I had lived a healthy portion of my life before I started to self identify as heathen. In my youth, my friends and I were aware of paganism and actually referred to ourselves as heathen, feeling some affinity to the norse gods. However, as I left my teens behind, I began to consider myself more of a nihilist than anything. Famously engaging in good natured competition with a fellow nihilist as to who believed in less while out one night in Grimsby. I won by virtue of the fact that the guy believed in believing in nothing, while I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Such sophistry appealed to me back then, I guess.
But, in my early thirties, the quest for romance took me to Sweden. I moved in with my then-girlfriend in Boras, Sweden. It was only fated to last a year, but that was a year that taught me a lot about myself. During that time, we made a trip together to some woodland, just outside of Svaneholm. It was there that I had my spiritual awakening. A feeling of awe overcame me and felt in some ways divine. It was the first time I felt divinity to be something outside of (but connected to) myself. It was also connected to the land around me at that time and linked me and the land to my ancestors and, what I later came to refer to as wights.
That didn't exactly set me on a new path, but it caused me to think more deeply about the path I was already on and how it could be considered to be a pagan one - and, more specifically, a norse heathen path.
Now, I find myself still on that path - and travelling as often as I can to Sweden where the landscape is as awe-inspiring as ever. The train from Stockholm to Kiruna, for example, took me and my (English) wife through some amazing countryside. Forests, mountains and lakes all call to mind faerie tales, sagas and myths that have been knocking around in my brain since my childhood.
Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Monday, 19 September 2016
Thursday, 18 June 2015
Independent: Hunt for Viking DNA in Normandy riles anti-racism campaigners
Originally posted on: The Independent Website
Hunt for Viking DNA in Normandy riles anti-racism campaigners who fear the results could contribute to increasing xenophobia in France
The notion of 'true Normans and false Normans,' a possible infringement of French laws that forbid any form of racial classification and the study being hijacked by racist groups are among the concerns expressed over the project
John Lichfield Author Biography
Thursday 18 June 2015
It’s been more than 1,200 years since the Scandinavian longships first invaded Western Europe – but France remains scared of Vikings.
A study of the DNA of a handful of rural Normans by a British academic team searching for Viking “roots” has been condemned by anti-racist campaigners and some French academics.
They fear that any attempt to identify long-distant Viking ancestry in Normandy could awaken racial antagonism and disturb the legally enforced notion that France is indivisible and that all French people are uniformly French.
Viking longships first landed in Normandy between the years 790 and 800 Viking longships first landed in Normandy between the years 790 and 800 (Getty)
“We fear that this will encourage the idea that there are true Normans and false Normans,” said Jacques Declosmenil, president of the Mouvement Contre le Racisme (movement against racism) in Manche, lower Normandy.
“When you see pictures in local papers of Viking warriors wielding their weapons under the headline ‘Have you got Viking blood?’, you can’t help being worried.”
A team from the University of Leicester – the same institution which identified the DNA of King Richard III in Britain – gathered saliva samples from a small number of people in the Cotentin Peninsula near Cherbourg this week. Similar DNA tests have already been carried out in three areas of Britain known to have been colonised by Vikings from around AD 850.
“The objective is to explore the intensity of the Scandinavian colonisation of Cotentin in the 9th and 10th centuries,” said Richard Jones, head of the Leicester University team in France. “We also want to know whether the invaders stuck to themselves or intermarried with the local people.”
Read more:
• Engraved ring suggests contact between Vikings and Islamic world
• Iceland to build first Norse gods temple since Viking age
• It wasn't just male Viking warriors who raided Britain
The researchers asked in April for male volunteers with a surname of Scandinavian origin – such Ingouf, Osouf or Anquetil – whose four grandparents had all been born locally. They received an avalanche of applications, including one from a man called Rolland, who claimed to be descended from the Viking chief Rollo, who became the first Duke of Normandy in AD 911. Only 100 volunteers were selected. The results of the survey will be published next year.
Dr Jones dismissed the suggestion that the research could open a racial Pandora’s box. The study covered, at most, 2 per cent of any individual’s DNA, he said. That left 98 per cent of ancestors of other kinds.
Anti-racist campaigners have condemned the DNA research Anti-racist campaigners have condemned the DNA research (Corbis) More specifically, the Leicester team is looking for the DNA of a “haplogroup” of hunter-gatherers who came to Europe 10,000 years ago and whose genes are common in Scandinavia to this day. However, finding such DNA is a useful “indication” but not a proof of Viking ancestry.
Mr Declosmenil of the movement against racism said that he was worried that, however innocent the intentions of the research team, their findings could be hijacked by racist groups.
“In the present context of increasing xenophobia, this is extremely dangerous,” he said. “Certain racists could say, for instance, I have proof that I have no Arab blood.”
The study was also criticised as a possible infringement of French laws that forbid any form of racial classification. The keeping of any form of ethnic statistics is illegal in France on the grounds that, under the constitution of the Republic, French people are “indivisible”.
