Original subtitles

I'm Richard Rudgley. I've made it my business to delve into our past to try

find out what makes us who we are today.

And I've explored the Dark Ages and found that our barbarian ancestors were

mindless savages.

Now I want to fill in one more critical piece of the puzzle.

We think that our lives are shaped by 2 ,000 years of Roman and Christian

tradition.

But I've never really bought into this.

For generations before the Romans came along, we all lived in a very different

world. And I believe this world still plays a major part in who we are today.

This is the world of the painting.

If you say the word pagan, most people can conjure up some pretty dark, scary

and even horrifying images.

But we were all pagans once.

So is our pagan inheritance something we should be ashamed of?

I don't think so. I think they've had a bad press.

The word pagan just means country folk. It was an insult coined by Romans and

Christians to discredit those they displaced, the outsiders who kept

to their old ways.

But the Romans and Christians didn't just stick to insults. They waged a

propaganda war, bad -mouthing everything that was important in the pagan world

by calling it lewd or dangerous.

So if we're to understand what made pagans tick, it's those things, the

dangerous and shocking things that we have to look at.

To reveal the truth behind the headlines, I'm going on a journey across

Europe. to strip away 2 ,000 years of propaganda.

A good starting point is with the laws passed by the Christians, and many of

them target our pagan ancestors' close relationship with the animal world.

If anyone is dressing in the skin of a wild animal and putting on the heads of

beasts, penance for three years, because this is devilish.

So why were our pagan forebears dressing up as animals?

And what was wrong with it?

My journey begins at the heart of English paganism, Sutton Hoo, a burial

for several generations of Anglo -Saxon leaders.

In the 7th century, most of Northern Europe was still pagan.

And in 625 AD, King Redwald, pagan overlord of East Anglia, was buried

He was buried with all the military objects important to any warrior king.

His sword and shield.

His magnificent helmet.

But there's something striking in his grave.

Everywhere there are pictures of animals.

One in particular that still stirs.

A very basic fear in us.

The wolf.

You can see on the pursuit, wolf flanking this human figure. And also the

of a dynasty popularly associated with Sutton, who the Wolfingers, or the

Wolfingers, if you like, the kin of the wolf, all combine with local folklore

and stories about wolves helping people, protecting people, to give the

impression that the wolf was a very important emblem.

In the modern world, the wolf is still an important emblem.

But from Little Red Riding Hood to American Werewolf in London, we see it

big bad wolf, the embodiment of evil.

The evidence at Sutton Hoo suggests things were different for King Redwald.

In pagan times, it was much more ambiguous. The wolf was dangerous, but

was also important, often something to aspire to in certain situations.

Whereas today, few people would aspire to be a wolf.

And if you did, you'd be looked at very strangely.

They were the sons of kings.

Sigmundur and Sinfjotli put the skins on and could not get them off.

They were transformed into wolves.

They howled like wolves.

and both understood the meaning of their howling.

Evidence from across Europe shows warriors dressing up as wolves.

In the pagan world, this was a way of taking on the power of the wolf, to make

yourself a better and more feared warrior.

These are replicas of masks. They're bestial in their appearance.

And if you like, it's an aid, a visual aid, not so that they would look like

wolf. You're not basically dressing up as a complete wolf to replicate the

but you are helping your mind achieve that best you'll stay. Would it be right

to say that there's a connection here between these guys imitating wolves and

acting like wolves and our ideas about werewolves?

Possibly. Certainly the origins of that idea come from these warrior societies

mimicking animals, and that's clearly related to part of a wider idea of

and animals not being as separate as they eventually become once Christianity

sets in. And this is what Christianity stressed, is that humans should be

distancing themselves from what we can term as the beast.

The Christians used the pagans' affinity with the animal world against them by

calling them bestial or animalistic.

This blackened the names of both pagans and animals.

Today, we would never identify with a wolf in a positive way.

We talk about someone wolfing their food or being a lone wolf.

But in the pagan world, there wasn't this superior attitude.

