Front page of my local paper is [this article](https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article255292666.html) about Americans who are using Norse Mythology to excuse a whites only (also anti LGBTQ) “folk church”. As a person (white M38) with Scandinavian roots, who loves anything Norse/Norwegian, I find this to be absolute garbage, especially the part about the Kennewick Man. Love to hear your thoughts?
*Edit: thanks for all the great responses! Reminds me the world is a good place and a couple bad actors don’t represent us all! Please remember to keep it civil! The cross post to r/Norse has already been removed, likely due to comments. I really appreciate all the feedback and will be sending this back to the editor of the SacBee in appreciation for calling out hate in our communities.*
**Edit 2: wow so many great informative responses! I will continue to read these and educated myself. Sent this to the writer of the article, hopefully they read it and see the amazing info and feedback their story has inspired.*
30 comments
Just more racist Americans. Tell them that Norway says to fuck off.
Yeah there are really no connection between Vikings and hating brown and/or gay people. They have for some weird reason used the whole Norse thing as their persona for racism. It’s fucking weird, and kinda ruins it for the people who genuinely are interested in Norse mythology. We have them here in Norway as well, not just an American thing.
everything about it screams lets use a white culture to be idiots.
also Åsatru never used churches it was folktales.
its extremly insulting that people use Symbolism from scandinavia to be racist
No. This isn’t acceptable. You can contact bifrost (https://www.bifrost.no/) to get an official statement. racism and anti-lgbtq+ sentiments are not compatible with that faith.
The vikings travelled far and traded with everyone. There is no reason to suspect racism.
And in the story Trymskvida, Thor dresses up as a woman to marry to get his hammer back, so there’s no reason to suspect them of being anti-LGBTQ either.
Fuck’em.
They’re making a joke out of themselves. Vikings weren’t racists.
Fun fact, real Vikings were confirmed to have had at least one black jarl (lord/king), and it was common to have kids with people from all over the world, especially the middle eastern countries because of trading routes. Like everyone else says, it’s just a stupid excuse to be racist. If you read the Eddas (supposed to be Odin’s words) Odin literally says that kinda shit isn’t ok
Neopaganism has been embraced by white supremists for decades.
The mythology has little to due with white nationalism. It is more about finding one’s pure religious roots— uncorrupted by Catholic influences. Makes no sense to be nationalist while pushing a ‘foreign’ religion like Christianity.
I would love if people stopped taking norse history, vikings etc for their hateful ideas and turning it into something that can be seen as a hate symbol or whatever. I hate all the misinformation and misunderstanding of the north and our history
Nothing about them is scandinavian, norse or authentic as far as I’m concerned.
Tell em Norway said suck my dick
“Asatru” is an Icelandic word that McNallen said means “true to the gods.” Uhm Icelandic here: Ásatrú is a new word that came in the 18-19 century. Ásatrú is tied to any old norse god or creatures within Norse mythology and folklore, such as land monsters, elves, giants, dwarves and other powerful creatures or ancestors. Many pagans view Ásatrû as a way of life rather than a direct religion, believing in their own power and side and also in life itself.
So In short this is just another racist piece of shit using our common culture as a reason to be more racist! THIS IS WHY WE CANT HAVE NICE THINGS!!!
You know fascist racists. They’ll attach them selves to traditionalism to say that black and brown skinned people aren’t apart of the traditional image, reframe history in their ideal and then try to use that politically in the hopes that culture clash will serve them in the long run. The Nazis did it, the Klu Klux did it, heck even the Hindi nationalists and Muslim Saudis do it, both of which treat Pakistani like garbage.
They might claim that Vikings enslaved foreigners, but the Vikings pretty much enslaved anyone who wasn’t worthy (called “trell”). There’s even tales of a black Viking in island, which isn’t all that farfetched considering the Maurs were excellent warriors and could most likely be accepted into a clan on pure prowess alone.
Then again, Vikings were a basic and feudalistic people. Seems like a racists wet dream – to live in a time when people from the town over were plotting to kill you. Good times, good times… ^/s
This is what real cultural appropriation looks like.
This is just racists making nonsensical connections to Norse mythology.
Funny thing is ásatrú does not mean true to the gods like this article states it’s literally ása(æsir/the gods) trú(belief)
Living in the states for a few years I know exactly how annoying this is. Remember talking to so-called “good” white boys who became so excited hearing I was a Norwegian. They had all these viking symbols tattooed on them with swastikas and cloves of four with the letters AB (yes I know what AB is) mixed in. They also had thors hammer in a chain and proclaimed to follow the teachings of Edda.
When I told them that they had stolen my culture to justify their bullshit agenda of hate and all I wanted them to do was to get the f**k away from me before I kick their asses, their faces had a tendency to turn red…
These people think they are practicing the Viking tradition, but the truth is that they have mixed norse mythology, Irish tradition, paganism, and Druidism to create a bastardized justification to continue their ignorant racist behavior under the banner of religion.
Well, it’s certainly clear that this particular group of supporters of Åsatru in your hometown has not fully and truly grasped what being a “believer” in Åsatru is all about:
First of all, Åsatru is a non-dogmatic, experience-based religion. So there’s no collective consensus of what’s “right” or what’s “wrong”; what’s important is what knowledge and wisdom you can gain from deities and spirits, and what one can learn from the challenges that one must overcome in life and how one can improve oneself to gain a better understanding and mastery of nature, the creatures, other folks, and oneself within this world.
