It would not be unfair to say that the great age of Anglo-Saxon paganism was the nineteenth century. This was a time when scholars spoke with some confidence of the pagan beliefs of the Germanic peoples of north-western Europe, including belief in an unyielding impersonal fate (wyrd) and, consequently, the need for heroic action in the face of death. More recently, scholars have become increasingly hesitant to speak of the “paganism” or “heathenism” of those people, for as soon as one speaks in terms like these, one begins to misrepresent the past. Such terms derive from the writings of early Christian authors who wished to distance themselves from those who were indifferent to Christ by characterizing them as practising a rival religion analogous to their own. Finding apt terms to refer to the pre-Christian religious beliefs and practices of the Anglo-Saxons remains a challenging task.

The fact that a word for “religion” is lacking in the lexicon of the early Germanic peoples of Europe is perhaps a tell-tale one. Those people may have cultivated a variety of religious beliefs and practices, only some of which had to do with the worship of gods. Since power was not centralized, religious practices would have varied from place to place. Moreover, many of the religious ideas of the early Germanic peoples were probably compounded, in syncretistic fashion, from yet more ancient ones.