Six Questions XXVI: Rune Rasmussen (Nordic Animism)
Rune Rasmussen is a Danish historian of religion from the University of Uppsala, Sweden. Rasmussen works with Nordic belief systems both as a component of scholarship and in his personal life by way of cultural activism: He operates the YouTube channel Nordic Animism, where Rasmussen develops and promotes an animist perspective on beliefs rooted in the ancient Nordic historic record, and a variety of topics within the field of ancient Germanic studies.
In 2019, Rasmussen authored the Calendar of Nordic Animism, which takes a syncretic approach to modern understandings of the ancient Germanic calendar systems. While rarely discussed in ancient Germanic studies today, animism—the notion that matter typically considered by contemporary minds to be ‘inanimate’ or ‘not alive’ is in fact ‘alive’ in a different sense—receives little discussion. However, the ancient Germanic folklore record and modern Scandinavian folklore corpus alike both teem with examples of animism. For example, in Norse myth, bodies of water are explicitly personified as deities and deity-like entities, such as the goddess Rán, her jötunn husband Ægir, and their Nine Wave Daughters; and the contemporary Scandinavian folklore record features entities such as the Hyldemor (Danish ‘Elder Mother’), the personified elder tree (Sambucus nigra).
Like the modern revival of ancient Germanic heathenry, the roots of animism run deep: Anthropologists have long identified animism as widespread among cultures throughout the world. In an age when mankind values every river, stone, and tree solely by its short-term financial value, animism provides a radically different perspective.