The Origins of the
Pagan Revival
The revival of Norse Paganism and Paganism is understood to be a long, complex process. There are many stories of glorified founders, larger-than-life figures, and teachers who led the way. They are not, however, all there is to the story of how Paganism in general and the Norse ways in particular returned after nearly a thousand years of suppression. A key part of this story is also how the neo-Volkisch movement began, became influential, and started losing their power in Paganism. There is a lot to this history, and much is poorly understood thanks, in part, to the limited nature of existing sources. What is presented here is an attempt at making sense of this process, starting with the roots of the modern revival in the eighteenth century.
Age of Spiritualism
For four hundred years after Scandinavia’s conversion to Christianity by hook and crook, a new order settled over the European continent called Christendom. This social system was ruled by kings claiming divine right to rule and supported by allies in the church. Everyone who lived in this society saw themselves first and foremost as Christians before anything else. The crosses and crowns of feudal Christendom were supported by the vast majority of the population toiling under the yoke of serfdom. There were times when they rose up in rebellion, but many of these attempts were dealt with using the same harsh cruelty first inflicted on the pre-Christian peoples of the continent.
It took centuries for the solid, unified rule of the feudal system to crumble, beginning with the Reformation, which tore Christendom asunder between Protestant and Catholic. Ambitious kings, now armed with gunpowder and cannons, used the opportunity to crush unruly lords and reduce religious authorities from partners in power to subordinates. Merchants and bankers, who once had little power, became increasingly influential thanks to many monarchs’ need for stable tax revenues to pay for everything. The last remnants of the old feudal order were swept away by the fires of the French Revolution and a quarter century of war unleashed by the ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte. As Europe industrialized, invaded the Americas and Africa, and found its footing, cracks in the spiritual status quo opened. Created by centuries of turmoil, these breaches became wide enough for a breath of fresh air to slip in.
The first breeze was a movement known as Spiritualism, the direct precursor to modern Paganism. Spiritualism emerged in 1848 in the United States and was heavily influenced by Romanticism, a cultural and artistic movement that developed in reaction to the destruction of Napoleonic warfare. Its spread signaled the demise of Christianity as a central point of identity and the detrimental effects of the Industrial Revolution. In this way, Spiritualism was very much a product of its time. Members of this movement rejected what they saw as the detachment created by modern rationality while also embracing scientific processes to prove the existence of spirit.203
Spiritualists were and are most famous for their work in contacting the dead. Ouija boards, séances, and the practice of mediumship as we know it today were all developed, appropriated, and popularized by the Spiritualists. Others sought evidence of faeries, the hidden folk, and other beings attested to in folklore. Swept up in the fascination with all things seen as exotic to European colonial powers, some explored the spiritual practices of cultures around the world and those of pre-Christian Europe. A few started occult groups dedicated to the study of lost or hidden knowledge. This interest in folklore and mysticism was heavily influenced by the assumptions and norms of Victorian society, playing out as the tendency of Victorian Spiritualists to impose nineteenth-century ideas about race, nationalism, gender, and sexuality onto the past, mythology, and folk customs. As much as this work brought many sources for inspiration into the public consciousness, the material they produced was nevertheless distorted and removed from its original context via their deep-seated prejudices.204
The influence of Spiritualism waned from its origins in the 1850s to the 1930s. The times of greatest interest were in the aftermath of especially bloody conflicts such as the American Civil War and the First World War. People in these periods sought ways to contact relatives they’d lost in conflict, come to terms with so much destruction, and process the agony of industrialized warfare. These wartime surges were not solely responsible for Spiritualism’s growth; interest endured well into the 1930s. Two of the more famous adherents of Spiritualism were Mary Todd Lincoln, First Lady to US President Abraham Lincoln, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of many popular works of fiction, including the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, who also wrote extensive works promoting Spiritualism.205
Spiritualist occult societies and folkloric groups were the most direct predecessors of the modern revival. Some of the most historically significant groups for modern Pagans were the German Volkisch movement, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the Theosophy Society. These groups combined the ideas of the Spiritualist movement with fragments of folklore and remnants of older mystical traditions preserved by oral tradition or groups like the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons with their own developments. Their ideas provided inspiration for many who built modern Paganism in the twentieth century.206
