Northern Indo-European pre-Christian religions. A critical humanities perspective on Celtic, Germanic and Baltic traditions

Jan Reichstäter

The book offers analytical insights into the pre-Christian religions of the northern Indo-Europeans, meaning the Celtic, Germanic and Baltic peoples. In three thematic chapters, the author presents, through the perspectives of archaeology, philology, and ethnology, a critical synthesis of current knowledge about the pantheons, rituals, and mythologies that once formed the ‘pillars’ of these religious cultures. In addition to the possibilities of reconstructing these systems, rejected by their adherents in late antiquity or in the Middle Ages with the adoption of Christianity, he attentively addresses the ambiguities, complexities, and challenges of interpreting their particular structures or elements. Through this balanced combination of logical constructivism and critical deconstruction, the book provides the reader with credible outlines of the archaic traditions that influenced – as a substratum legacy – not only Western Christianity, but also the subsequent secularised cultures of northern Europe.