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Scandinavian textual sources

A few runic inscriptions with religious content survive from Scandinavia, particularly asking Thor to hallow or protect a memorial stone; carving his hammer on the stone also served this function.

In contrast to the few runic fragments, a considerable body of literary and historical sources survive in Old Norse manuscripts using the Latin script, all of which were created after the Christianisation of Scandinavia, the majority in Iceland. The first extensive Nordic textual source for the Old Norse Religion was the Poetic Edda. Some of the poetic sources, in particular, the Poetic Edda and skaldic poetry, may have been originally composed by heathens, and Hávamál contains both information on heathen mysticism and what Ursula Dronke referred to as "a round-up of ritual obligations". In addition there is information about pagan beliefs and practices in the sagas, which include both historical sagas such as Snorri Sturluson 's Heimskringla and the Landnámabók, recounting the settlement and early history of Iceland, and the so-called sagas of Icelanders concerning Icelandic individuals and groups; there are also more or less fantastical legendary sagas. Many skaldic verses are preserved in sagas. Of the originally heathen works, we cannot know what changes took place either during oral transmission or as a result of their being recorded by Christians; the sagas of Icelanders, in particular, are now regarded by most scholars as more or less historical fiction rather than as detailed historical records. A large amount of mythological poetry has undoubtedly been lost.

One important written source is Snorri's Prose Edda, which incorporates a manual of Norse mythology for the use of poets in constructing kennings; it also includes numerous citations, some of them the only record of lost poems, such as Þjóðólfr of Hvinir 's Haustlöng. Snorri's Prologue eumerises the Æsir as Trojans, deriving Æsir from Asia, and some scholars have suspected that many of the stories that we only have from him are also derived from Christian medieval culture.