Anglo-Saxon paganism is attested by scraps. Bede names two goddesses, Hretha and Eostre, in the course of explaining month names, and Eostre gave English the word Easter. Royal genealogies trace descent from Woden; place names preserve the gods in Wednesbury, Thundersley and Tuesley; and the days of the week carry Tiw, Woden, Thunor and Frig. David Wilson's study assembles the material and is candid that it does not add up to a theology.
The archaeology gives more. Furnished burial with weapons, jewellery and food, cremation under mounds, the ship burial at Sutton Hoo with its extraordinary deposit, and the temple Bede describes being destroyed by its own priest at Goodmanham together indicate a religion concerned with lineage, with the display of standing, and with the passage of the dead.
The Old English Rune Poem, preserved in a Christian manuscript, names each letter with a verse, and some of those verses appear to carry older material inside a Christian frame. The atlas records the gods as attested by name and by place, and marks the rest as not recoverable, rather than filling it in from the Norse sources, which are three centuries later and belong to a different branch of the family.