Material Deposits at Sacred Sites—the Many Faces of Modern Paganism in Estonia

Abstract

The popularity of natural sacred places has increased significantly across Europe during the last decades. Hills, stones, springs, and groves—places named sacred in oral tradition—have become focal points for practices of contemporary paganism and spiritualism. In Estonia, this movement’s rise in popularity has been marked by an increase in the number of and type of deposits left at sacred sites. This article examines the objects left at sacred sites in order to analyze the vernacular religious practices and convictions of the people who use these places. Based on case studies at five sacred sites across Estonia, it is argued that these material objects must be regarded as an independent source of information about contemporary paganism and its interpretations by people who approve pagan worldview. Taken as such, these material objects complicate existing understandings of pagan religious communities in Estonia. While traditional accounts describe paganism as a cohesive body of devotees united by their participation in ancient traditions derived from folklore, the material culture of sacred sites in Estonia reveals the users of sacred sites to be a loosely structured community who engage in shifting vernacular practices related to history, nature, ethnicity, and paganism.

Keywords: :

• contemporary paganism
• deposits
• sacred natural places
• ethnic religions

Notes

1 “Empty” in this context means empty of materiality. The site has folklore records suggesting it to be a sacred site but no physical evidence existed prior (re)creation of the place in the late 1980s.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the support of the Estonian Research Council [PRG 908, Estonian Environmentalism in the long twentieth century: ideologies, discourses, and practices]; Estonian Literary Museum [8-2/20/3]; and by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund [Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies, TK-145].

Notes on contributors

Tõnno Jonuks

Tõnno Jonuks is an archaeologist, interested in reflection of religion, especially its vernacular practices, through material objects. In combining art and science, he has conducted various multi-method case-studies on religion-related objects from the Mesolithic to the 21st century to investigate the versatility of religions. He works at the Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folkloristics, in Tartu, Estonia.

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