Animism: What Was Lost

Animism Illustrated

One of the biggest differences between Norse/Germanic belief and modern faith isn’t which gods are worshiped, it’s how the world itself is understood.

Animism didn’t ask whether the world had meaning, that was assumed. The land watched, rivers listened, forests remembered, humans were never alone, and they were never unobserved. Today, that way of seeing the world often feels distant, even foreign.

When the World Stopped Looking Back

Modern religious and philosophical systems tend to divide reality into two categories:

·       Spiritual

·       Material

Spirit is elevated. Matter is neutral or disposable.

In an animistic worldview, this division doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as “just land” or “just a place.” Every location carries presence, memory, and consequence. You don’t extract from nature; you work with it. When that worldview faded, something subtle but serious went with it: our own accountability to our world.

The Sagas Assume a Living World

The Icelandic sagas don’t explain animism, they assume it. In Kormáks Saga, the warrior-poet Kormákr seeks healing by making offerings to the elves at a mound (álfhóll). The saga describes the act plainly: blood of a cow is offered at the mound, directed not to distant gods, but to the beings associated with that specific place. The story does not frame this as superstition or desperation. It presents it as a well-known and accepted practice, something that works because the land and its inhabitants possess real agency.

The elves are not abstract spirits, they are tied to a mound, a specific location in the landscape. Power and relationships are local. If you want favor, you go to the place where that favor resides. This is animism operating at ground level, and this belief was not limited to heroic moments.

In Landnámabók, there is an account of a farmer, described as a goat herder, who regularly made sacrifices at a waterfall near his grazing land. This was not a one-time ritual or a dramatic plea. It was ongoing, routine, and tied to daily life.

The waterfall is treated not as scenery, but as a place of presence.

Together, these examples show a consistent worldview:

• Gods governed great forces

• Elves and many other spirits held authority over specific places

• Natural features themselves were sacred and places to give/receive offerings

• Relationships were maintained through repeated action, not belief statements

The land was not neutral ground, it participated.

Modern Faith Without Sacred Spaces

Many modern belief systems emphasize salvation, morality, or transcendence, often at the expense of where life actually happens. Sacred space becomes abstract, ethics become universal but placeless, and nature becomes an afterthought. Even when modern faith speaks of stewardship, it often frames nature as something to be managed or protected, which still places humans above it. Animism, by contrast, is built on reciprocity. You take and you give, and you answer for what you disturb. The result today is a strange contradiction: people speak constantly about meaning and spirituality, while feeling deeply disconnected from the physical world that sustains them.

A Modern Disconnect

What Modern Research Is Starting to Measure

Interestingly, modern psychology and environmental science have begun studying something animistic cultures never needed to: how connected humans feel to the natural world, and what happens when that connection dies.

One of the most widely used tools in this, is the Connectedness to Nature Scale, developed by Mayer and Frantz in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. Their research found that people who feel a stronger sense of belonging with the natural world consistently report higher well-being, greater empathy, and stronger ethical concern beyond themselves. When people experience nature as something they are part of, not something they stand over, their mental health and behavior change.

A related metric, the Nature Relatedness Scale, was developed by Nisbet, Zelenski, and Murphy. Their work showed that emotional and experiential connection to nature predicts not only happiness, but also life meaning and resilience. People who felt disconnected from nature were more likely to report anxiety, dissatisfaction, and alienation, a pattern that closely mirrors what animistic cultures warned against, though with different verbiage.

Beyond self-report scales, researchers have tested direct exposure to natural environments. In a well-known study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bratman found that participants who took a 90-minute walk in a natural setting showed reduced rumination and decreased activity in a brain region associated with depression, compared to those who walked in an urban environment. The environment itself produced a measurable psychological shift.

Earlier foundational work by Rachel and Stephen Kaplan on Attention Restoration Theory demonstrated that natural environments restore cognitive focus and reduce mental fatigue. Their research suggests that humans are neurologically attuned to natural settings in ways modern built environments do not replicate.

Children appear especially sensitive to this disconnect. Studies by Kuo and Taylor found that access to nearby nature reduced symptoms of attention disorders. Later research summarized by Richard Louv under the term “nature-deficit disorder”, while not a medical diagnosis, reflects a well-supported pattern in developmental psychology and public health.

None of these researchers frame their conclusions in spiritual terms. But the pattern is consistent:

·       When humans live as if the world is inert and unrelated to them, psychological costs accumulate.

·       Animistic cultures did not need brain scans to understand this. They lived it.

All of these consequences people experience in modern times from being disconnected, are symptoms of spiritual attacks by aggravated, disrespected, and dishonored spirits our ancestors spoke about. Coincidence? I will let you decide.

Animism Wasn’t Romantic, It Was Practical

It’s tempting to romanticize animism as poetic mysticism. For Norse and Germanic peoples, it was deeply practical:

·       If the forest watches, you tread carefully.

·       If the land remembers, you don’t take without giving.

·       If a place can reject you, you behave accordingly.

Animism created restraint without law and responsibility without institutions. The world itself responded.

A Silent World Is a Lonely One

Animism doesn’t promise comfort. It promises connection. You aren’t the center of the world, but you aren’t alone in it either. Midgard is alive, aware, and responsive. Modern faith often asks people to look upward or inward, animism asked them to look around...

...maybe that’s what was lost...

Sources Mentioned (Studies and Research)

• Mayer, F. S., & Frantz, C. M. (2004). The Connectedness to Nature Scale. Journal of Environmental Psychology.

• Nisbet, E. K., Zelenski, J. M., & Murphy, S. A. (2009). The Nature Relatedness Scale. Environment and Behavior.

• Bratman, G. N., et al. (2015). Nature experience reduces rumination and neural activity associated with mental illness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

• Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S. (1989). The Experience of Nature. Cambridge University Press.

• Kuo, F. E., & Taylor, A. F. (2004). A potential natural treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. American Journal of Public Health.

• Louv, R. (2005). Last Child in the Woods. Algonquin Books.

• Hartig, T., et al. (2014). Nature and health. Annual Review of Public Health.

• Twohig-Bennett, C., & Jones, A. (2018). The health benefits of the great outdoors. Environmental Research.