NORDIC ANIMISM

Nordic Animism is the contemporary recovery of Euro-traditional animist knowledge of Northwestern Europe. It is the practices of engaging and respecting other-than-humans that inhabit our landscapes, our cycle of seasons and our culture through history.

We are working to recover this traditional knowledge of creating and maintaining landconnectedness and kinship with the Nordic space as a wider community of beings. Uncovering and renewing rejected Animist parts of our cultural heritage offers new perspectives on self-image, cultural understanding and eco-activist empowerment, through the engagement with north European cultural history. Nordic animism is a popular platform based on research into traditional animist knowledge in Northern Europe for the purpose of actualising bring this knowledge in live contemporary cultural dialogue. This can aid us in developing ways of being in the world that pose alternatives to the omnicidal consumerism that is driving the present eco-Ragnarok.

 

Animists engage and relate to the beings in the world, what scholars call “the wider community of persons” and animism can work through different modes. One mode is scholarship. It aims to produce a academic knowledge by applying animist perspectives to Nordic history of religions and folklore. But this is a kind of action research and thereby comparable to queer studies, indigenous studies, or critical race studies, because it is directly related to cultural activism. It aims to reopen dialogue with our traditional knowledge for the purpose of sustainability sensitization.