stylistic:style_transfer, linguistic:voice_change, information:extraction, quality:correction, structural:reformatting
Romanticism, aesthetics, and politics

During the romanticist movement of the 19th century, various northern Europeans took an increasing interest in Old Norse religion, seeing in it ancient pre-Christian mythology that provided an alternative to the dominant Classical mythology. As a result, artists featured Norse gods and goddesses in their paintings and sculptures, and their names were applied to streets, squares, journals, and companies throughout parts of northern Europe.

The mythological stories derived from Old Norse and other Germanic sources inspired various artists, including Richard Wagner, who used these narratives as the basis for his Der Ring des Nibelungen. Also inspired by these Old Norse and Germanic tales was J. R. R. Tolkien, who used them in creating his legendarium, the fictional universe in which he set novels like The Lord of the Rings. During the 1930s and 1940s, elements of Old Norse and other Germanic religions were adopted by Nazi Germany. Since the fall of the Nazis, various right-wing groups continue to use elements of Old Norse and Germanic religion in their symbols, names, and references; some Neo-Nazi groups, for instance, use Mjöllnir as a symbol.

Theories about a shamanic component of Old Norse religion have been adopted by forms of Nordic neoshamanism; groups practising what they called seiðr was established in Europe and the United States by the 1990s.