Hammerhof

Very little is known about historical pre-Christian religious practices and if the pre -Christian peoples we commonly call The Germanic Tribes had a priestly class. That is a class of people who’s only job in society was to be a priest. There are virtually no sources or archeological evidence that would lead us to believe there was a priestly class in ancient pagan/heathen societies. The Christian chronicler Bede reported that the Anglo-Saxon pagans of Northumbria has a high priest. Bede's description of Coifi is that of the chief of priests in Northumbria, suggesting that there was some sort of organized pagan priesthood in existence during Coifi's time. However, many historians believe that we need to take Bede’s interpretation of the Anglo-Saxons with a grain of salt. Although Bede may have been a firsthand witness to this history, he may have misinterpreted it due to Christian influence. According to Bede Coifi destroyed the temple of Woden and helped to convert the Northum

If you go to YouTube and look up Asatru, Germanic Pagan ism, or some sort of related topic you will find thousands of videos on the subject. A lot of these videos are very good, and I do watch a lot of them. Many of the presenters are pagan/heathens and in their professional lives are historians, archeologists, and anthropologists. I myself am a historian, so I can relate to them very well. Many of these videos discuss the history of the Germanic peoples “religion” versus modern Asatru practice. They discuss how Asatru was created by our contemporaries and most of the practices are NOT historically accurate. Now, being a historian, I completely agree, modern Asatru is mostly a fabrication by people over the past 50 years who are still alive today. Asatru is not historically accurate. Ok, I can deal with that. When I started down the pagan path, I knew that modern Asatru religion was not the religion of the Vikings, Saxons, or Germanic tribes of yesteryears…. I enter into Asatru with th

This is more of a matter of opinion rather than fact, but it seems to me that the Great Plague of Covid-19 has had a major impact on the Asatru and the people who practice its many variations. I know that in my circle or circles it put a stop to progress and positive change withing our extended family. In Asatru today we are widely spread out across the landscape and our innangardh tends to be a bit wider than it was during the days of The Ancestors. Just before the plague struck my area, I was working on building a local Asatru community. By local, I literally mean local, right here in my little town and a few miles afield of that. It is my personal opinion that Heathenry is local and if you cannot be local you cannot be global. I was making connections and plan a moot at the local pub. That all fell apart when they closed the pubs, the restaurants, and just about everything. On a larger scale some rouge members of a national Asatru organization were planning a coup that failed and th

Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson So, I watched a few YouTube videos on the topic of what to call the religion of the Germanic or Norse ancient peoples as it exists today for the modern practitioner. There was a lot of debate on the proper and politically correct terminology for the faith that I believe in. So, I am going to start with Asatru.   Asatru is Icelandic and a fairly modern term meaning "faith in the Æsir." The Æsir are one branch of Norse deities consisting of Odin, Frigg, Thor, Baldr, and so on. The term Asatru came into modern use in the 1970s in Iceland by the efforts of Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson and other Icelanders who had rejected Christianity and formed the Icelandic religious organization Ásatrúarfélagið ("Fellowship of Æsir faith"). The term Asatru was soon adopted in the United States and other countries. Stephen McNallen is possible the first American to make the term Asatru popular when he formed the Asatru Free Assembly in 1976 or there abouts. That bri

Eowemeolc a time of celebrating the first signs of spring. Our female ancestral spirits are communally honored around this time, to lend their efforts to the coming planting season as we celebrate the halfway point to Spring. The Eowemeolc rite falls on the first full mood of February for us, but traditionally would have varied by the location. For instance, today it is snowing here, and we are expected to get 16-inches! Doesn’t seem like the coming of spring.  The Kindred Hall of Hammerhof celebrates Eowemeolc (Imbolc) known in many Asatru groups as The Charming of the Plough. Eowemeolc is a Celtic calibration, mentioned in early Irish literature. Indeed it is more commonly associated with Wiccan calibrations than that of Heathen, but the pagan Anglo-Saxon seemed to have adopted this calibration and the practiced continued on after they converted to Christianity.  According to Bede’s De temporum ratione, the Anglo-Saxon month of February was known as Solmonad, and meant month of mud.