The Connection between Anglo Saxon Heathenism and Folk Horror

Anglo Saxon heathenism the polytheistic beliefs of the Anglo Saxons before Christianisation centred on a sacred, animistic relationship with nature, worship of gods such as Wōden, Thunaer and Frēo, and veneration of sacred groves and pillar-like objects like the Irminsul. Folk Horror draws heavily on that same soil the fear of the wild, the power of ancient gods (or at least the suggestion of them), the sense that the land itself might remember or punish, and that archaic rituals and pagan rites leave a shadow from the past.

In other words Folk Horror often dramatises a world where the pre Christian beliefs and taboos of peoples like the Saxons are not safely buried with time but instead linger in the landscape, seeping into isolated villages or forgotten woodlands. That lingering past becomes a source of dread the “folk” are not just people, but memory, land-spirits, and uncanny religious forces that refuse to die.