Their relationship with wild animals was a positive thing.

Dressing up to be like a wolf gave them power.

I think the reason for this is because in pagan times, when they lived much

closely with a wolf, they understood this wild power much better, and it was

something that they tapped into.

But to us, it's still just a big, bad wolf in the fairy tale to scare the

children with. Now, why? I mean, they're never going to meet a wolf except in

the zoo.

It wasn't my idea to do this, but somehow I got talked into it.

The production team decided that the way to try and understand our pagan

ancestors and their view of the world was for me to get quite a lot more

intimate with wolves myself.

Would you prefer it if I went sort of closer rather than yourself and sort of

come up? Whatever you think.

So with some trepidation, I was about to find out what it felt like to be a

pagan. by getting up close and personal.

So if you sort of get into position, what you're doing is you're kind of

bouncing from side to side.

Sean Ellis has spent the last 15 years living with wolves and learning how to

communicate with them.

For the facial expression, what we look at is we kind of pull the lips up over

the front teeth and we kind of stick the tongue through. That's what we're

looking for. Lift the lips up over the front teeth, try and keep the teeth...

How close is he going to come?

You'll probably find it'll come quite close to you. Once we disappear out of

way and he's got one -on -one, he'll come quite close and try and take it

you. He's already there now, licking the lips. He's going to be quite up for

this, don't worry.

It's kind of squeezing them together, if you can.

That's it, you're getting there. That's fine, yeah. As he's looking at me now,

you turn and run. You'll probably get to around about here, if you're lucky.

OK, you should have it by then.

Play boat.

Yeah, face them side to side, and then as soon as he comes in, just turn, run,

and feed the rabbit in. You can't really go wrong, mate, anyway, so, okay?

Tonight, that's going to be you and I.

Yours is going to be slightly higher than mine.

And as I stop, you come in. As you stop, I'll come in.

Spending the weekend with the pack made me start to think that the notion of the

Big Bad Wolf is as unfounded as the notion of the Big Bad Pagan.

When Sean lives with these wolves, they very quickly start to assign him a rank.

In the pack, every wolf has a place, and they work together as a team.

You would be tested through strength, maybe even through speed, but it's

just to place you within their group.

Well, I think we know where that is.

Right down there.

It's kind of pretty near the bottom, if not right down there. It's not a bad

place to be, actually. They tend to look after you very, very well indeed.

The protection, their family orientation is second to none.

So the wolf just isn't the evil stereotype of Christian fairy tales.

Of course, Little Red Riding Hood should have been wary of the wolf, but I now

understand why pagan warriors would also, have admired it.

However, some Christians reported that our pagan ancestors' passion for animals

went beyond admiration into areas almost too shocking to contemplate.

In the 12th century, a Christian propagandist called Gerald of Wales was

travelling in Ireland.

There, he claimed to witness the pagan ceremony that beggars believe.

It's one of the most shocking accounts I've read in all my time as an

anthropologist.

What Gerald described was a man killing a horse, bathing in its blood,

and then serving it up as a Jew.

But before all of this, in full view of a crowd of people, he had sex with the

animal.

Wild sex.

Bestiality.

Exhibitionism.

If this story's true, maybe we should feel ashamed of our pagan past.

But did anything like this really happen?

The record in Ireland is silent.

But here in Norfolk, there's the beginning of a trail to help me unravel

truth behind this Christian scare story.

This archaeological warehouse near Norwich contains over 2000 boxes of

remains.

They come from Spong Hill, the largest Anglo -Saxon cemetery ever excavated in

Britain.

These Anglo -Saxons were pagans and rather than burying their dead, they

them and put their ashes into urns.

The decoration on the outside of some of the urns is the first clue to

understanding Gerald's story because it shows that horses were of special

importance to these people.

This is one of the urns that was used for burial.

And you can see all around here, you can see the horses.

Almost as if they're galloping around.

Fantastic. But what the decoration on the outside didn't prepare Jackie for

what she discovered when she examined the contents of the urn. But what we've

got here...

