TY  - GEN
TY  - GEN
T1  - Otherworldly Beings in the Pre-Christian North. Tribal, Chiefdom, and Archaic Religion and the Use of Cultural Evolutionary Theory
T2  - Articles
JF  - Temenos - Nordic Journal for Study of Religion
VO  - 58
IS  - 1
SP  - 67
OP  - 89
A1  - Nygaard, Simon, kirjoittaja
LA  - eng
YR  - 2022
UL  - https://kansalliskirjasto.finna.fi/Record/journalfi.article102495
AB  - The interplay between societal and cultural change consists of a host of different factors. Religious conceptions are just one and are this article’s focus. Various conceptions of Otherworldly beings can be found in the textual sources for pre-Christian Nordic religion. To better understand these differing descriptions, one can employ various theoretical frameworks when constructing the particular model for the reconstruction of pre-Christian Nordic religion. For this article a cultural evolutionary framework inspired by the work of Robert N. Bellah is paired with a model of ontology in a case study suggesting that specific types of Otherworldly beings belong to specific types of religion. It is suggested that Otherworldly beings such as the álfar may represent what might be termed a tribal religion, while Otherworldly beings such as the vanir seem to belong to an archaic religion. The proposed intermediate category of chiefdom religion is then suggested as relevant for a different kind of Otherworldly being, which is explored by applying Phillipe Descola’s work on ontology. These differing groups of Otherworldly beings further seem to fulfil similar functions while remaining relevant throughout our textual corpus. This is ultimately seen as an example of Bellah’s notion that ‘nothing [important] is ever lost’.
NO  - Temenos - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion
KW  - pre-Christian Nordic religion
KW  - cultural evolution
KW  - cultural evolutionary theory
KW  - ontology
KW  - dispositions of being
KW  - Robert N. Bellah
KW  - Philippe Descola
KW  - álfar
KW  - vanir
KW  - tribal religion
KW  - chiefdom religion
KW  - archaic religion
KW  - otherwordly beings
ER  -