Paganism, Ásatru or "Our Way"

In Norway it is Bifrost, in Denmark it is Forn Sidr and in Sweden it is Asatrosamfundet. Paganism or "Our Way" as this religion was called in ancient times is a branch of Indo-German paganism with some influences from Asian shamanism and the religions of the middle east. In Iceland twelve people founded Asatrúarfélagia or the Pagan Association of Iceland in 1972 with a Allsherjagodhi as high priest and leader.

Asatru believes that the whole of creation is reflected in the smallest. The course of the year reflects the lifespan of the earth. The sun is reborn at midwinter's. All plants are reborn in the spring, only to die in the fall. This cycle is repeated every year and so things will go while the world stands. So is the life of man. We are born, reach our prime, age and die. But life goes on. That is the promise that is fulfilled every time a child is born. In the beginning there was the void, Ginnungagap, icecold on one side and burning hot on the other. In the middle where the ice and fire met there came into being the two primeval beings. The giant Ymir and the cow Audhumla who nourished him. Audhumla licked the rocks in the void and thereby formed a man, his name was Buri. His son was Burr the father of Odin (Wotan) Vili and Vie. The brothers kill Ymir and form the world from his body. From his bones they make the mountains. From his blood the ocean. From his hair the trees.

THE ASH: In the middle of the world stands the Ash, Yggdrasill, the mighty tree of life. The roots of the Ash stand far and wide. One among the gods, another among the giants and the third one in the world of men. Under the Ash sit the three faiths Urd, Verdandi and Skuld. Past, present and future, they control the fate of men. The gods hold their assemblies under the Ash. HUMANITY: Odin and his brothers found on a beach two splinters from the tree of life. The gods gave them human form, life, intellect and purpose. They are named Askur and Embla and are the ancestors to all mankind. THE FINAL TWILIGHT: The world shaped by the Gods is not eternal. In Ragnarbk the final battle between the gods and the giants both are annihilated. So is the earth and all life except for two humans that take refuge in the great Ash. They re-populate the new earth that rises from the sea.

THE CYCLE: Asatru is based on the eternal cycle of nature. All things succumb to the negative forces in the end, even the gods. We must fight on never the less, that is our destiny and has to be accepted. All is eventually restored but never repeated.

GODS. Asatru followers do not worship the Gods. They revere them. The three most important are Odin, Thor and Freyr. ODIN is the father of the gods. He is the god of poetry, the runes and the occult. Those who die fighting dwell with him in Valhalla. He owns the two ravens, Huginn and Muninn (mind and memory). They tell him tidings from all worlds. THOR is the son of Odin and earth. He is the protector of all men and of Midgard, the central world, man's abode. Thor is the most popular god both in the past and the present. FREYR is the god of fertility and of all plants that grow upon the earth. RITUALS: Modern pagans keep one eye on the past when setting up their rituals. Most of the inspirations originate from the Edda ancient book of divine poems. BLOT: The word bidt is used for all religious ceremonies. It indicates both offering and strengthening through solidarity between gods and man.

SEASONAL CELEBRATIONS: There are four determined by the old Icelandic calendar. THE BEGINNING blót celebrates the creation of matter. It is held in the autumn, the beginning of the new year according to the old reckoning. The YULETIDE bldt is held on the 21st of December, the shortest day of the year. This is the celebration of the creation of light and the birth of the new sun. The LIFE bidt is the celebration of life, the highest form of the creation. The gods, human beings, the earth and all that lives has one beginning and all life is sacred. The PARLIAMENT bldt is to the law, civilization, society and other rules in the world of man. This blót is held at Thingvellir around the 20th of June on the opening day of the Althing, the old Icelandic parliament.

THE CYCLE COMPLETED: The fifth bidt is to give thanks for the fruits of the earth. It also rebo us of the inevitable end of life and all creation. This bldt falls together with the first. All is renewed. This is the promise given in the bifrost rainbow, the bridge between men and gods. While the rainbow stands there is order in the world.

THE EARTH: Asatru is an ecological way. Followers are expected to revere the earth and respect her. "She is our mother and deserves all our respect."

CHRISTIANITY: Catholicism was accepted by the Icelandic Althing Parliament in the year 1000 under considerable pressure from the king of Norway and the Christian minority. Thus Iceland became Christian, but with considerable rights for the adherents of the old Gods.

