A new year awaits

We passed a pretty sedate Yule.  Hampered, as it was, by catching COVID a couple of weeks before.  Still, we had a nice celebration with family and shared a drink with those we lost this year.

Big things are planned for 2022 and beyond... 

Gods, wights and ancestors - Or is that the wrong way around?

One of the side effects of heathens bringing their christian sensibilities into heathenry is the over-emphasis on the Aesir and Vanir. The Gods and Goddesses star in our mythology, cosmology and campfire stories. They inspire us and teach us important lessons about the nine worlds and the importance of being a good heathen. Being active in all the nine worlds and having great stories and quests to complete means that they have little time to spend dealing with the whims and fancies of the average everyday heathen.

Perhaps one of the things that was new and appealing about christianity at the time of the conversion was the idea of a god who took interest in each worshipper's life. One who watched over them and cared for them - offering protection and blessings to that individual worshipper, rather than to the collective community as a whole.

For heathens, gods weren't required to offer personal service to each individual. Our ancestors, being part of our own family line and having loved us in life would have been the ones who took care of personal fortune, luck and prosperity. After all, it is in the ancestors' own interests for you to succeed and gain fame and fortune. For they live on in you and they are in turn remembered by you. As the Havamal says, "...one thing never will die, the fame of one who has done well". They are your protection and the source of your wyrd. To understand them is to understand yourself. To recount their stories is a foundational part of your fame and carving your own story that your descendents in turn will remember for you.

Similarly, wights or vaettir are closer to the individual heathen than the Aesir and Vanir. This is because, while they are not part of your family and do not have any vested interest in you in that sense, they do share your little corner of Midgard with you. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement to have good dealings with the vaettir of your home and surrounding area. They are like your neighbours. Getting on well with your neighbours can significantly improve your quality of life. Just as being embroiled in a dispute with your neighbours can cause considerable detriment. Therefore, it is wise to make offerings to the wights/vaettir of your local area and home.

Other members of my family share my ancestors and so we could (were any of them heathen) blot together in their honour. My friends live in my neighbourhood and so we share some vaettir between us, and those of us who are heathen blot to them. However, when dealing with heathens who aren't family or local to me, my ancestors and local vaettir mean nothing to them. This is where gods and goddesses help bring us together. I can meet my fellow heathens from the south of England and offer a toast to Thor, knowing they will join me. If I offer a toast to my grandfather Harry, what would that really mean to them? Equally, if I offer a toast to the vaettir from Rivington Pike, how will they understand what that means? Gods and goddesses are more likely to take an interest in heathenry as a whole, or larger communities of heathens. So, when I mix with my fellow heathens at Sumarrblot 2021, it will be to them that I drink.

For a better, more educated and erudite explanation of this, I heartily recommend checking out Arith Harger's video on Tribal Heathenry.

Ancestors in heathenry

Over on the Asatru UK Facebook Group (linked for those with access) there is currently a discussion about ancestors and genealogy and how or whether these features in the members' heathen paths.

I was going to post another response in the thread there. As I was typing, however, I realised what I was saying didn't really add much to the discussion being held there. Not wanting to waste the impetus to type, though, I thought I'd relate it here. Just some of my musings on Ancestors in heathenry.

"I recall when I had my first heathen thoughts and experiences, I described my heathenry as very much tied up in the past, my ancestors and the land. I kind of stopped referring to it that way for a very long time as, if you're not careful, it can get very "blood and soil". Thankfully, as my understanding developed, I found my particular take on that was very inclusive - ~The Patels down the road have just as much of a positive influence on the community and the land as I do - likely more. Multiculturalism is not a weakeness as the alt-right would have us believe. It strengthens us and opens our minds and hearts to new ideas.

It can be problematic, however, to start thinking of heathenry in terms of heritage and ancestors - not just because of the alt-right, but also because it becomes something of a pissing contest placing value on Scandinavian surnames and dodgy genealogical research, rather than knowledge, wisdom, and character. I love my family and the ancestors that I remember, but I don't think that makes me any more heathen than someone with a more problematic family background. Neither would having an ancestor born in Sweden make me more heathen.

I do think, though, that some people with the aforementioned familial problems do tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater when rejecting ancestors as part of their heathenry. Those immediate family members who are alive now and have wronged you are a drop in the ocean compared to the totality of your ancestry. Family beliefs, situations and character can alter wildly over just a couple of generations. Much of the source material has family at its heart. The Icelandic sagas have many stories based on the trials and responsibilities of being part of a family. Many traits, such as wyrd, are said to be inherited down the family line.

Family is a big deal in heathenry. I'm not saying reconnection with abusive family is necessary, but very little genealogical research is required to find other role models or stories to sing at your next blot or symbel."

Perhaps I'll add to this later. If one or more of my ancestors reminds me to do so... ;)

Origin of the gods?

Something of a placemarker here. Just some ideas for further consideration when I have more time. I'm at work right now and can't really spend too much time daydreaming about our heathen ancestors and norse mythology.

I've just been considering the Voluspa, more specifically, the following passage:

6. Then sought the gods | their assembly-seats,
The holy ones, | and council held;
Names then gave they | to noon and twilight,
Morning they named, | and the waning moon,
Night and evening, | the years to number.

7. At Ithavoll met | the mighty gods,
Shrines and temples | they timbered high;
Forges they set, and | they smithied ore,
Tongs they wrought, | and tools they fashioned.


To me, this sounds like the establishment of civilisation. Establishing rules, constructing municipal buildings, creating tools - all things necessary when establishing a new culture or city-state. Could the gods have originally been ancestors who established the original proto-germanic culture?

Heathenry and bereavement

At the start of this year, my father died. It came as no great surprise - he was 86 and had suffered ill health for several months previous. However, it is never nice to lose close family, and they don't come much closer than your father.

Surprisingly, I found that heathenry helped give me strength at what was a trying, grief-ridden time. My knowledge of heathenry and the nature of my path meant that I appreciated that my father hadn't really gone anywhere. He was and is still present in myself, my brother and my sister. In true heathen style, we talk of him often and keep his memory alive - despite none of my family back in Lincolnshire actually being heathen.

I also noticed how many people came out of the woodwork, so to speak, to attend his funeral. Every last one of them said what a kind, simple man he was - and each seemed to have an anecdote to illustrate just the kind of man he had been. I found that very touching and the greatest possible affirmation that the most important thing that survives death is one's reputation.

I still think of him a lot, and miss him terribly. But now and then, I think of his having joined our ancestors and I still shares words with him, as I do with them. While there is little in the way of comfort in the heathen view of things, when a person dies, they are simply gone - joining our other honoured dead in the burial mound. However, there is a comfort to be had in the understanding of the way of things - old makes way for new.

Save me a space on the bench, Dad. See you later.

To quote Bladerunner, "How can it not know what it is?"

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.

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.