The Volkisch movement is a particularly complicated example because there are some who claim they are a direct precursor to modern Norse Paganism. The core of their ideas was a mystical take on German nationalism, asserting what made a person German was blood and soil, which defined them on a deeply spiritual level. According to many Volkisch thinkers, true Germans lived in a direct spiritual relationship with a god very similar to that of Christianity. This deity was, according to them, the center of a powerful sun cult that was a direct manifestation of the Germanic peoples’ desires, culture, and beliefs and was the true source of inspiration for Christianity. They argued only someone of true German heritage could study their lore or engage in their practices, a position that was used to justify excluding Jews and anyone else deemed insufficiently German from society. They used fabricated claims of “ancient wisdom,” such as the writings of Guido List as proof while also arguing the Eddas were evidence of this solar cult. In reality, these ideas really set them apart from anything that could be described as Pagan. Such fervent nationalism also set them apart from the more ecumenical Spiritualist movement.207
All these groups are part of what could be described as proto-Pagans, movements who predated the Pagan movement with practices that helped inspire modern Paganism, even though many of their ideas were a far cry from the modern revival. These practices included using older source material such as occult grimoires and folklore as sources for inspiration, developing their own forms of practice and ritual, establishing systems of organization, and producing written material to perpetuate their ideas. These offshoots of Spiritualism saw themselves as pursuers of hidden and secret knowledge, a key difference from present-day Pagans, who generally see modern practices as a kind of religion or spirituality. This is especially the case for Norse Pagans and other similar practices, greater emphasis is put on the use of surviving ancient sources as inspiration for modern practice.
Fascism and Spirituality
As novel and experimental as their ideas were, these occult societies were not removed from the times they lived in. Political movements rooted in appeals to romanticized versions of the past, nationalism, tradition, and pseudo-scientific racism made some inroads into proto-Pagan groups. The best example of this was a Volkisch group known as the Armanenscheft, founded by Austrian mystic Guido List. List, whose practice was also known as Armanism, claimed to be channeling secret knowledge of a long-lost group of sun-worshiping priest-kings who, according to him, ruled over the ancient Germanic tribes. He also believed the Germanics were the purest of the so-called Aryan race, making them the greatest of all groups in the world.208
An offshoot of List’s Armanen, the Thule Gelleschaft (also known as the Thule Society) were early supporters of the Nazi Party in Bavaria. They backed Hitler’s organization prior to and during the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by Hitler and the early Nazis to overthrow the German government by force. They eventually fell out with the Nazis, partly due to the Nazi Party’s attempts to appeal to church-going members of the German public, and were banished from any power or influence in the Nazi regime. One prominent Volkisch runologist and student of List, Friedrich Burnhard Marby of the Edda Society, was denounced as an anti-Nazi and imprisoned at the Welzheim concentration camp in 1936; he was released in 1945 when Allied armies liberated the camps. By the mid-1930s, the Volkisch were relegated to fringe status by a regime many of them had once helped propel to power.209
The main exception was SS-Brigadenführer Karl Maria Wiligut, Heinrich Himmler’s personal occultist. Wiligut created his own Volkisch-derived practice known as Irminism, which claimed the ancient Germanics were monotheists who worshiped a god named Krist, who was appropriated by Christianity. The source of Wiligut’s ideas was his “ancestral clairvoyance,” and he claimed to have been initiated into these mysteries in 1890 by his grandfather’s spirit and to have come from a prehistoric line of Germanic priests. Needless to say, there is no evidence to substantiate any of his claims. While Wiligut and other mystically-inclined Nazis like Heinrich Himmler continued to hold positions of influence, they largely stayed private in their practices while official regime religious policy focused on co-opting Christianity into a tool for expanding Nazi power.210
There is no better expression of how insignificant such groups were in Nazi Germany than the denunciations of occult practice in general by Hitler and the Nazi Party’s open embrace of contemporary Christianity. As Hitler himself said on the subject in Mein Kampf:
It is typical of such persons that they rant about ancient Teutonic heroes of the dim and distant ages, stone axes, battle spears and shields, whereas in reality they themselves are the woefullest poltroons imaginable. For those very same people who brandish Teutonic tin swords that have been fashioned carefully according to ancient models and wear padded bear-skins, with the horns of oxen mounted over their bearded faces, proclaim that all contemporary conflicts must be decided by the weapons of the mind alone. And thus they skedaddle when the first communist cudgel appears. Posterity will have little occasion to write a new epic on these heroic gladiators. I have seen too much of that kind of people not to feel a profound contempt for their miserable play-acting.211
This clear disdain is further reinforced by this portion of a 1938 public speech he gave in Nuremberg:
We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else—in any case, something which has nothing to do with us. […] But since we set as the central point of this perception and of this profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the future of a being formed by god, we thus serve the maintenance of a divine work and fulfill a divine will.212