Second, there are many core values within oneself that one must cultivate in order to thrive and improve as a human in Åsatru: concepts like honour, truthfulness, courtesy, charity, and hospitality are a few, if not one of the most, important personal characteristics and qualities a true follower of Åsatru should strive to develop and uphold with oneself.
Third, by using Åsatru symbolically as an excuse to exercise various kinds of discrimination, nationalism, and bigotry, signifies very poor understanding of Åsatru and also a severe lack of intelligence and critical thinking (which is ironically very much not a desired quality to personally be attributed with within oneself at all according Åsatru, by the way😉)
So yeah, that’s it.
Vikings with “Allah” embroidered into clothes
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41567391
We have one of these shithead churches in Minnesota, and the locals are trying to fight it: https://www.fox9.com/news/fight-over-western-minnesota-white-only-church-ends-up-in-court I’m enjoying everyone’s responses. My experience is that most Americans of Nordic descent are Lutherans? Not racist stuff like this
Keep in mind that many modern norse pagans are not racist or homophobic like these people, but sadly there is a loud minority.
So the asatru belief does not care about color at all. These are racists that do not understand how it works
Racist people stealing from our culture for their nazi propaganda. They can go to hell. Norse mythology is for everyone
Putting asatru and church together should be the first red flag. Having it be whites only is the second. Stapling nordic people as pure and whitest as some sort of glorification and using our heritage to justify racism is down right disgusting. It is just as racist to glorify white as it is to portray black as bad and I dearly hope I wont come to the US and experience this…
Probably the biggest mismatch is their hatred of socialism and their embrace of US-style conservatism- All of Scandinavia is heavily socialist. Even our “right wing” parties promote policies that are pretty far to the left of the American Democrats.
To be sure, Scandinavia _does_ have a problem with racism, and _some_ people are heavily racist, but not the majority. Its worth noting that whilst the vikings loved themselves a bit of slavery, they tended to enslave other white people.
This in NO way honors norwegian heritage/culture/country. Instead it spits on it, and perverts it to promote bigotry. Fuck those people.
In Norway, we’ve never been bothered about whats called “cultural appropriation”. If someone from outside Norway was interested in out hertiage or though it was cool, that was great. Marvel has a Thor character? Awesome!
Aaaand when we look at how the whole “Norse” thing has been appropriated by neo-Nazis and racists, that was probably a big mistake.
A friend of mine saw a nice bomber jacket in a shop in Germany with a small Norwegian flag on the shoulder, and wanted to buy it. His German friends advised him not to because the Norwegian flag was considered a neo-nazi dog whistle. Our national flag!
If we are going to have a concept like cultrual appropriation, this is the sort of thing it should cover.
This is just a racist group using Norse belief and “Scandinavian heritage” as an excuse to segregate non-white people.
Tl;dr: It’s horseshit. It has nothing to do with the old Norse culture or their religion. It definitely does not honour neither my heritage, my culture, or my country. These people would do the world a favour by sacrificing themselves to the gods they claim to believe in.
There’s virtually no evidence that indicates that the old Norse had any notion of race, or that this was a meaningful distinction for them. As for homsexuality, I’ve never heard about any written account where this matter is even brought up. They did practice slavery, however, but not much suggest that they had any racial/ethnic distinction on whom they’d enslave. Pretty much anyone conquered could be enslaved, as to the Viking mindset any thing that could be taken by open use of force was rightfully theirs for the taking. In the early Viking era, Scandinavia had yet to be unified into the kingdoms we know today, the Norse raided and warred with eachother as frequently as they went out on raids abroad. So even people from neighbouring Norse settlements could in principle be enslaved.
The Åsatru were largely a nature religion, and much of the worship and rituals are believed to have been practiced outdoors. I have never heard anything that suggests that they believed their faith was something only reserved for themselves, or that they considered themselves “chosen” in some regard. Instead, the accounts that exist suggest they believed the gods had their own mind, and needed to be appeased by conducting sacrifice in order to gain their favour.
As for the whole racist connection with the Vikings began with the rise of nationalism and the concept of the nation state in the 19th century. The Scandinavian countries started to look back to the Viking era as a golden age, and they romanticised the Vikings as proud seafarers and conquerors. The far right nationalist movements (e.g. Norway’s nazi-branch Nasjonal Samling) in the early 20th century are the ones that started mixing this idea with the notion of race. They depicted the Vikings as these blond, blue-eyed warriors, and professed that it was our genetic heritage and our destiny to rule over “lesser” races. It’s all a bunch of horseshit. It’s cultural appropriation, and has no connection with known historical accounts.
As an interesting side-note, more recent studies on the genetic material excavated from known Viking graves, indicates that the Vikings came from many different cultures, some with Sami and Finnish genetic markers. This suggests being a Viking was more a profession than a culture. As for their appearance, their genetic makeup showed that the buried had olive skin and brown hair, closer to what today is common in Southern Europe. If anything, this study indicates that the spread of the blond and blue-eyed genes is a result of heavy intermixing with people from Eastern Europe.
As a Norwegian and a fairly interested guy in history, I have found no evidence that suggests the Vikings were racist in any way. They were explorers and traders and actually Vikings were the bodyguards in Constantinople for a period of time. Something that suggests they merged well with other cultures.