First, I want to say I appreciate your input even though I disagree.
It's an interesting discussion, thank you
Now if you want to say these reltionships are now considered purely christian the I would like for you to explain how these are related to the christian religion. The fact that recently in iceland they had to stop a runway prodject because of the landwrights living in a rock in the way of the construction is consistant with pre-christian relationships.
I spent much of my life living in a majority Muslim country where animistic and shamanic folk beliefs in magic, spirits and ghosts are still common today. I remember getting stuck in a traffic jam that was caused by people trying to get a ghost out of a tree.
There is a process of mutual influence which changes the nature of both. It's always hard to say to what extent something reflects a genuinely ancient belief, or what is a more recent reimagining and adaptation of cultural motifs.
But to say they do not approximate the traditions is to not be aware of what is happening in the community. This has to do with the source of knowledge for most indigenous people. These religions were not revealed and never written down. They were experiential and phenomenal religions. The source of knowledge for the pre-Christian religions is still present today. There is enough information in other indigenous cultures to draw from along with ongoing cultural remnants and comparative mythology as well as direct experience with the other numinous beings. Most modern people have difficulty understanding this because they are imbedded in a culture that is so dependent on the written word and logic. Those have their place but there is much more to the experiential and phenomenal interactions that is misunderstood.
I see it the other way round, as for me this is the reason they cannot be recreated in any meaningful sense.
If they were experiential and phenomenal, and the experience and phenomena of the modern world are vastly different, then what is reimagined and repurposed from the echos of the old ways has little in common.
Modern communication tech is basically an extension of the senses, and alongside modern education and scientific knowledge, industrial development, etc. creates a radically different perception of our environment, an environment that has itself been radically changed.
Archaeological findings are often ambiguous and may support a range of contradictory narratives that are equally plausible and equally unprovable. Folk tales, myths and sagas redacted by Christians or 19th C Romantics are often of unknown accuracy.
Like in science where observations are theory laden (what you observe depends on which theoretical presuppositions you are operating with), this is true of how we all observe the past.
Let me ask you this, do you see god or the gods as supernatural and outside of nature or to you see god or the gods as immanent and within the natural world?
I don't believe in gods, so neither.
Other people may perceive them which ever way they personally find more meaningful.