Between such sentiments and the marginalization of supportive Armanen practitioners by the Nazis, any sympathy on the part of the Volkisch movement for the regime was largely one-way and not reciprocated. Scholars like Nicholas Goodrich-Clarke have argued the influence of these groups on the Nazi Party (outside of Nazi usage of symbols popular with the Thule Society and the Armanen) was minimal.213 Historian Peter Staudenmeier argues that any occult and Pagan influences on the Nazis are mostly sensationalism and attempts by former Nazis to create scapegoats. His argument against people taking these stories at face value is very direct:
“Attributing the horrors of Nazi Germany to obscure occult sources is all too often a convenient way of absolving ourselves from the hard work of understanding the past.”214
This part of the history of Paganism is important to wrestle with for two reasons. The first is due to the common tropes in popular culture of Nazi occultism, mysticism, and association with otherworldly forces. Understanding the real history of the Nazi party’s disdain for such practices is important for properly grappling with the true causes of Hitler’s rise and march to genocide, and what it means for the modern day. The second is many in the neo-Volkisch movement point to this misunderstanding of history as justification for their beliefs while ignoring the open endorsements of Christianity by Hitler and Nazi disdain for the original Volkisch movement. As much as some of the neo-Volkisch work to forge connections with Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich, their efforts would have been dismissed by the Nazis themselves. It also ignores how much of the modern white nationalist movement, whom they’ve allied with, has very similar opinions of the neo-Volkisch to the original Nazis.
Modern Revival
Spiritualism and occult practice generally receded into the background during the 1940s and 1950s. The once-vibrant Spiritualist movement was already in decline before the Great Depression hit, retreating to the fringe after the stock market crashed. Even so, the first significant modern Pagan groups—Aleister Crowley’s Thelema and Gerald Gardner’s Wicca—were organized during the 1920s and 1930s as Spiritualism’s popularity was beginning to wane. This work wouldn’t truly come into its own until the late 1950s and 1960s, when modern Paganism really took root.
There is little doubt the 1960s were critical in propelling Paganism from being a set of small, dedicated groups to the highly diverse religious movement it is today, thanks in part to challenges to the existing status quo rising from the counter-culture movement. For most people, “counter-culture” refers to hippies, Woodstock, and LSD. In fact, these were the only tip of the very large iceberg that was counter-culture, which had its birth in earlier forms of social criticism like the Beatniks and the Mods who challenged the conformity, regimentation, and general lack of personal satisfaction of modern life of their era. Three major strains of the counter-culture that had the greatest impact on the modern revival were the new wave of fantasy fiction, the “back to the land” movement, and exploration of Buddhist, Hindu, and occult spirituality.
Fantasy fiction is an under-appreciated element of counter-culture, even though it really exploded into popular consciousness during the 1960s. The vanguard of this element was, surprisingly enough, JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series, first published in 1954. As much as The Lord of the Rings is seen today as the archetypal fantasy novel, at the time of publication it was very subversive compared to the pulp fantasy literature of the time such as the Conan series, which was populated with all-conquering supermen and helpless damsels in distress. As BBC Culture points out, The Lord of the Rings’s main appeal for the counter-culture was due to its use of clearly pre-Christian folklore for ideas, the fashioning of the relatively ordinary hobbits and even women into heroes instead of being part of the background, the villains as part of a militaristic industrial wasteland, and victory achieved by breaking power instead of conquest. All these themes and ideas struck a chord with the rising counterculture. The Lord of the Rings’s place on the bestseller list was propelled primarily by the counter-culture movement.215
Incredibly influential in shaping the rest of the fantasy genre, Tolkien’s books also saw impact outside of the literary world. Two examples from popular music of the time were bands like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Another was the founding of the Society for Creative Anachronism in 1966 in Berkeley, California, by a group of fantasy literature fans. From its humble beginnings as a themed outdoor party hosted by future Asatru author Diana Paxson, this organization was key in the rise of the broader medieval reenactment and recreation movement. The exploration of non-Christian or pre-Christian ideas in fantasy literature and the rise of re-enactment groups played a key role in raising awareness of these ideas in broader society.216
These groups were also influenced by the back-to-the-land movement, which was more or less spontaneously started by young people who were disenchanted with modern life, wishing instead to seek connection to nature. They set up communes, learned traditional crafts, and pursued primitive skills. Their escape from modern life was very similar to the desires and motives of the growing fantasy literature culture with considerable overlap.217
It’s easy to see how the revolt against the shortcomings of modern life present in fantasy literature, medieval reenactment, and back-to-the-land was influencing and shaping modern Paganism. These groups overlapped with other elements of the counterculture of spiritual explorers, as they all came out of the same general mindset. Desires for a simpler life, deeper truths, and meaning beyond simply having a nice house with a white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and the newest car in the garage propelled people to question their life decisions and society at large.