Quite easily identifiable bits of human bone. For instance, we have fragments of

mandible, which is very easily identifiable here. This bone here is far

and far more robust. It's far thicker, as you can see, than any of this bone

here. It's quite a different element.

And those are fragments of horse bone, of horse long bone.

So they were definitely mixed together in this case? They were mixed together,

but... You know, the horse is not just in there by accident. This is a

deliberate deposit, a deliberate burial meant to be of that animal.

Over half the cremation urns from Spong Hill contain animal remains, and the

horse is by far the most common of these animals.

Why?

In life, horses were useful and a sign of wealth and power.

But the finds here suggest they were important in death too.

and combined with something central to the pagan world, fire.

Today, we shy away from facing death, but the Anglo -Saxon cremation pyre

that the pagans wanted to see the transformation of the body into ashes.

You'd see how people would be fascinated by this. Because they didn't really,

they didn't understand the chemistry of it.

Well, I don't either.

I'm not sure I do, but...

You know, looking at that, it is visually so beautiful. Oh, yeah, you've

got to look at it, haven't you? And it looks like it's alive.

It's hot. It is very, very hot, isn't it?

Yeah.

Pagans believed that the fiery transformation to ashes was a fast track

next world.

We can tell how important this was to them because when Christians came along

with a different view of the afterlife, they labelled cremation as barbaric, and

infernal. It was banned in Britain soon after this time and only made legal

again in the late 19th century.

Had they seen what was happening at Spong Hill the Christians would have

even more shocked because here this magical transformation had an extra

The horse bones were not just mingled with humans in the urns.

They were actually burnt at the same time on the pyre.

In this pagan spectacle, human and animal were symbolically fused.

I think this might help explain Gerald's story of a man having sex with a horse.

The fusion of man and animal, not in death, but in life.

To stand any chance of getting to the truth behind Gerald's account, we need

see things as pagans saw them. We need to get inside their minds.

The pagan legacy here in Sweden goes back much earlier than Spong Hill or

Gerald's tabloid tale, but there's a fascinating connection between the

The people who lived here have left a remarkable legacy, hundreds of stories

carved in pictures on huge flat rocks.

These pictures are tantalising clues to how our pagan ancestors thought.

Tell me what you see.

Well, I see a man. Yeah.

I think, with a sword.

Yeah, perhaps.

Well, I guess, and then, dare I say, he's having sex with a horse.

Yes, you dare.

You dare say.

Perhaps this is his arm, his hand.

He's got a pretty long arm. Yeah, with a whip or something, I don't know.

He's whipping it as well. He's really a bit strange guy, isn't he? Yes.

The picture fits Gerald's story pretty well, but it's the only one that's been

found in the whole of pagan Europe so far.

Gerald the priest told his story in horror to shock his readers.

But at Tarnum, we see things from the pagan point of view. If only we can

decipher what they mean.

So if you could help me, just try to clear the leaves away.

I promise you, you will see more of the rubbing. Put the paper out. Today, we

only see a small proportion of the rock carvings in what was probably their

original splendour, coloured in red.

We'll have to take this.

Oscar Fredl has gone to great lengths to catalogue all the pictures.

Let's have some magic.

Including ones that are invisible to the naked eye.

Oh, see, look at that magic.

Things are coming out here now.

This looks like a human figure and maybe here it's a... Has he got

an erection?

Yeah, it's a big one, but we don't know if it's like... if they actually had

these.

Could be some kind of outfit or gear to put on.

What do you mean? What kind of gear?

Like a loose... Like something to put on, like in a costume.

So you think this might not be his real one? It might be a... Yeah, it might be

a... No, yeah. I'm sure if you see some of them, they can't be the real one.

Yeah, they're exaggerating. Yeah, they're exaggerating.

A bit of artistic license.

Although there is only one picture of a man having sex with a horse, in the

Tanim area alone there are roughly 150 pictures of men with erect penises or

strap -on phalluses.

So what do these pictures tell us about what people were actually doing?

