06/13/2026
A Review of The Hanged God by Lagrillon Debast
Shani’s book The Hanged God streams from the old roots of time in a culture so misinterpreted along history from past to present. Ranging from a unique point of view, Shani gives her insight both as a living crafter of northern traditions and as an academic researcher into the warrior and war band cultures of Germanic, Scandinavian and Britain’s mythologies and folklore.
Seeking to shed some new lights in the common view, as usual, the author pushes boundaries previously established by public opinion rather than actual research and one of these is the idea that Óðinn may not have been so popular as today we might think, rather his cult was surrounded by forbidden and obscure practices of outlawry and by warrior groups formed by actual or fictive kinship, united under oath bound allegiances to the image of their chieftain.
Exploring the mystical elixir that drops from the sorcerous and poetic texts of the Hávamál, the book invites us into themes such as rites and rituals of life, death, trance and journeys into the wildness that although hailed by many these days are rarely realized outside of comfortable walls and bookshelves.
The realms of prophecy, of the Seidr and of the Volva and of authority are wonderfully stressed in a part of the book that explores the image of Idunna as both a Dís (a divine ancestress) and as the Goddess of Fate “who fixes the lifespan of mortals, and the gods too through her golden elixir”. Linking this Goddess with the totemic representation of the Wolf, the author reveals her titanic forces present in Ragnarok as a way of regeneration of a new world for both man and the gods.
The importance of the Axis Mundi, the transcendence climbing and the embodiment of the same by mythological and heroic figures through ordeal is a recurrent idea that explores the different and possible modalities of sacrifice pertaining to the realm of Óðinn and his followers. Animal forms of fetch or fylgja and of shamanic travels, from Finn-Ugaric to South American, hangs in our mind as we feel ourselves to be suspended by the timeless reality that the author so gently pushes us into.
However, once we have entered this ancestral place of memories and shades, the author presents us with songs of old that invokes in our minds by the tongues of poets, necromancers and visionaries, the figures such as the Draugar (the living dead) and the Haugbúar (mound-dwellers). The engagement with the útisetta or the meditational practice around burial mounds and sacred places are stressed as a traditional way of approaching and consulting the souls of ancestors shades until the church banned it.
Poetic verses translated and offered both by other academics and the author herself (truly, this is an enormous task) shows us the myriad of interpretations that have grown in our mind what pertains to northern culture.
Physically, the book is impeccable. Lastly, but not least, I should mention that the appendix is incredibly woven around the whole idea, providing further grounds of research to the reader. I would also recommend to check the long list of references at the end, there are very interesting researches that back up Shani’s controversial theories and perspectives upon the cult of the Hanged God and the ‘Windy Tree.’
"The Hanged God: Óðinn Grímnir" by Shani Oates uncovers rare insights into the Northern tradition, offering a deep dive into forgotten rituals and wisdom. Unlike typical works, it presents an in-depth, multi-disciplinary approach to Óðinn’s sagas, challenging mainstream interpretations. Fu
