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Fire, Water, Heaven and Earth: Ritual Practice and Cosmology in Ancient Scandinavia - An Indo-European Perspective

by Anders Kaliff

Archaeological excavations of prehistoric Scandinavian graves and ritual sites often reveal seemingly enigmatic and contradictory features. Interpretation from a comparative Indo-European perspective allows a partly new approach to material which at first sight seems fragmentary and anonymous. The interpretations in this book proceed from cosmological beliefs occurring in various Indo-European traditions. The author discusses mortuary practices and votive customs in ancient Scandinavian tradition in a long-term perspective, with a comparative Indo-European approach. 216p, b/w and col illus (Riksantikvarieämbetet (Swedish Heritage Board) 2007)

Review Quotes

"Kaliff has written a thought-provoking, intriguing and passionately argued reconstruction of later prehistoric cosmologies in Scandinavia... it deserves to be read by all students of Nordic religion."

Neil Price
Antiquity vol. 82 (2008)

"Kaliff has written a thought-provoking, intriguing and passionately argued reconstruction of later prehistoric cosmologies in Scandinavia... it deserves to be read by all students of Nordic religion."

Neil Price
Antiquity vol. 82 (2008)

Table of Contents

Introduction; Religion as a force in the creation of culture - a revived research field; The significance of terminology for interpretation; Analogies and phenomenology; The Indo-European context - problems and possibilities; The Vedic analogy - an introduction; The source material and the ancient Scandinavian conceptual world; Cosmology and ritual practice; Grave monuments and sacrificial altars - kindred ritual implements; The cremation ritual and the ideas behind it; Traces of Scandinavian fire sacrifice; Fire sacrifice rituals and the elements; Death and grinding - the annihilation of the body; Ritual dismemberment and deposition; Everyday life and ritual - different expressions of the same cosmology; Rock and stone as a medium and a cultic implement; Aspects of the dead as mythical beings; References.

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