The books that I have on Norse animism are in storage. It is hard tracking down sources online. Nevertheless, even in English scholarship, references to Norse ‘animism’ and Norse ‘shamanism’ are common enough. For example, even the first .pdf I googled across randomly, says this...
Okay. You will note that these sources frame their statements as
speculative, whereas you have consistently been framing your statements as
declarative. What you are saying is
not consensus among scholars in the field. In fact, very little is. Hard facts about Norse religious practices are rather thin on the ground, and it's probably not a good idea for you to pretend you have more than you do.
The closest thing to a spiritual leader among indigenous Scandinavians is the Volva, a kind of shaman who interacts with nature spirits including Alfar and Jotnar.
Other theories propose that the positions of priest and chieftain were merged at some point in early Germanic culture. For possible evidence of this in the Norse religion, see Odin, and the etymology and usage of the word
goði. (Oh, yeah, that's worth mentioning: the Norse actually had the word
goð, 'god', for the Æsir, Vanir,
et al.) Völur were part of the picture too, of course, but their position is hardly distinctive to Norse culture or even to shamanic cultures in general; witches and seers of various descriptions were all over the place in both pagan and Christian Europe. They seem to have been, as your source puts it, "reflexes of shamanism", but they readily existed as a part of these polytheistic and monotheistic cultures.
In the indigenous traditions, there are no priests. They lack temples.
It is true that the Germanic pagans, both in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe, seldom built temples; they preferred to worship in natural places they considered sacred, and seemed to have a particular thing for big old trees. It does not follow from this that they did not worship gods. As for priests, see again the chieftain theory. Chiefs certainly officiated a number of religious rituals.
The places translated loosely as ‘temples’ are private homes, with a room dedicated to a nature spirit.
Hrafnkell Freysgoði (there's that word again) would beg to differ. His
hof, which I have no compunction translating as 'temple', was a freestanding structure distinct from his home.
An exception is a royal temple in Uppsala, but its founders originate from outside of Scandinavia, imported foreign religious beliefs, and Uppsala itself is part of extensive foreign trade connections.
Whence do you believe the founders of the Uppsala temple came, and why do you believe this? And since Uppsala was an important political and religious center since at least the 6th Century AD, and probably much earlier, I think it's safe to say that
even if the religious beliefs were originally imported, they were sufficiently well established by the Viking Age proper not to be dismissable as "foreign".
Wikipedia too mentions this...
If we're to be taking Wikipedia as a source, then it's surely germane that Wikipedia matter-of-factly describes Thor and company as "gods" and does not even mention any controversy about whether or not they are.
In any case, the Aesir are mortal. They die, even die by old age. They are nature spirits who need other nature spirits to keep them alive.
This does not follow. Why does mortality indicate that they're not "gods"? And if they're not gods, why does it indicate they
are "nature spirits"? What is the distinction between "god" and "nature spirit" you think is so important, anyway?
To bake the Cleric class setting cosmology into the rules of the game, inherently distorts settings, prejudices the expectations of the players who read these rules, who assume there are gods even where there are none, forces the DMs to constantly contradict the rules, and prevents interesting stories from happening.
Classes are completely modular. You can play the game without the cleric, or the warlock, or the fighter, or any other class, and nothing in the rules will break. They're not "baked in".
