Silence of the Gods:
The Untold History of Europe’s
Last Pagan Peoples
Francis Young
Cambridge University Press
The formal conversion to Christianity in 1387 of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania seemingly marked the end of Europe’s last ‘pagan’ peoples. But the reality was different. At the margins, often under the radar, around the dusky edgelands, pre-Christian religions endured and indeed continued to flourish for an astonishing five centuries. Silence of the Gods tells, for the first time, the remarkable story of these forgotten peoples: belated adopters of Christian belief on the outer periphery of Christendom, from the Sámi of the frozen north to the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians around the Baltic, as well as the Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia’s Volga-Ural Plain. These communities, Young reveals, responded creatively to Christianity’s challenge, but for centuries stopped short of embracing it. His book addresses why this was so, uncovering stories of fierce resistance, unlikely survival and considerable ingenuity. He revolutionises understandings of the lost religions of the last pagans.
- An original, sprightly analysis of the surprisingly overlooked survival of pre-Christian beliefs around the edgelands of Europe.
Wolfson History Prize judges
An exclusive extract, read by Francis.
- Landscape and its sacredness is central to Silence of the Gods and my chief inspiration was the forests and hills of Lithuania and the stark, mostly treeless sub-Arctic landscape of Sápmi, especially Norwegian Finnmark.
Francis Young
About the author
Francis Young has worked as a Senior Research Associate at the University of Portsmouth and a tutor at Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education. Alongside his writing, he is a Series Editor for Cambridge University Press and a professional indexer, as well as Secretary of the British-Lithuanian Society.
