The deep roots of paganism

We are so used to commonplaces about the history of “Christian Europe” that it comes as a bit of a surprise to realise that the widespread persistence of collective pre-Christian religious practice was still a live issue for governments as well as churches in Scandinavia and Russia well into the 19th century. Francis Young’s survey of pre-Christian survivals (and revivals) in the marsh and tundra of the territories between the Baltic and the Urals from the late middle ages to the present day is a gripping introduction not only to the faith and folklore of these areas but to significant aspects of the history of anthropology – and to a whole set of confusions around how to define “religion” that still bedevil the study of the subject.

Scholars have argued for decades about whether the mass Christianisation of Europe’s populations in the early middle ages penetrated much below the surface. But Young skilfully reworks the terms of the argument, questioning an over-simple opposition between Christianity and other “religions” as rival systems, and charting the increasingly complicated relations between ethnic/linguistic identities, imperial projects, patterns of cultural fusion, and modern nationalism. He does a good job of distinguishing between the sustained, public and quite systematic continuation of pre-Christian practice – sacrifice, pilgrimage, priesthood – where a clear non-Chrisitan identity is being underlined, and the persistence of folk customs that may have remote roots in an era prior to any contact with Christian missions.

This means that he is sceptical about the kinds of 20th-century folklore studies that claimed to find “pagan survivals” all over the place in folksong, seasonal rituals and so on. Like Ronald Hutton, who has deposited a scholarly wet blanket over Green Men, mother goddesses and horned hunters, Young is very much aware of how 19th-century antiquarianism and incipient anthropology nurtured a mostly fictional picture of popular pre-Christian folk religion – a vision that was untrammelled by Christian hierarchy (and morality) and often represented some sort of imagined racial integrity. His accounts of the elaborate neo-pagan movements of 19th and 20th-century Baltic cultures, especially Estonia (where today a good half of the population express some sympathy with the “native faith” movement), show how enthusiastic antiquarians were ready to create a national mythology from a bundle of diverse practices and traditions, with a little help from classical, Norse and even Sanskrit sources.

But Young’s analysis does not simply demystify neo-paganism. It is grounded in one of his most important and helpful ideas, which is that non-Christian communities were ready to adopt elements of the new religion into their ancestral practice and vocabulary in the centuries following their first exposure to the church. This was especially true in territories with few substantial settlements and large nomadic populations, like the extensive regions of northern Scandinavia once called “Lapland” and more properly referred to as “Sápmi”, the territory of Sámi nomads with their reindeer herds. It is a process that Young calls “creolization” – a term often used for the linguistic, cultural and ritual fusions found in African and Latin American settings.

Paganism was not a fixed, immemorial system; it was an ensemble of beliefs and rites designed by communities to secure the best possible adjustment to their environment, spiritual and material. Changes in that environment, or in their social patterns, brought changes in religious practice. And the Christian church offered new “technologies” and resources of spiritual power – the prayers of the saints, the consecrated bread of the mass – that could be a welcome addition to the repertoire. It is roughly what we see in traditions such as Candomblé in Brazil or the varieties of Voodoo in the African diaspora. But it takes distinctive forms in Europe’s northern margins largely because of the absence of towns and large settlements, even in non-nomadic areas. Young explains how the medieval Church found itself at a bit of a loss in areas where centralised political power and market economies had no traction, where the structures of parish and diocese would have little meaning.

The most basic point, though, is one that Young flags early on in the book. We tend to ask, “What was the religion of such and such ancient or medieval group?” But in an important sense they had no “religion” – if by that we mean a system of beliefs detached from their ordinary social interactions and symbols. “Religion” was what you did to optimise your relation with “gods”, pretty much as cuisine was what you developed to optimise your relation with food. It was part of a range of taken-for-granted activities to handle and make sense of who and where you were.

The notion that a community of believers could exist bound together by relations that were not part of the routine connections of local collective life – a community that thus potentially had an identity distinct from the existing forms of solidarity and power – was a revolutionary one, making Christianity a highly problematic presence in all sorts of settings. Islam later presented the same challenge with even more starkness because of its endeavours to create a completely new kind of social and political unit unconstrained by geography.

But once Christianity had gained a foothold as an expanding and recruiting public presence, aiming at organisational and intellectual homogeneity, other kinds of religious behaviour were under pressure to compete on its terms. The brief pagan revival in the Roman empire of the mid-fourth century deliberately set out to imitate Christian structures and practices – rather like many forms of neo-paganism today. And Young shows how “creolized” religious practices in the areas he surveys reflect something of this. It is harder and harder to be an unselfconscious pagan. Even in the further reaches of Finland or Lithuania, you are now to some extent defined, like it or not, by your relation – whether negative or cautiously welcoming – to Christianity.

Young ends with some tantalisingly brief reflections on faith in today’s Europe. His book shows the sheer extent of ebb and flow, dissolution and reinvention, that is part of religious history. Some might call themselves pagans, but in fact we cannot return to any kind of “native faith” untouched by Christian culture. Are we then faced with a religious future in which we have to find our way around a market of customised mythologies with no pretence at offering a comprehensive social vision? Is this even possible when literacy about traditional faith is so minimal? Has Europe engineered itself out of anything resembling a religious sensibility? Or does this whole history remind us that, at ground level, new imaginative syntheses persist in arising?

People rediscover resources, recombine in new kinds of communal practices and reinhabit traditional practices, though with a different sensibility. Young wisely refrains from prophecy, but leaves us with ample food for thought on these matters in this comprehensive, critically intelligent, challenging and original book, which genuinely breaks new ground in mapping the religious history of Europe.

Rowan Williams served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012.

Silence of the Gods: The Untold History of Europe’s Last Pagan Peoples by Francis Young is published by Cambridge University Press (£25). Order a copy from The Observer Shop for £22.50. Delivery charges may apply

Illustration: The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches (1796), by Henry Fuseli, courtesy of Alamy