[…] the symbolic reference still in use in lodges of Freemasons cannot be explained on other reasoning than that these artists united with the Germanic guilds, under ecclesiastical patronage, at that era, or subsequent thereto; because the well-defined Gothic or Teutonic elements, still in existence in lodge ritual, were, as we shall hereafter see, derived directly from such a condition of social life as presented itself in the north of Italy.

Thus says Georges Franklin Fort (1809-1872) in The early history and antiquities of Freemasonry (1884).

This website investigates the investigations into the hypothesis that a part of Masonic symbolism can be traced back to the pre-Christian religion of Northern Europe. This is not a widely investigated theory and only a handful of people wrote/write about it and those who do, do or did not all do so in English, making the subject even more elusive.

On this website you will find some texts to give you an idea of what I’m interested in in the named field.