Rune Hjarnø 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.

1. Where did you grow up?

I grew up in central Jutland, Denmark. My parents are/were teachers and farmers.

2. Can you remember when you first encountered Norse mythology or, more generally, Germanic mythology? And what was the context?

My family, particularly on my father’s side, can be characterized as secularized Grundtvigians. Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig [ed.: 1783-1872] was a Danish pastor who founded a kind of national romanticist protestantism with a very strong focus on Nordic religion.

Grundtvigians have seen the Eddas as the Old Testament of Nordic Christianity, so they used to jump over their own shadow to find prophecies of Jesus in the Eddas, and so on. This family background means that I was exposed to Norse myth from childhood, particularly by my grandmother.

She had these old school books that she read the stories from to me. When my grandparents passed away, I made sure to save those old books.

3. How would you describe your religious beliefs (or lack thereof)?

My religious beliefs are a mix of many things that I have encountered through the years. During my student years, I was part of an occult left-wing milieu in Copenhagen. The group was eclectic and had a Nordic leanings. When I started university, I wanted to specialize in Norse religion, but I became disillusioned by the fact that so little could be known for certain about the topic. But after taking classes, it became clear to me that I wanted to specialize in a field that was less characterized by conjecture.

So, I first studied Jewish mysticism and learned classical Hebrew, and then I turned to Afro-Brazilian religion, on which I also did my Ph.D. All these elements have a hand in my own religiousity. Afro-Brazilian orisha-religion in particular informs the way I relate to Nordic deities.

I believe that religiousity works best when it is organically eclectic and I’ve always been attracted to transgressing the difficult line of distinction between faith and scholarship.

Today I mainly operate with the ontological turn, specifically a new animist trend in anthropology, in line with scholars such as Graham Harvey, Eduardo Kohn, Nurit Bird-David, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, and Martin Holbraad. I think we should see religion as ways of creating relation. I want to engage Nordic religion as forms of traditional animist knowledge, forms that have transformed throughout the course of history. This opens a new way of using the Nordic material, both in terms of scholarship, i.e. seeing it as rejected animist knowledge forms, but also in terms of cultural activism. We can engage the Nordic history of religions as rejected majority animism and this may help us to find more balanced and sustainable ways of interacting with the world in which we live.

4. How would you describe your political beliefs (or lack thereof)?

I am a kind of eco-socialist. Though socialism has been disastrous in some instances of its implementation, I still think that it is evident that free market capitalism has placed us at the threshold of civilizational cataclysm of proportions unprecedented in human existence. Some sort of state control of rampant consumerism is an urgent imperative, if we want to avoid seeing the world brutally and destructively destabilized.

5. Do you have a formal academic background in Germanic studies? If not, where do you do your research on the topic?

I received an MA in history of religions in Copenhagen and a PhD from Uppsala. My focus primarily on Afro-Atlantic religion, but historians of religion regularly maintain several focus fields and I have studied Nordic religion almost consistently throughout my education.

6. How does Norse mythology and/or general Germanic mythology influence your creative output?

I am attempting—in a number of ways—to bring traditional animist knowledge into play. For example, after working it for years, I have published a wall calendar that features brief paragraphs on the topic of traditional seasonal animism. This is partly inspired by the way that different indigenous groups work with calendars to cope with climate change and resist petro-colonialism.

With this calendar, I try to reopen an engaged dialogue with animist traditions in different forms, both ancient and more recent. The calendar combines the traditional Swedish runic calendars with a number of holidays marked by traditional primstaves, old month names, and so on. You can find the project here.

I generally work to introduce Nordic eco-animism as a cultural voice and, together with a group of scholars with similar interests, I have written a couple of articles that have appeared in the biggest national newspaper in Denmark, Politiken. A translation of one of the articles can be found on my facebook page “Nordic Animism” here.

I also maintain a project focused on engaging a present trend where the German Krampus-tradition is spreading throughout the northwestern world. We are trying to use this trend as the impetus to (re-)introduce some traditional Scandinavian seasonal animism, such as the Yule goat: Here is an example.

Joseph S. Hopkins thanks Rune Rasmussen for his participation.