Are they dirty Bronze Age cartoons, or could they be records of real events?

Oh, this is obviously the main one, isn't it? Yeah, it is.

Excavations in front of the rocks have found evidence of fires and feasting.

They show Tannum would have been the site for big community festivals,

theatrical events.

So what have we got here, the usual erect penises? What's going on there?

but you find people dancing or moving.

The pictures are scenes from these performances, like photos of the cast.

And the man with the big phallus seems to have been quite a popular character.

Most people today when they saw a picture of an erect penis would

think about sex But do you think that's the way that they saw it?

Actually, I don't think that's the way they saw it. I think it's more of an

attribute Like a symbol for something like potency like a show -off

This big man.

I wondered if he'd drawn it after the other one, say, you know, my one's

than your one, including his axe as well.

Might be, but... These pictures are not pornography.

Big penises with symbols of power and being man enough to have sex with a

horse... ..would be the supreme expression of male power.

I was pretty sure that what Gerald saw was more power trips than sexual

deviancy, but I still needed proof.

Here in the gold room in Stockholm are the status symbols of the pagan elite

from the Bronze Age to the time of the Vikings.

Their jewellery, expensive, intricate, and often showing humans and animals

together.

I'd been promised these enigmatic finds.

would give me the extra evidence I needed to prove that what Gerald saw was

ritual about power rather than proof of pagan promiscuity.

They turned out to be some of the smallest clues I'd ever seen.

Tiny gold images the size of a fingernail. And they weren't all they

Looks like a man and a woman kissing to me, maybe a husband and wife. This one

is not quite as clear, but is that the same?

Ingmarie Back -Danielson has studied over 700 of these found across Sweden

Denmark.

But how are they going to help me?

But if you look really closely, you can actually see that it's not that very

clear. Is it really a man and a woman?

I think they're wearing masks.

They're wearing masks.

Yes, facial masks.

Not very human -like at all.

Almost a bit animal -like.

So, what do we make of that? I mean, that's a bit unusual, wearing masks like

that. I mean, it seems a bit strange to me. Well, it is strange to us. But you

had several animal spirits that could help you in different matters. And you

donned jewellery or even your clothes with certain aspects of that animal in

order to get that animal's power.

What the pictures show is something called a sacred marriage, a ceremony in

which a person mated with a piece of land to stake their claim to it.

In these ceremonies, the land would be represented by a person in an animal

mask.

And where these tiny gold stamps were found hints at not only what these

ceremonies meant, but also who was taking part in them.

for they have all been discovered in the foundations of royal palaces.

I think you have to remember that these items are made of gold and gold is not

something that every man or woman had access to. So they were used in order to

explain the origin of the ruling couple.

All the evidence I had seen pointed to a long pagan tradition of theatrical

spectacles.

in which humans symbolically mingled and even mated with animals.

So although I think Gerald could have seen a horse being killed, I think the

show that went on before was just that, a show.

Just as the warrior drew strength and knowledge from the wolf pack, so leaders

asserted their power by mastering an animal that represented potency and

The horse.

Now, this might sound a million miles from today, but even in the modern

horsepower is something we use as a status symbol.

A man demonstrating his wealth or sexual prowess by the type of car he drives is

directly echoing this pagan power ritual.

But we can't all have Ferraris, and what I'm interested in is the Ford Fiestas

of the pagan world.

The normal people, the ones like us.

And more specifically, the women, who were often described by Christian

propagandists as little better than animals themselves.

Pagans, the original sexy beasts.

And pagan women, the wildest sexy beasts of all.

Depending on who you read, they spent a lot of time with their kit off.

flashed their genitals at cattle, and weren't averse to pleasuring themselves

with large stone dildos.

But how do we separate fact from 2 ,000 years of Christian fiction?

Here in Sweden there is a long tradition of open sexuality, and it goes back at

least to Viking times.

We know a lot about people's everyday lives in those days, because we can read

them in intimate detail in the Viking Saga.