Jörmundur Ingi – Pagan High Priest Interview

Asatru is the recognized pagan religion of Iceland. The Pagan Association of Iceland was founded on the first day of summer 1972, this being the only remaining pagan holiday officially celebrated in Iceland. Official recognition came a year later after much bureaucratic wrangling. Today the membership in the Pagan Assembly is still only in the hundreds but this is the fastest growing religious group in Iceland.

Ásatru bases its religion on the belief in Aesir (the gods of Pagan Iceland). Members of the Pagan Assembly may worship other gods and other sacred beings. All forms of worship, within law and order, are permitted. Statues may be dedicated to the pagan gods, but no one is obliged to worship them. The Important thing is that every individual is responsible for himself and all his actions.

All of Iceland was Christened in 999. The established church In Iceland is the Evangelical Lutheran, and there is also a Catholic church in Reykjavik as well as a number of churches for other groups.

Jörmundur Ingi holds the title of Allsherjargodhi - the head of Asatru. The duties of Allsherjargodhl include the right to perform marriages, give names to children and conduct funerals as well as to issue legal certificates confirming these acts. Allsherjargodhi is considered to be on par with ministers of the State Church and the judges of the Republic.

Scandinavian Press: When we talk about Asatru are we limited to Iceland? Mrmundur Ingi: In the Nordic countries we all have a tendency to think in a very similar fashion. Two years ago I was in Sweden to give a lecture at the University of Lund and a young girl said to me that after she became a member of this group she was in more of a balance, things were easier. I had an explanation for this and that is that all the things that the Social Democrats in the Scandinavian countries see as their achievements and all their ideals actually come from ancient ideas. Equality of people and the whole system of security that existed in Iceland from 930 is what we think of as real Scandinavian today. So if you practice the old religion you don't have any conflict. You could liken this to a car with three wheels, it will always be in imbalance or if you add the fourth wheel - the religion, things simply go better. According to the 16th century Italian philosopher Gianbatista Vico, there are three pillars of society - reason, tradition and religion. If one of the pillars becomes too weak or strong then the balance goes out of society. If for example reason becomes too dominant, it undermines tradition and religion. A religious revival has taken place all over the world in the last fifty years and it is because people are returning to older values.

SP: What were the conditions in Iceland that made conversion to Christianity 1000 years ago so smooth?

JI: The Icelanders were in reality traders rather than, as we are always told, farmers. In Scandinavia 1200 years ago there was already a solid middle class of traders. This was because there was a population explosion and there were no large farms left. They had been divided up and when the farms could not be divided further the younger sons became traders. They later formed the middle class so it is not true that the middle class emerged in the 15th century. Anyway when Harald started uniting Norway it was difficult for the farmers but it was even more difficult for the traders because there were all sorts of new taxes and customs duties. The traders were not tied to the land so they simply left and went to Iceland. Here they had to become farmers also because they could not import food like you do today but the beginning of the Icelandic society was based on traders. And this is important to remember when we try to explain what happened in 999. The traders had experienced more and more difficulty in trading with the Christian nations of Europe. They actually had to take the "lesser baptism" every time they went to Europe in order to be allowed to trade because you were not allowed to trade unless you were a Christian. Since they had already been baptized before, they knew that Christianity was not so dangerous, it was just a convenience. They felt they could just as well declare themselves Christians instead of doing it every year. The tradesmen were used to deals and they made a deal.

SP: Were there any Christians in Iceland prior to this?

JI: Before 999 there were Christians in Iceland, but they were left alone. Probably the only thing they could not do was to practice their religion openly at Thingvellir for the two weeks of the session. This was the only place that was public. Everything else was considered private property and the authorities could not do anything about what you did there. In Iceland Thingvellir, the parliament plains are considered the most sacred place in the land. When the Minister of Culture tried to forbid the Asatru to perform the opening ceremony there a few years back, there was such an outrage from a multitude that he promptly reversed his decision. Now we have the same rights there as the parliament and the Bishop of Iceland. These three are the only ones that may perform public ceremonies in this most holy place. I mention this to illustrate the place that Asatru plays in the mind of the Icelanders today.

