>>19713
cont.
Now, with that out of the way, we can move on to the nature of reincarnation. That which is of a higher nature, that is Fylgja and Óð, those parts reincarnate. Or rather, one part reincarnates whilst the other lives on forever. The Fylgja reincarnates multiple times through a family, and it is what shapes the family and Pulls it towards honor and better Hamingja (hence the relation between the two). According to Tradition, the fylgja manifests physically for each person as the placenta (which itself is also called fylgja for that reason, at least in old Norse), in order to shape and create the new born person and attach a certain Óð to them, and hence the relation to Ymir (The Twin, every Creative Act requires a Sacrifice, in this case it is the body of the Fylgja, the fylgja, and it dies after the new person is born). This is why they were traditionally buried almost like a person, either under a threshold of a house or under a sacred tree.
The Óð, the highest part of your being, both reincarnates and stays in an afterlife. It reincarnates in that it possesses a new body after a certain amount of time, to experience new lives and accumulate more Honor and Hamingja. However, just like how Óðinn sends out his mind and memory to do that task, our Óð likewise sends such aspects of itself to do that task.
One of the crucial aspects of paganism is reconnecting to your Óð. This is something only those that live according to a Higher Ideal (trust their Óð and Fylgja, live according to the thousands of year old ancestral wisdom) can achieve. And they did this by remembering past lives. The only things that one truly remembers from a past lives are moments which were of a spiritual importance to the person, hence why living according to a higher ideal was necessary (to live honorably and heroically, do something memorable). The myths again point as to how then remember, by going through a ceremony of rebirth which acts out like how Óðinn hang on Yggdrasil and how the gods found golden tablets in the mounds in Völuspá, and countless other metaphors in other myths and even later folklore. Probably the best description of a person describing the feeling was by Sæmundr Fróði in is Sólarljóð. In short, some (Sólarljóð and Óðinn's hanging) describes a euphoric feeling, traveling out of your body, and most others as going into burial mounds that belonged to you in your past life (which is something tradition keepers, either Nornir or Goðar, would judge) and reclaim your goods (they are supposed to help you remember). However, one must also keep in mind that stores that describe going into burial mounds are also likely to express Óðennic feelings as well, rather than literal descriptions of going into burial mounds, but I'd argue that the two are highly linked. Of course, the purpose of burial mounds were to be a physical representation for rebirth. For one, most of the time there was a horse accompanying the dead in the grave, and it has the same symbolism as the fylgja pulling it into the next life. The mound represents the dead waiting to be reborn, and he is reborn when it is reopened by his next reincarnation. That's one purpose, but there are likely many more reasons for burial mounds being the way they were that varied between tribe to tribe.
So, I hope that answers your question. There is a lot more nuance to be said, but this should be a good start.