So as a little bit of extra research for the programme, after a hard day's

filming, I decided to have an early night.

What I like about the Norse stories and poems is they seem to cover the whole

range of life. I mean, there's stuff here, for example, about love and sex,

romance and marriage, which wouldn't be out of place in a woman's magazine,

although, of course, this is also great poetry.

But there are some things in here that are pretty surprising.

There's a story here about a horse's penis, and everyone has to sing a little

verse about what they're going to do with it.

So what really happened when a few Viking women got together?

Here's one part of it. Oh, no, it's... Ah, here.

It's, um...

I've come here to Storholmen to see what the Vikings got up to.

If there's any in, that is.

Hello! Well, in Sweden... Britta and Mats are a one -off. They don't just

the sagas, they try to live like them.

They have left the 21st century, and for the last decade have been building

their own 10th century world, based on what they have read.

Havamal. or Sayings of the High One, is a guide for how to live the good life,

Viking style.

By following the guidelines set out in this particular book, Britta and Matt

believe they have been able to tap into the minds of our pagan ancestors.

It's more like guidings, how to live your life in the best way, how to treat

other people, how to treat yourself, actually, and how to make the best out

things. I do the countdown now. OK, OK.

Three, two, one. By living by the book, Britta and Mats have learned not to be

turned off by seeing life and death in all its gory detail.

They make work fun by peppering it with games and have a few practical ways of

testing the worth of a partner.

And I win.

Yeah.

It's not much to have. No muscles at all. It seems pretty obvious stuff, but

adds up to an interesting bigger picture.

of a pagan world where boundaries were not as defined as they are today, where

the lines between humans and animals, or work and play, were blurred.

Britta's experience has led her to a pragmatic conclusion about some of the

lewd stories in the Thargos, particularly my famous horse penis

Often when...

historians or archaeologists should interpret such things. They say, it's

mysterious, it's a wreath, it's about fertilization. And yeah, probably it is.

But if you were holding a penis in your hand, it would be a lot of laughing.

And I think it was like...

Like party feeling, not like, I'm holding a penis.

You don't think it was a serious symbolic ritual?

Well, maybe both. When we think back in time, we tend to separate it as we do.

Religion here.

Of course, penis there.

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, handicraft here.

Yeah, but it was all one part of one whole.

Yeah, of course it was.

Our pagan ancestors, unlike the Christians who displaced them, didn't

in terms of opposite, good and evil, civilized and wild, sacred and profane.

And this is reflected not only in the sagas, but in some of the objects they

left behind.

These three are just a little selection of the pagan statuettes that may have

something to do with sex.

And if we were to interpret them in our own way, in a modern way, we'd simply

say, okay, this is a topless dancer with a miniskirt, here's a woman flashing

her boobs, and here's a man sitting down with an erection.

But is it really that simple?

Well, it probably isn't, because I don't think the pagans would have seen these

in quite the same light we do today.

Because for us, Sex is very much something apart from religion and

life. It's sort of got its own little bit at the side. But sex was part of

life, obviously, but it was also part of their spiritual life. They didn't cut

the two apart.

The fact that pagan women talked about sex and were portrayed as being sexy

doesn't automatically mean that they were the harlots of Christian

In their world, sexiness was a force for good.

Why?

The answer can be found in the grave of a young woman across the water in

Denmark.

In 1370 BC, a teenage girl was buried in a tree -trunk coffin.

A quirk of chemistry has meant that her clothing has been completely preserved.

It is the best -kept outfit ever found by archaeologists, and it provides us

with a unique opportunity to learn something about the morals of pagan

Around her waist is a belt with a large bronze disc.

The skirt is made of a row of strings that would open up as she moved.

She has nothing on underneath.

The egg -fed girl makes the Bronze Age very familiar to us.

Her outfit would not be out of place on a young girl today.

You were the first one to actually put it on and try doing different things in

it. Annie Brugger has worn an exact replica and seen what you can and can't

in it.

It is both difficult and revealing to bend down, so any kind of work in the

fields would be out.

