Within the shadowed annals of time, before the dawn of recorded certainty or the measured rhythms of modern faith, there loomed a multitude of half-remembered rites and spectral beliefs among the tribes that once roamed the vast and twilight-haunted landscapes of early Europe. This course undertakes a rigorous exploration of those archaic spiritual systems, focusing its lens upon the Germanic peoples of the northern reaches, whose ceremonial customs and dread cosmologies endured the slow, inexorable encroachment of Christian doctrine.

Particular scrutiny falls upon the subtle mechanisms by which the solemn and inscrutable mysteries of these primeval religions persisted—transmuted, concealed, or absorbed—within the overtly sanctified practices of the emergent Christian order. In charting this perilous passage from the eerie sanctuaries of the wild to the cloisters of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, students will confront unsettling echoes that linger still, as if vestiges of a primordial fear or longing refuse wholly to yield to the light of orthodoxy and temporal reason.