The most direct tie between these currents and Paganism was exploration of alternative spirituality. In 1972, sociologist Edward Tiryakian observed a clear connection between participants in the 1960s counterculture, campus politics, and the New Left with interest in the occult. He argued this was part of a broader surge of societal interest in the occult, pointing to films like Rosemary’s Baby. Another example of this surge in interest can be seen in both the wild popularity of bands like Black Sabbath and the rise of heavy metal, an entire genre of rock and roll whose main sources of inspiration in this period were traditional occultism and social critique. All these factors helped to create an environment where individuals and small, grassroots groups around the world started exploring Norse mythology.218
The first known organized group that combined all these elements into Norse-inspired Paganism formed in Iceland. On the first day of summer in 1972, four men met at Hotel Borg in Reykjavík to discuss reviving traditional Icelandic spirituality. They were Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson, a farmer and poet; Jörmundur Ingi Hansen, a prominent participant in the Reykjavík hippie movement; Dagur Þorleifsson, an active member of the Reykjavík theosophy lodge; and Þorsteinn Guðjónsson, the leader of the esoteric group Félag Nýalssinna. They founded Asatruarfelagid, named Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson as the first Chairman or Alherjarsgodi, and they called their practice Asatru. They received recognition as a religion later in that year by the Icelandic government, making them the first government-recognized Norse Pagan group in the world.219
Shortly after, similar groups came together in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. In Norway, the first known organized group was the Blindern Åsatlaglag, a campus-based group that formed in the 1980s. In 1996, a newer group founded on similar ideas, Asatrufelleskapet Bifrost, was recognized by the Norwegian government. Asastrufelleskapet Bifrost was founded as a strongly inclusive organization in structure and practice. Maintaining this position was assisted by outside actions undertaken by the Norwegian Antifa movement throughout the ’90s, which thoroughly destroyed Norwegian fascism by 2001.220
Sweden followed suit in 1994 with the recognition of Sveriges Asatrosamfund, now known as Samfundet Forn Sed Sverige, which has continued to grow ever since. In 2000 Eldaring, a group based in Germany, was recognized by the German government. These groups were inspired by similar trends, ideas, and tendencies, tapping into the growing interest in pre-Christian spirituality, a return to nature, and disenchantment with the modern world.221
Unfortunately, it was in this period when the first neo-Volkisch groups emerged. These groups hijacked the broader tendencies in the counterculture so they could build a new vehicle for advancing fascist ideas. These organizations, along with Nazi appropriation of some symbols during the 1930s, led to many white power groups stealing Norse symbols and establishing influence within the community. In 1973, a group of individuals in England founded the Committee for the Restoration of the Odinic Rite, which became the Odinic Rite in 1979. The Odinic Rite embraced many of the same ideas advanced by the original Volkisch movement, including the claim of an inherent link between race and culture. They blended this ideology with existing opinions from the neofascist English National Front.222
The same process unfolded in a United States wracked by the turmoil of the 1960s. In 1973, Stephen McNallen advertised his own version of such a group, the Viking Brotherhood, in the notorious journal Soldier of Fortune, whose main readership included large segments of the white power movement and mercenaries who fought for dictators across the planet. Shortly after, he started his first major organization, known as the Asatru Free Assembly, which lasted until 1985. Towards the end of this period, he wrote an essay titled “Metagenetics” where he combined pseudoscience with the same ideas of the Odinic Rite, arguing that Asatru was a whites-only religion. Years later he founded the Asatru Folk Assembly in 1994 with metagenetics as its core doctrine, and called his organization’s ideology Folkish Asatru.223