But there's one thing you can do in it.

And that's done.

So would you let your daughter go out in this costume on a Saturday night?

No, indeed not.

This is a very special costume.

It's not for every young girl. So it wouldn't be what the typical teenage...

indeed not.

A special costume for dancing and even more special for fertility dancing.

This belt was like the sun and the point of the dancing was to make the rays of

the sun bounce off it.

When she's spinning around, she's receiving the sun and she's spreading it

And she even put seed out of here and stamp it down.

The egg -fed girl's outfit is not any sexy, but seems to draw the gaze

deliberately towards her womb.

So was this not just about her sexuality, but also her fertility.

The tree trunk coffin doesn't just contain a sexy girl. There are other

in here as well.

A cattle hide and pollen, both symbols of fertility.

and most curiously, a small bag containing the burnt remains of a child.

One of the reasons why I think we should think of her as a sexual being, as it

were... At first, it looked like the egg -fed girl could have been the mother,

but DNA testing has put her age at 15 and the young child at six, so this

highly improbable.

And because the child is cremated, whilst the egg -fed girl and her outfit

intact, it seems that the child's presence too is symbolic.

Everything points to the egg -fed girl being special for the fertility of the

whole community.

Not because she was promiscuous, but because she was a virgin.

The point may be that she was sexually very provocative.

highly sexually charged, but at the same time virgin, so that she couldn't be

touched. You know, to be virgin is to be pure, but at the same time it's to have

this dangerous power all locked up inside you, waiting to explode out, as

were.

Whilst Christians view virginity as good because sex is bad, pagans saw

virginity as a sexual time bomb.

And in their world, sex, and flaunting it, was a good thing.

We have to think of the pagan past where fertility, reproductive capacity is

something which is bound up with the survival of the community, whether it's

people, whether it's crops, whether it's animals.

And so what to us may seem permissive is again to do with the success of the

community and its sexuality is going to be the key to that success.

What the egg -fed girl gives us is a glimpse into a society that treasured

young women and valued the power of female sexuality just as much as it

the power of its men.

So yes, it's easy to portray pagan women as a bunch of orgiastic harlots, but

this would be to miss the point.

Just as Gerald of Wales missed the point when he witnessed the horse ritual.

In sharp contrast to the picture painted by their Christian rivals, our pagan

ancestors belonged to a highly moral and spiritual society.

But my rehabilitation of our pagan ancestors was about to be seriously

challenged by a recent discovery in Estonia, the death house.

I'm on a journey across northern Europe, uncovering the truth about our pagan

past.

It wasn't all sex, animals and wild abandon.

It seems that wherever the Christians displaced the pagans, they left a trail

bigotry and propaganda.

But what about when it came to death?

They cut off their stomachs.

and tore out the hearts from their living bodies.

Then they divided the hearts, cooked them on the fire, and ate them.

I had every horror cliché in my head as I was driven through the wilds of

Estonia.

I was being taken to a place I'd heard referred to as the death house.

I felt like I was entering a 70s flasher movie.

Nearly 2 ,000 years ago, this area was prime farming land.

Antonia was the site of a prosperous settlement.

But this spot here had something more surprising in store for archaeologists.

So how old is this?

It's mostly from the 2nd up to the 4th century AD, this particular

The second to the fourth century.

When excavation started, Marika Magi thought she had found the foundations of

house. I can show you if you want.

OK. But when she removed the limestone floor, she was forced to think again. I

think it was here.

Staring straight at her was the gull of a woman.

When she dug some more, she found that the skull was framed in a small stone

box.

As she excavated further to try to find the rest of the skeleton, she realised

she was standing on the chopped up remains of more than one person.

After collecting the bones together, she calculated there could be as many as 13

people in here.

So what was going on?

The bones we found here, they were not bones of the whole skeleton.

And not only that, but many of them had been broken intentionally, probably

during the ritual.

And would you like me to show you some of the bones?

Sure, yeah. Why would they have broken them? They tried to kill the bones even.