“I warned my British colleagues that these questions were extremely sensitive in France,” said Pierre Bauduin, professor of medieval history at the University of Caen. “This is not the kind of thing that we do. You have to be very careful that such research is not exploited for political ends.”
"They fear that any attempt to identify long-distant Viking ancestry in Normandy could awaken racial antagonism and disturb the legally enforced notion that France is indivisible and that all French people are uniformly French."
France has more indigenous minorities than almost any country in Europe yet continues to suppress their languages like Breton, Provencal, Catalan.
The Vikings traded, pillaged and settled all over western Europe and beyond. Since then, the descendants of these interactions have interbred with everyone else. Pretty much every white person, whose descendants have been in Western Europe for more than a few generations, will have Viking ancestry.
Hunt for Viking DNA in Normandy riles anti-racism campaigners who fear the results could contribute to increasing xenophobia in France
The notion of 'true Normans and false Normans,' a possible infringement of French laws that forbid any form of racial classification and the study being hijacked by racist groups are among the concerns expressed over the project
John Lichfield Author Biography
Thursday 18 June 2015
It’s been more than 1,200 years since the Scandinavian longships first invaded Western Europe – but France remains scared of Vikings.
A study of the DNA of a handful of rural Normans by a British academic team searching for Viking “roots” has been condemned by anti-racist campaigners and some French academics.
They fear that any attempt to identify long-distant Viking ancestry in Normandy could awaken racial antagonism and disturb the legally enforced notion that France is indivisible and that all French people are uniformly French.
Viking longships first landed in Normandy between the years 790 and 800 Viking longships first landed in Normandy between the years 790 and 800 (Getty)
“We fear that this will encourage the idea that there are true Normans and false Normans,” said Jacques Declosmenil, president of the Mouvement Contre le Racisme (movement against racism) in Manche, lower Normandy.
“When you see pictures in local papers of Viking warriors wielding their weapons under the headline ‘Have you got Viking blood?’, you can’t help being worried.”
A team from the University of Leicester – the same institution which identified the DNA of King Richard III in Britain – gathered saliva samples from a small number of people in the Cotentin Peninsula near Cherbourg this week. Similar DNA tests have already been carried out in three areas of Britain known to have been colonised by Vikings from around AD 850.
“The objective is to explore the intensity of the Scandinavian colonisation of Cotentin in the 9th and 10th centuries,” said Richard Jones, head of the Leicester University team in France. “We also want to know whether the invaders stuck to themselves or intermarried with the local people.”
Read more:
• Engraved ring suggests contact between Vikings and Islamic world
• Iceland to build first Norse gods temple since Viking age
• It wasn't just male Viking warriors who raided Britain
The researchers asked in April for male volunteers with a surname of Scandinavian origin – such Ingouf, Osouf or Anquetil – whose four grandparents had all been born locally. They received an avalanche of applications, including one from a man called Rolland, who claimed to be descended from the Viking chief Rollo, who became the first Duke of Normandy in AD 911. Only 100 volunteers were selected. The results of the survey will be published next year.
Dr Jones dismissed the suggestion that the research could open a racial Pandora’s box. The study covered, at most, 2 per cent of any individual’s DNA, he said. That left 98 per cent of ancestors of other kinds.
Anti-racist campaigners have condemned the DNA research Anti-racist campaigners have condemned the DNA research (Corbis) More specifically, the Leicester team is looking for the DNA of a “haplogroup” of hunter-gatherers who came to Europe 10,000 years ago and whose genes are common in Scandinavia to this day. However, finding such DNA is a useful “indication” but not a proof of Viking ancestry.
Mr Declosmenil of the movement against racism said that he was worried that, however innocent the intentions of the research team, their findings could be hijacked by racist groups.
“In the present context of increasing xenophobia, this is extremely dangerous,” he said. “Certain racists could say, for instance, I have proof that I have no Arab blood.”
The study was also criticised as a possible infringement of French laws that forbid any form of racial classification. The keeping of any form of ethnic statistics is illegal in France on the grounds that, under the constitution of the Republic, French people are “indivisible”.
“I warned my British colleagues that these questions were extremely sensitive in France,” said Pierre Bauduin, professor of medieval history at the University of Caen. “This is not the kind of thing that we do. You have to be very careful that such research is not exploited for political ends.”
"They fear that any attempt to identify long-distant Viking ancestry in Normandy could awaken racial antagonism and disturb the legally enforced notion that France is indivisible and that all French people are uniformly French."
France has more indigenous minorities than almost any country in Europe yet continues to suppress their languages like Breton, Provencal, Catalan.
The Vikings traded, pillaged and settled all over western Europe and beyond. Since then, the descendants of these interactions have interbred with everyone else. Pretty much every white person, whose descendants have been in Western Europe for more than a few generations, will have Viking ancestry.
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