The Scandinavian countries have loads of old placenames with Odin or Tor in them. The names of the weekdays still carry the memory of the old gods. Yet it's Christianity that rules as a faith. There are very, very few who claim to worship the old gods, and none of them can connect to the old tradition. It's all made up, a romanticizing movement connected to extreme nationalism and/or new age.
All the Scandinavian national flags carry the cross, and the national/regional heraldry is strongly influenced by Christian or central European imagery.
During the past two thousand years since the alleged life of the Anointed, the North has gone through several religious shifts:
- some 800 years of paganism (which probably went through developments we can only guess and imagine now)
- some 400 years of establishing Christian faith & structures, with seemingly strong local pagan traditions still going on
- some 300 years of established Catholic Church, with the dying off of paganism, and reinterpretation of pagan myths into Christian ones
- some 300 years of centrally led Lutheranism, with active uprooting and condemnation of both the remaining pagan traditions AND the characteristics of Catholic Christianity, like the saints (partly unsuccessful)
- some 160 years of National Churches within a secular state, strongly supported by the nationalist state
- some 50 years of actual religious freedom, with 'habitual Christianity', atheism, new age and immigrant religions increasing
A place called Taalheim, near the River Talabec, in the electorate of Talabecland, likely has a similarly manifold religious history since the legendary time of Sigmar. The Sigmarite religion has taken over in different phases, for different reasons. But it has always been the Empire religion, whereas the local gods have retained their strong local presence. There are also new, foreign gods, like Myrmidia. At one point in the civil war period, Talabecland was allied with the Ulricians of Middenheim. This probably influenced the religious climate of the city and land. And although the city and province probably are quite Sigmarite these days, Taal is still recognized and the millennia-old tradition lives. Contrary to the example of modern Scandinavia.
I think this makes Talabheim and Talabecland really interesting. While the official emblems and the ruling religion are Sigmarite, the other religions really are alive, with their global and local traditions. Individual units and bands of warriors could very well draw from these other, parallel traditions in defining themselves. You could model a unit with an official Sigmarite flag, but with various individual religious tokens and connotations in the ranks. After all, they do believe in the active existence and protection of several different gods.
-Z