SP: What happened to Ásatru after the conversion to Catholicism in 999?

JI: It seems that very little happened. After Catholicism took over in Iceland all you had to do after 1238 was to go to mass and take holy communion four times a year. Privately you went on as before because what you did in between they did not bother about. The thing I find sad is that the priests are using less Eddas in the ceremonies than they did thirty years ago. Now they are scared to. It has been the general consensus and still is that if you compare the moral teachings of the Eddas and the moral teachings of the Bible, they are equal at least and if there was a difference the Edda was better. It took 250 years after the introduction of Christianity, in the middle of the 13th century, before the first books saying something negative about the old beliefs were written. Coincidentally they came at the same time as we got a king because the king thought of himself as the champion of the religion and then also the Catholic church in 1238 went through a big change and became more or less like it is today.

SP: What has survived of the Asatru during these one thousand years?

JI: There were not pockets of believers who would have looked upon themselves as Asatru believers but the beliefs were there. In Iceland the strange part was that the stories of Odin, Thor and so on were always part of mainstream culture. This was very much alive and very much a part of the tradition even if people did not profess directly to this. There was the folklore with the giants, elves etc being called the hidden people and there was the added element, the ancestors. In Iceland the hidden people lived in rocks because we do not have trees here. And when you died you went to Tor Mountain where your ancestors were also living. The vulva has been there all the time. We do not know if the renewed belief in Oden and Thor and so on in the 16th and 17th century was actual Asatru or whether it was a reaction against the church. Between 1930 and 1950 a lot of spiritualist and theosophical people came to Iceland, a lot of them prominent people and they became a part of this movement which was considered an in thing in America. Now the women who had been keeping this alive jumped at this movement. Everything that they had been doing was acceptable and legal and you could even make a living out of it by becoming a medium. Prophecising and such has always been a part of the living tradition and sometimes they took on new ways to do the same old thing. The Icelanders were one of the first people to start collecting folk stories. In Iceland people were so obsessed with the sagas that they only wanted stories that were clear-cut with a beginning and the end and the little peculiar things people were doing that did not classify as a story were not written down. Grand mothers changed religious tales into parables and fairy tales when custom, new religion or foreign oppression demanded. If you really talk to Icelanders you will always hear of examples of people who as late as in the 50s and 60s practiced some kind of sacrifice or some ancient practice. So it is difficult to differentiate traditions from the religion. The Allthing was a religious institution, inseparable from Asatru.

SP: How do you practice Ásatru?

JI. There are three blots every year, in the beginning of winter which was also the beginning of the year, mid-winter and the first day of summer. This seems a bit illogical until you understand that the allthing which is held right at midsummer would be the fourth one. But they were not allowed to say that in the 13th century when they were writing this out. Midsummer is the final blot, it was a religious ceremony. Probably the church was not very keen on having an old pagan blot imposed on them. They always preferred not to be connected to nature especially not to the sun. If Christianity connects with nature it is with the moon like Easter.

SP: What ancient ceremonies do you as Allsherjagodhi perform today?

JI: We don't want to reconstruct, we want to find, rediscover. Reconstruction is dangerous because even if you have an accurate reconstruction it has no connection with the people who are involved. So when it comes to a marriage ceremony we referred to the divine marriages between Odin and Gunlodd and then Frejr to Gerd marriage and Brunhild's marriage to Siegfried and so I have taken the text from there and the text from the law book from 1118 and I have merged them together and we also use living traditions in weddings. People like this ceremony because it is obviously very Icelandic. We have a ceremony of giving names to children which we have done in the same manner.

SP: How did you yourself get involved? JI: In Iceland this has always been so much alive that it is very difficult to say when you heard of it. My parents and my grandparents were Christians. When I had my confirmation when I was 13, I did not want to do that but that was not acceptable but I did not really participate. Then when it came to the actual ceremony I pretended I did not know any of the verses. I felt it within myself that I shouldn't do them. Then I managed to ruin my confirmation pictures so completely that my mother never showed them to anyone. A few years later I just decided one day that Asatru was my religion. I was probably 17 then. But it was not until I was 32 years old that I was casually talking to somebody about this who put me in touch with like-minded. This was in 1972.

Scandinavian Press, Issue 1, 2000