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.