I have signed a contract with Arc Humanities Press to write a new book for the ‘Past Imperfect’ series, Pre-Christian Baltic Religion and Belief, which will be the first book written in English dedicated to providing an overview of Baltic religion and mythology.

The Baltic region (Prussia, Lithuania and Latvia) was one of the last areas of Europe to be Christianised, and the survival of its pre-Christian religions into the early modern period meant that they became a subject of interest to early ethnographers, as well as church authorities concerned about idolatry and witchcraft. However, the religions of the Baltic have often been interpreted through the lens of modern reconstructions of mythology based on folklore collected in the nineteenth century. Pre-Christian Baltic Religion and Belief will concentrate instead on what we can know about Baltic religion from sources contemporaneous (or nearly contemporaneous) with the ongoing practice of pre-Christian cults, as well as drawing on the insights of archaeology to understand the world of some of the last people in Europe to relinquish their pre-Christian beliefs.

The book will deal with the gods, goddesses and spirits of Baltic belief, sacred sites in Baltic religion, rites of sacrifice, birth, marriage and burial, and the probable place of magic and divination in pre-Christian Baltic belief.