“Metagenetics” clearly argued that culture was a product of genetics, not people, and it was only possible for “the peoples of the North” to practice Asatru. In practice, it has been frequently observed that one’s quality of being “of the North” is determined by skin color; no organization that practices metagenetics has ever actually defined what it means to be part of “the peoples of the North.” That this idea didn’t exist for the actual pre-Christian Norse peoples casts even more doubt on the claims that metagentics is about anything other than a justification for bigoted spirituality. And this form of bigoted spirituality is even in direct conflict with the words of the actual founders of Asatru, including Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson, who said, “Anyone can pray to the gods in whatever manner he likes.”224
The conflict of Norse Pagan worship first manifested in the United States shortly after the end of the Asatru Free Assembly in 1985 with the founding of a new organization. Known as the Troth, or the Ring of the Troth, it was founded in 1987 by Stephen Flowers and James Chisholm, who pushed for more inclusive Norse Paganism compared to McNallen’s followers. They called their practice Universalist Asatru. Flowers would have a falling out with other Troth members and later changed his position on inclusion with the 2002 publication of the essay “Integral Culture” in the fascist periodical Tyr. In it, he advocated for the same argument as Stephen McNallen’s metagenetics in more academic language. Since then, the Troth has been largely active in the United States and Canada, with some members in other parts of the world.225
McNallen put his words into action in 1998 when he plunged headfirst into controvery surrounding the Kennewick Man. The dispute began over what were then recently uncovered ancient remains, between the Washington State government and the Umatilla Native American tribe who, citing federal law, claimed the body was an ancestor whom they had the right to rebury. McNallen inserted the AFA in the controversy, claiming the body was an ancient European, hiring known Holocaust denier Michael Clinton, who had ties to white nationalist groups, as his lawyer. White nationalists, who were campaigning to turn the Pacific Northwest into a whites-only enclave, saw Kennewick Man as a critical battle. They believed if the body was proven to be European, it gave them a “claim” to the entire region. McNallen’s motion was laughed out of court, and later investigations determined the body was, in fact, of Native American ancestry. However, even in defeat, this cemented his alliance with American white nationalists.226
Though what the neo-Volkisch groups preached was in direct conflict with the practices of the first Scandinavian organizations, they managed to endure and become a major factor in Norse Paganism. Such toleration was due to a phenomenon referred to in chapter eight as the unwritten pact of silence. This pact formed the general tendency that developed in North America to excuse the obvious bigotry and quiet support for the neo-Nazi ideologies of groups like the Odinic Rite and the Asatru Folk Assembly.
The pact of silence manifested through peer pressure, castigating people who pointed out the problems with the AFA and Odinic Rite as “frith-breakers” and disturbers of the peace, social ostracism, and even the whitewashing of neo-Volkisch ideas and actions by more tolerant Norse Pagans. One example of such whitewashing is from Diana Paxson, a prominent advocate for inclusive Asatru, Troth member, and clergywoman, who wrote the following in 2006 on the Asatru Folk Assembly in her book Essential Asatru:
As these goals should make clear, the AFA defines itself as a revival of the native spirituality of western Europe, a religion that belongs to the people of indigenous European stock in the same way that traditionalist tribal religions belong specifically to Native Americans. It states that it opposes racial hatred and honors other indigenous religions. McNallen received national publicity in the mid-90s when he claimed Kennewick man (a 9,000 year old body found in Washington state) as a European tribal ancestor.227
Since the publication of Essential Asatru, Paxson’s position (along with many others) has changed. Paxson herself has since spoken out against the neo-Volkisch and personally took to the streets of Berkeley, California on two occasions recently to oppose fascist rallies. In her writings and actions, Paxson has left her earlier words on the neo-Volkisch firmly in the past.228
The circumstances that created the pact of silence in the United States are somewhat understandable. One major factor was how small and relatively insular their communities were in this period. Many were afraid to upset others or be identified as trouble-makers. The underground, small-scale nature of the American community is what made the peer pressure at the heart of the pact so incredibly effective.