To kill the bones?

Make sure they were dead.

To make it absolutely sure the body is completely destroyed.

Next to this house is a series of mysterious pits, at the bottom of which

fragments of human bone.

It seems the bodies were either being stored or even cut into pieces here.

The dead bodies can just be buried first on the ground somewhere else and after

some period, perhaps a year or something, dug up and cooked, for

Cooked? Yes.

Any particular reason?

For defleshing the bones.

Because otherwise it's not very easy, actually, to cut the flesh off from the

bones. But it must be hard to cook one of your relatives or something.

It depends how you get on with your relatives, but for most situations. It

something which was necessary for entering the other world and very

and probably not as disgusting as it would be for present people.

In the 21st century, we're really very squeamish about death and dead bodies.

But for these people, death was not the end.

And their belief about what happened afterwards fundamentally affected their

attitude to the human body, alive or dead.

Digging up particular bones, defleshing them and reburying them, was a way of

helping their loved ones get to the next world.

Our pagan ancestors also believed it enabled them to revisit this world.

They were comfortable with the idea of ghosts and spirits in a way that we are

not. They even had a special date in the calendar when the door between this

life and the next was left open.

The Night of the Living Dead was a joyous occasion, but now it's become the

fright night that is Halloween.

After a day in the death house trying to keep my own squeamishness in check, I

decided to treat myself to some well -earned relaxation.

A sauna, Estonian style.

I'd heard they could be pretty racy places in pagan times.

The bread of love, the bread of joy.

I whip you with the wolf's tail.

I whip you with the fox's tail.

May the boys love you as much as the wolf loves the lamb.

Archaeologists believe the smoke sauna has existed in Estonia for at least 2

,000 years and was the focal point of pagan life.

It was used as a source of hot water and peace and quiet when a woman gave

birth.

So it doesn't look much like a modern sauna.

It's quite different.

And as Ritaime casually mentioned to me on the way in, it was also in its own

way a kind of death house.

Until the last century, it was here that corpses were laid out before they were

buried.

I couldn't wait to get in there.

This is the changing room.

It's a mixed changing room. Is that normal in the sauna?

Yes, it is normal, because in old times there was no question if people had

naked bodies.

And it was no problem to go to a sauna mixed.

I'd learned that pagans had a very different attitude to the body after

And it was clear also they had a completely down -to -earth attitude to

naked body in life.

It was no big deal.

Do you want a towel?

Yes, please.

So what's the temperature going to be like?

It's not that hot, at least not for Estonians.

Do you think I can't take the heat?

No.

I was just beginning to relax when Rick brought out the bird twigs.

This is a sledge mower.

And the symbolic part of this twig is that it symbolizes the green power or

power of life.

So it was thought that with the contact of the body, the body would take over

all this energy that is in there.

And so people would either hit themselves with this or hit the other

the sauna with this? Yes, and everybody told thank you for hitting.

Oh, OK.

Thank you.

Is it harder the better, or...? It all seemed pretty civilised, actually.

And this talk of the power of life seemed a direct echo of the pagan world,

which constantly looked to nature for strength, for guidance, for prosperity.

So this playful sauna ritual between older and younger women may seem a bit

risque, but seen through pagan eyes, it's actually just another way of

celebrating the power of fertility.

It struck me that the sauna sums up what pagan life was actually all about.

But when Christianity came along, all that changed.

People became animalised in the sense that...

It was thought that there is some hidden animal instinct in a person that can

just come out without any warning.

The idea that being open about our bodies and sexuality is a bestial or

animalistic thing is the major disservice that Christianity has done to

It's at the root of a lot of the angst that we feel in the modern world today.

In fact, the last 2 ,000 years of anti -pagan propaganda have all

been about distancing ourselves from the animal world, demonising it and

suppressing our natural affinity with it.

But in spite of this, I believe our pagan past is still very much a part of

we are today.

Scratch the surface and it's there. Our wild side. Our beast within.

And I think that's a pretty good thing.