Hey you, viewer. You ve played Skyrim, right? Course you have. Here s a question
what god or gods do the people of Skyrim, the Nords, worship?
What s the divine presence at the centre of their culture? I m not asking rhetorically honestly,
go throw your answer in the comments, I promise you its relevant. Alright, you about done down
there? I m gonna go out on a limb here and predict some common answers. First, Talos.
thank you, Heimskr. Yeah, Talos ll be a common answer. A lot of you, too,
will probably bring up the 9, or 8, divines the pantheon of which Talos is sometimes a part,
which include the gods worshipped in every conventional church throughout the game. Maybe
there s even a couple of lorebeards watching maybe someone ll have suggested the old Nordic pantheon,
figures like Kyne, Stuhn or Jhunal, of whom we see but brief snippets throughout a playthrough.
But which answer s right? Well, all of these. And none of them. In this video I ll explain
what I mean by that as well as why that s so interesting, why in my opinion this little
matter reveals Skyrim to possess a slightly more nuanced politics than it s given credit for.
And, yeah in case you re confused regular viewer I do talk about games sometimes on this channel,
too not just TV and movies. It s just been a little while since I ve done so
in a non-Patreon exclusive. So let s talk about Skyrim, culture, and imperialism.
First, two brief history lessons of Skyrim s religious culture one from an out-of-universe
perspective, and one in-universe. Because while it s true that if you load up Elder
Scrolls V and go a-worshipping, you ll bump into shrines for Talos, Akatosh, and all the others
this wasn t always how things stood. Because the Elder Scrolls as a franchise is,
like, 30 years old and for most of this time the fictional culture of Skyrim was supposed to be
quite different to the version we ended up seeing in 2011. In textual sources like the various
Pocket Guides to the Empire, as well as in the Bloodmoon DLC for Elder Scrolls III Morrowind, we
saw glimpses of a pretty different Skyrim. Before Skyrim, the game, rolled out all sources pointed
to the Nords of the region worshipping a different pantheon of Gods to the ones newer players might
be more familiar with, the old Nordic Pantheon I mentioned briefly above not Akatosh, or Zenithar,
and all the rest. Not Talos. That s right, the seeming hero-god of Skyrim, the religious figure
so central to this culture that the banning of his worship provokes a civil war? Canonically,
he wasn t really a part of this culture until Skyrim itself came out. In the fan-community,
this is broadly seen as, basically, a retcon a change to the setting Bethesda made in order
to preserve a sense of cultural continuity from the previous two titles, both of which featured
fairly prominently the same Imperial Pantheon we see worshipped throughout Skyrim. This plays
into the popular narrative that Skyrim dumbed it down, oversimplified the series, sold out.
And that s true to a point, but not entirely. Because it isn t a straight retcon. There are
explanations offered for the change in-game, and pieces of what we might call cultural detritus
little scraps leftover from a different time, a different culture. First, there s the placenames.
Settlements like Kynesgrove, or Shor s Stone are named for gods no longer actively worshipped
in the mainstream Nordic culture of 4E201. This detritus also exists in the language of
Skyrim. But it s also visible, every now and then, in more obvious ways
like with Froki Whetted-Blade. Froki s a hunter, living in a remote cabin in the Jerall mountains
south of the Rift. There s really no reason you d ever find Froki s shack unless you re actively
exploring for the sake of it. Trying to learn more about this world, about the setting of Skyrim. And
that s exactly what you get here, because Froki is one of the last followers of the old Nordic
pantheon. He offers a fun little quest, where you can undergo a ritual named Kyne s Sacred Trials,
and really engage with this nearly-buried religion the Nordic culture hinted at in earlier games.
But I m less interested in the quest he offers than in the information he gives. This is what
Froki has to say about the pantheon worshipped by the rest of his country: I don t think it
s overselling it to say that this one NPC makes Skyrim a much deeper and more interesting game.
With him in mind, and the rest of the clues hidden in the background,
we can take a punt at establishing the in-universe history of Skyrim s religious shift.
In between those previous games and now, in the 200 years between Oblivion and Skyrim,
the northern province underwent a massive cultural shift. Perhaps their Cyrodilic overlords saw an
opportunity to build soft power in the wake of the Oblivion crisis solved as it was by Martin Septim,
a descendant of Talos, and the power of Akatosh. Perhaps it was in response to
the gathering strength of the Elvish Thalmor the Empire wanting to use religion to galvanise Skyrim
into a province of people who would more readily take up arms against these would-be attackers.
Personally, my theory comes down to Talos. The deity who s become the heart of Skyrim
s nationalist movement. You play Skyrim without reading a whole bunch of books, without snooping
around for all the information you can, and the narrative you ll pick up is essentially that
Talos was a Nord, possibly the last Nord from their ancestral homeland, who went on to found
an Empire in Cyrodil and unite Tamriel. And while that s not completely wrong, it s very misleading.