Another factor was a new moral panic during the 1980s known as the Satanic Panic, a wave of persecution aimed at practitioners of the occult, alternative spirituality, heavy metal music, and even Dungeons & Dragons. Accusers claimed there were secret cults of Satanists with members in all levels of society who were kidnapping children for sacrifice, sexual assault, and other horrendous crimes. The panic became so widespread in the popular consciousness that Oprah Winfrey hosted a discussion of the subject on her show. Many innocent people went to prison based on false accusations in this modern-day witch hunt.229
Even though these circumstances partially explain how the pact of silence happened, they do not excuse it. Many people were driven out of the Norse Pagan community, particularly in the United States, due to threats and intimidation by the neo-Volkisch. Others swore off associating with a practice they loved due to neo-Volkisch activities. The failure to decisively confront the neo-Volkish (who have always been a minority in the community) in these early years set the stage for one of the central conflicts in Norse Paganism just as it entered its greatest period of growth.
Digital Revolution
If the counterculture was the soil in which Norse Paganism sprouted, then the internet was the fertilizer that accelerated its growth. Before the internet, Paganism in all its forms spread very slowly, depending on word of mouth and personal connections. Contacting groups required knowing where and who to ask. The common availability of the internet made it possible for Pagans of all stripes to reach out, organize, share information, and exchange ideas with people all over the world, while websites provided often cash-strapped groups free do-it-yourself media outlets.
There were two big waves in how the Digital Revolution shaped Norse Paganism that coincide with Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. During the Web 1.0 period, beginning with the birth of the internet in 1991, email lists and free websites were the backbone of community organizing. Web 2.0 began with the rise of social media sites like MySpace, and things really took off when Facebook opened to the public in 2006, leading to a new explosion of interest, outreach, and organizing. Social media’s ubiquity globalized the Pagan community, making national and international communication incredibly easy while at the same time bolstering local groups.
It was during this period the first documented groups emerged in Latin America. The first was the Hermandad Óðinnista del Sagrado Fuego of Mexico in 2004. In 2010, they would be joined by the Irminsul Fellowship of Costa Rica, who became the Asociación Ásatrú Yggdrasil in 2015. Across Brazil, new local groups emerged and developed into many different vibrant communities. At the time of this writing, Latin America has one of the fastest-growing Norse Pagan communities in the world by all accounts.230
Just as Norse Paganism was reaching new places, new ideas developed. Before the Digital Revolution, the dominant form of Norse Paganism (excluding the neo-Volkisch) were Asatru and Theodism. Vanatru, which focused on the Vanic deities over the Aesir while following similar forms, was the one main divergence that slowly emerged during the Web 1.0 period. The rise of social media over the course of the mid-to-late 2000s was paralleled by the development of Reconstructionist Heathenry. This also saw the rise of Lokean practice as an organized movement. This was started by people who honored the God of Mischief that now had the means to build community and develop their ideas without fear of harassment or persecution.
All this growth, change, and rapid development led to newer and younger Norse Pagans challenging the pact of silence. Just as Reconstructionist and Lokean practice developed thanks to the emergence of new networks outside of existing organizations, the same was true for breaking the pact. People were able to freely exchange ideas, compare notes, and air grievances on the state of the community. In these spaces, the most common objection was to the abuses and silent toleration of the neo-Volkisch in officially inclusive, Universalist groups. Social pressure, which long maintained that silence, lost its potency thanks to Norse Pagans now having the means to find or build new networks. In some ways, the rise of these dissenting movements parallels similar dynamics seen in the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring.
This simmering discontent erupted in September of 2013, when a group of Norse Pagan anarchists and anti-fascists known as Circle Ansuz published a highly detailed exposé on Stephen McNallen, the AFA, their ideology, and other connected organizations. Their work can be found online at circleansuz .wordpress.com. Much of what Circle Ansuz pointed out was already known to some extent. The Circle’s work was powerful because they were the first documented case of a Norse Pagan group connecting the dots and showing the truth neo-Volkisch propaganda had hidden. The conversation changed rapidly—people who were once forced to keep quiet or were driven out of the community through intimidation tactics could finally raise their voices.
