But all testify to the importance given to ritual acts.Īccording to research carried out on the prestigious Oseberg burial site in Norway, it would have taken nearly 4 to 6 months, and perhaps even several years, to carry out this type of funeral, including the building of a burial mound. The Viking Age burials brought to light in Scandinavia by archaeologists show great regional, and sometimes even local, disparities, whatever the beliefs of the populations.

hræ ('carcass' used indifferently for an animal as for a human being).Three terms are used to designate a mortal remains in Old Norse: The hamingja could leave the individual during his lifetime or be received by another member of the lineage after death.ĭeath was thus a biological death, but not a social death. the hamingja, who is the guardian force of a family watching over the good behavior of its descendants.It does not disappear with the individual to whom it is attached, but if it leaves him or if it manifests itself to him outside of a dream, he dies.

the fylgja, which is the soul of an individual and even of a clan, the self emancipated from the body, a guardian being whose function is protection and prediction.It is detached from the physical body only after the latter has decomposed or been burned and then begins its journey to the afterlife. the hugr, which is the mental body, the spirit, the capacity to acquire knowledge and to use it.the hamr, which is the astral body, the consciousness that distinguishes all living beings from plants, a constitutive and indissociable element of the individual that can allow him to metamorphose following the example of wild warriors (berserker, ulfhednar).

It is the energy that leaves the body at the moment of death.

várðr (or vörd), which is the force, the energy that allows all forms of life from plants to humans.

In the Nordic beliefs, the man is made up of 5 bodies: Death did not mean for the Vikings the absolute end, but only the passage to another form of existence.

Viking age mythology games