THE RITUAL CYCLES
Rituals are the means by which mortals come into contact with the gods and secure their divine support. Although daily routines would entail many small rituals, from greeting the sun to bringing small sacrifices and libations (R.
Bradley 2005), the main rituals were linked to those critical transformations that ensured the yearly cycle of the sun (the seasonal rituals of midsummer and midwinter), the life cycle from birth to death (the rituals of initiation and finally death rituals), and protective rituals to secure safe travels, and those linked to the transformative processes of crafts, not least metal working (Goldhahn & 0stigard 2007).When it comes to the seasonal rituals, hieros gamos is the classical wedding and intercourse between king and queen to secure fertility, and it is well known throughout the Bronze Age from Mesopotamia to Scandinavia (Fari 2006). In the Indo-European-speaking Bronze Age societies of the steppe and temperate Europe this ritual is taken over by a horse as the main divinity with whom either the king or the queen copulates. It corresponds to the unique position of the horse in these societies, and it refers back to the original story of the birth of the Divine Twins as sons of the sky god, and helpers of the Sun goddess in the shape of horses. It is well attested in rock art where both forms of copulation are illustrated - that between man and woman and that between man and a mare (ibid.: figs 43-6).
The festivals of the sun shared a number of rituals in Indo-European-speaking societies, among them the swinging of the sun. Rock art testifies to the active use of sun discs in rituals, both hand-held and swung with ropes by humans or simply shown as a circular rope with a sun disc at the end. Another custom known across Europe from Russia to Wales is the use of a wheel that was set on fire and while burning rolled down a hill and into a river or lake where it was extinguished (West 2007: 214).
It has numerous parallels in the use of wheels as sun symbols on rock art and in metalwork. Also the use of ritual fires is widely shared across western Eurasia (Kaliff 2007).The most critical transformation was that from death to the afterlife. Therefore, Bronze Age burial rituals across western Eurasia mobilize all of the major gods; the first step of the construction of the barrow was a circular stone ring, sometimes with spokes to symbolize the sun wheel, and later the barrow itself was added as a symbol of the rising sun. But first the burial itself was placed in the centre of the stone ring. An oak tree was commonly used for the coffin, symbolizing the tree of life, and the dead and his/her belongings were always wrapped in the fresh hide of an animal (ox or cow) sacrificed to the sky god. In this way, the tree of life, the sky god and the Sun god supported the journey to the afterlife. The dead would thus enter the eternal cycle of the sun into the afterlife. Later in the Bronze Age, a ship often took over the transport function, represented by numerous stone ship settings around the Baltic (0stmo 1997; Bradley & Widholm 2007; Skoglund 2008).
After this brief summary of some general aspects of Bronze Age religion and ritual I shall exemplify the historical context of the Divine Twins.