The real history of Talos, or Tiber Septim is insanely complicated, both because of conflicting,
unreliable sources, and because there s a weird metaphysical level to it he might not
even have been just one dude. But, to keep it simple if Talos was ever just one mortal guy
he was probably a Breton, who fought against the Nords as much as he ever fought with them,
before brutally subjugating the continent, which he would go on to rule
Skyrim included. In the general timeframe we re looking at for the Imperial conversion of Skyrim,
this empire was weakening; beginning to crumble on multiple fronts and against this backdrop, the
idea to spread this Imperial Pantheon, and with it this myth of Talos a figure who symbolically
unites the nations of Skyrim and Cyrodil makes a lot of sense. In such an interpretation, the
conversion of skyrim to the religion we see in the 2011 game is imperial propaganda on a mass scale.
Whatever the reason, it seems the Empire undertook a program of systematic syncretism in the North,
over time convincing the Nords that their gods and the Imperial pantheon were essentially the same;
interchangeable. Froki s words give us a snapshot into one of the ways this might have happened
Imperial priests showering the churches of Skyrim with money, so long as they started displaying
Imperial shrines and idols. Over the years, this leads to the cultural climate we see in Skyrim
where Nords are willing to slaughter their countrymen over the worship of a God who
only REALLY became a big deal to their culture a few generations ago. But nobody even realises
this. And I think this is fascinating - even if, on some level, it is the result of Bethesda
trying to simplify, homogenise this setting. Because this is such a realistic conception of
empire and culture for a video game to have. So many fantasy worlds come up with a culture or
cultures for their settings, for lands controlled by this empire or that, without understanding this
basic truth culture isn t static, and even when states exert this sort of cultural pressure,
trying to reshape societies and lifeways to suit their own wants.. it s never really that simple.
Culture is palimpsestic even when you try with all your might to wipe it out, to replace this
or that, to astroturf there s always going to be a residue, and almost no level of imperial control,
of cultural whitewashing, of dominant, hegemonic pressure can truly erase it. There s always some
level of cultural dissent whether that s in the language of geography, within the culture
s vocabulary, or within the memories of those few old men living just outside the reach of society.
These few, fractured signs of times past might never be able to overthrow the new
but maybe their existence alone is a form of rebellion. Skyrim appears to understand this.
And as a result, Skyrim s engagement with ideas of imperialism, nationalism, culture,
and cultural change isn t limited to a handful of clunky quests with middling
writing. It s present throughout the world, in every shrine or blessed amulet you find,
in every bandit who s dying curse invokes a dead god. So I m not bothered that, at first glance,
Skyrim seems to push these cultural markers of difference, these non-familiar parts of its world
to the very margins of the map, and into some barely perceptible background. Because if it
didn t the effect we ve been talking about wouldn t exist. I think this change, from a Skyrim which
still worships its traditional pantheon, to one culturally colonised by Cyrodil, is a great one
BECAUSE of the way the game remembers to include these little details, the scars of this cultural
colonialism. It s real, and it s potent. Is it a shame we don t get to see more of
this religious and cultural turmoil as it happens, instead of after the fact? Well,
maybe. We don t get to see this process in action. But we do get to see its aftereffects.
There s some sense of poetic justice here, then, because this invisible past of religious
astroturfing has backfired spectacularly on the Empire. The imperial cult they thrust upon the
people of Skyrim was dismantled in the peace treaty the Empire signed after the great war,
30 years prior to the game s setting and the resultant banning of Talos worship in
Skyrim is the single greatest catalyst for the Stormcloak rebellion, and the civil war
tearing the country apart the civil war which threatens to weaken the empire even further.
Again, though, this sense of belated karma, this fuck around and find out , isn t really a point
the game ever tries to make consciously. And I appreciate that. Bethesda s RPGs are a mixed bag,
but I think they re at their best when they present to the player complex, layered,
situations and settings, and leave it to us to put the pieces together. That s what we see here
a world which understands the relationship between culture and imperialism in a really interesting,
if barely visible, way. And sure, Skryim is a triple A game it s hardly some revolutionary text
but I think it s worth recognising complexity and nuance when we see it especially when the
text would have been equally successful, in a financial sense, without bothering.
So, yeah. Maybe bad thing good. Thanks for watching this video, and do let me
know if there s any other games you d watch me ramble about, because the process of gathering
clips for this was infinitely more fun than with my typical videos.
SECOND CHANNEL AD WHICH I ADLIBBED big thanks to all my patrons onscreen now,
especially Kevin Douglas.