Northern Crusades, Northern Europe

Paganism in 12th century Europe

By the time of the official end of the Western Roman Empire in 476CE, most of mainland southern Europe and France and England had been converted to Christianity. And because the Germanic tribes that migrated into the territory of the Romans – and who would form the new kingdoms that replaced the empire had been converted as they crossed the…

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Anglo-Saxon, Norse, Northern Europe

The Tree of Thor

One of the most famous pagan holy sites in what is now Germany during the early Medieval age was a sacred grove in the region of Hesse in which stood a very large and majestic oak tree. A contemporary account calls it ‘a certain oak of extraordinary size called in the old tongue of the pagans the Oak of Jupiter.’…

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