorized that this might indicate that Estonian sexual
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: culture remained largely disconnected from the moral framework promoted by
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Lutheran Christianity, and might even reflect pre Christian social structures.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: And even as we go into the eighteen hundred, sources
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: mention fishermen on the island of Sarama still thanking a
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: sea mother goddess for a good catch. In southern Estonia,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: offerings continue to be made to gods connected with lives,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: and in the region of Mulgima. In southern Estonia, people
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: continue to worship a grain spirit called Pell. In fact,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: in a nineteen fifty eight interview, an eighty three year
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: old woman remembers a Christian priest attempting to exercise pell
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: from a granary when she was a kid, probably sometime
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties. One of the most striking cases of
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: the worship of a grain and fertility figure named Peko
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: venerated among the Seto people. The Setos are a small
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Finno Ugric ethnic group living in a region called Setema
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: right along the modern border between Estonia and Russia. For centuries,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: this region sat at a cultural crossroads. While most Estonians
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: became at least nominally Lutheran, the Settos followed Eastern Orthodoxy,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: which tied them historically to the Russian religious world. Though
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: as with other parts of Estonia, Christianization did not erase
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: older traditions. Veneration of Peco among the Setos survived longer
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: than most other non Christian practices into the early twentieth century.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Small rural fraternities maintained secret ritual traditions centered on this figure.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Members would conceal a carved image of Peco and a
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: grain bin throughout the winter. Then toward the end of
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the agricultural psycho in late summer, they would hold ritual
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: gatherings that included contests and games to select a new
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: ritual leader. Today, Peco has taken on a new life
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: in Seto cultural identity. Every year, the Seto people hold
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: an event called Seto Kingdom Day. According to tradition, the
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: kingdom's true ruler is Peco himself, now imagined not just
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: as a fertility god, but as a legendary ancestral king
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: who sleeps in a cave and will one day awaken
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: to defend his people. Because Peco is absent, the community
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: elects a representative who speaks for the Seto people during
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the coming year. So why the slow Christianization in Estonia? Now,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: As with any cultural process like Christianization, there's no single reason.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: The historian Sylvan Guggenheim has identified four major reasons why
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Christianization stalled in the Baltics. First, negligent missionaries, often poorly
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: trained or uninterested in deeper cultural engagement. Number two, weak
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: church infrastructure with no consistent pastoral presence. Number three, sheer
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: geographic remoteness, which made sustained Christian presence difficult and number
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: four language barriers which hindered understanding instruction and much of
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Western and Southern Europe. Christianity spread among peoples whose languages
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: were closely related to those of Christian elites. Like how
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: local Romance languages like Spanish and French shared deep roots
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: with Latin. In places like Estonia, Latvia, Finland and the
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Sami territories, missionaries were working with entirely different language families,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: making it more difficult to translate ideas like the Trinity
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: or Salvation and doctor jung as a crucial factor active resistance.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Many communities in these regions actively resisted Christianization, but Estonia
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: had a set of local conditions that made this resistance
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: especially durable. First, Christianity and Estonia was overwhelmingly mediated by
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Baltic Germans from the Middle Ages onward. Religious authority, land ownership,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: and political power were concentrated in the hands of a
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: German speaking ruling class. The Church was not perceived as Estonian.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: It was perceived as part of the same elite structure
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: that controlled land, labor and enforced serfdom. Related to this,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Lutheranism was closely linked with landlords while Orthodoxy was linked
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: with a diss and foreign state, the Russian Empire. So
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: for ordinary Estonians, Christianity did not present itself as a
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: compelling alternative religion. It was either the religion of your
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: landlord or the religion of a Russian czar hundreds of
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: miles away. Third, conversion offered no meaningful social mobility. In
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: a lot of colonial or frontier contexts, adopting the dominant
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: religion could bring tangible benefits new legal status, economic opportunities,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: access to education. But in Estonia, no matter how sincerely
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: an Estonian peasant embraced Christianity, they could never become a German.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: The historian Heiki Volkas argue that this system of ethnosocial
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: segregation effectively prolonged medieval conditions in Estonia far longer than
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: elsewhere in Europe. Estonians remained under foreign religious instruction for centuries,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: with little incentive to culturally Christianize. The result was, essentially,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: as doctor Young puts, it, failed integration, where Christianity never
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: fully displaced earlier religious habits. So let's return to where
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: we began. It's seventeen eighty nine revolutions are making the
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Atlantic world, and in rural Estonia villagers are still engaging
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: with pre Christian spirits and gods, leaving offerings at sacred trees, stones,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: and springs. It's one of several examples challenging the idea
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: that Europe simply crossed a line from pagan to Christian
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: sometime in the Middle Ages. Religious change is a slow
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: and uneven process, and shaped just as much by power
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: as it is by religious habits deeply ingrained in a culture. Today,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of people are reviving pre Christian religions themselves.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: In fact, forms of contemporary paganism like modern Druidry and
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Wicca are among the fastest growing religions in the US
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: and Europe. If this topic fascinates you, then you should
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: really join our upcoming seminar Intro to Contemporary Paganism. This
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: is an eight week online course taught by Thorn Mooney.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: She's an amazing scholar of religion and the author of
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: the book which is among us. In this class, Thorne
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: will help you make sense of the surprisingly wide range
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: of modern pagan traditions and how they relate to things
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: like witchcraft, magic, and environmental spirituality. She's also an incredible teacher,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: and you know what I'll just let her tell you. So, Thorne,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: why should anyone take your class?
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Because there's a lot of overlap between what's going on
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: amongst the people who call themselves Pagans and a lot
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: of other traditions you've probably heard of, as well of
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: some of the popular movements that we see just in
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: our day to day things like manifestation and the law
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: of attraction, things like alternative healing, the contemporary witchcraft movement.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: People who are interested in magic, environmentalism, and nature. All
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: of these things that we find in other parts of
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: our lives convene in this large movement, so it's great
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: to know something about it.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: So Intro to Contemporary Paganism will run for eight weeks
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: every Wednesday, starting on March twenty fifth, and the best
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: way to join is through our membership bundle. The early
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: bird pricing is one hundred and ninety nine dollars that
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: gets you the full seminar plus a year long membership
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: to the Religion Department. The Religion Department is a place
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: for people who love learning about religion and want to
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: engage seriously with religion as an academic subject. We bring
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: together scholars and curious learners like yourself for seminars, guest lectures,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: and ongoing reading groups. So if you want to sign up,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: head on over to Religiondepartment dot com slash Contemporary Paganism,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: and I hope to see you there