Following these revelations, a number of grassroots groups emerged, including organizations like Heathens United Against Racism,231 the Svinfylking, Heathens Against Hate, Heathens for Racial and Cultural Diversity, Heathens for Social Justice, and many other groups. In other cases, individuals lobbied administrators of the larger Norse Pagan discussion groups to change moderation policies and implement bans on neo-Volkisch material. Tactics varied from raising awareness to educating people on neo-Volkisch ideas, social justice advocacy, agitation, and, in some cases, direct action and anti-fascism.
The older organizations responded differently to these developments. Asatrufelleskapet Bifrost of Norway, Asatruarfelagid of Iceland, Forn Sed Sverige of Sweden, and Eldaring of Germany made strong inclusivity statements, openly banning the neo-Volkisch from their organizations, while most groups in Latin America had already taken such steps early on. The only major holdout among the established organizations at the time was the Troth. Though some Troth members advocated for taking similar steps, their organization’s leadership consistently refused to make such changes.
Then, on January 31, 2016, the chief officer of the Troth, Steer Steven T. Abell, openly denounced anti-racist work and HUAR’s founders in a public blog post on Patheos, one of the largest general Pagan blog channels in the English-speaking world, that also included McNallen and the AFA. The result was immediate and widespread condemnation by many other Pagans, culminating in the cancellation of Abell’s Patheos blog. Many other sites, individuals, and groups joined the growing chorus of outrage. The tide was decisively turning.232
The wave of fascist denoucement continued and gained momentum throughout the year. On September 5, the blog Huginn’s Heathen Hof released a joint statement by a global coalition of Pagans organizations denouncing the AFA, known as Declaration 127. The Declaration (found at: http://declaration127.com) declared the AFA and its members were no longer welcome at any of the signatories’ events or spaces. Since its release, a total of 180 Norse Pagan organizations from twenty different countries around the world have added themselves to the Declaration, making it clear that the AFA is no longer seen as part of the broader community. The pact of silence was dead.233
Today the Norse Pagan community continues to grow. A 2016 demographic survey by Huginn’s Heathen Hof shows this spiritual movement consists overwhelmingly of younger people and solitary practitioners. What were formerly problems in the community now face challenges, such as the women of the Havamal Witches’ movement (they confront entrenched sexism rather than accommodate it) that began in the summer of 2017. The Havamal Witches have only begun their work, and there’s no question there are many challenges ahead for them. They are also one of many different groups in Norse Paganism confronting bigotry of all kinds, including racism, queerphobia, transphobia, and anti-immigrant attitudes. Though challengers are growing stronger, these problems are still a source of struggle.234
The neo-Volkisch now face open opposition, with bans on sharing their material becoming more common in the broader community. Stephen McNallen has solidified his alliance with the alt-right by founding a new organization, the Wotan Network, openly calling for putting race over religion. He is also reaching out to atheist and Christian alt-right groups, despite their obvious disdain for him. And non-Pagan groups, such as the Nordic Resistance Movement and the Soldiers of Odin, are using the same neo-Volkisch trappings to advance open bigotry.235
Yet these groups face increasingly fierce opposition. In April of 2016, Heathens United Against Racism and Anti-Fascist News conducted an operation that hamstrung the anti-immigrant Soldiers of Odin’s organizing in the United States. A month later, on May 1, Norse Pagans from more than two hundred locations around the world lit beacons in solidarity with inclusive community and opposing fascism. In 2017 Norse Pagans joined counterprotests to alt-right demonstrations in Berkeley, California, facing down attempts by fascists to march through the streets. Direct action against fascism is becoming more accepted in Paganism than ever before.236
What it means to be a Norse Pagan continues to change, as practitioners wrestle with applying its ideals in our lives. Even with its obstacles, Norse Paganism continues to grow, develop, and mature as a diverse, global spiritual practice. The new generation is learning from the past, rising to meet these and other problems head-on. They are enthusiastically building a stronger community than ever before. And the challenges created by the past are facing stiff resistance in the present—many are building a better future for all.
The lessons of Norse Paganism’s history show many challenges had to be overcome for this movement to reach the place it is now. There have been many setbacks, mistakes, and obstacles along the way. Even though great strides have been made in recent years, there still is much work to be done. It would be wrong to say victory is around the corner, but there is little doubt Norse Paganism has passed the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end is in sight.
203. Cathy Gutierrez, “Spiritualism,” Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, Cambridge University Press (New York: 2016), 240–242.
204. Gutierrez, 237–240.
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