The Northern Path

The National Geographic Channel will be showing a documentary on the Staffordshire Hoard tonight called “Lost Gold of the Dark Ages.” I’m looking forward to it with a mixture of eager anticipation and some puzzlement.

Apparently the show is going to include a “pagan” Saxon ritual, and the assistant producer’s blog on how they went about staging the ritual makes for some strange reading:

Dr. Kevin Leahy told me that Saxon Paganism was likely to be dark, atmospheric, and spooky, so that’s what we decided to aim for.

We all finally assembled in a woodland to film the ritual. We’d brought a macabre collection of skulls and animal skins with us, and we decorated the trees.

… With lots of smoke from the smoke machine, we began the ceremony.

The business with the smoke and skulls sounds more like a Korpiklaani show than a documentary, and I’m wondering how “dark” their portrayal of the so-called Dark Ages will be. But this program is still a must-see for me: it’s a chance to learn more about the Staffordshire Hoard, and to see the Regia Anglorum reenactment group in action.

I’d love to hear other people’s reactions to the show.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Tom Shippey reviews the latest installment in Bernard Cornwell’s “Saxon Tales” series set in Anglo-Saxon England. The Burning Land continues the story of Uhtred Uhtredsson, a ninth-century Northumbrian who was brought up as a Heathen by the occupying Danes and as a grown man becomes an unwilling vassal of King Alfred (who is anything but “Great” in this anti-history).

The Burning Land concerns the battle for Mercia, which was partly occupied by the Danes. Uhtred has finally joined his Danish blood-brother Ragnar in the North, but Alfred’s family pleads with him to fight for the English. Uhtred has saved Alfred’s skin any number of times, but is always rejected and betrayed afterward because he is not a good obsequious Christian. For Uhtred still has a Heathen soul, and that’s why I love him.

Most of this series is enjoyable historical fiction, with an emphasis on the “fiction” part — Cornwell uses the gaps in the historical record to rewrite history with a starring role for his fictional hero Uhtred. But The Last Kingdom, the first book in the series which treat’s Uhtred’s boyhood and coming of age, is really something special. In a tale of adventure, with blood and guts interspersed with lyrically moving passages on the Heathen worldview, Uhtred grows up into a Heathen warrior, with a understanding of fate and honor and a fierce love for his adopted family.

I’ll read the latest book because of the vivid writing and my continuing interest in Uhtred and his adventures, but if I really want to be moved, I’ll go back and reread the beginning of Uhtred’s story, a tale that truly sings.

Theodsman Dan Halloran’s candidacy for the Queens New York City Council has attracted a fair amount of attention in the media. This issue has been covered extensively at the Wild Hunt blog, but I did want to post today’s article in the Village Voice. In this case the author spent a bit more time trying to learn about Theodism and Asatru than the other journalists have, clearly doing some research and consulting numerous sources. There are still things to be unhappy about, but the at least the reporter made an effort to do some actual reporting about the issue. It’s a pity that the bar is so low that this has to count as an outstanding effort.

Halloran has been squirming and wiggling about his affiliations — which was partly why the Village Voice chose to look into the issue (the article is titled “Grand Ol’ Pagan: What Does the Republican ‘Heathen’ Running for New York’s City Council Actually Believe?”). Most of the public is probably still fairly confused. But no matter how the election next week turns out, this is another sort of “historic candidacy,” and there will be a new level of public awareness of Heathenry and Theodism.

I’m lucky enough to live in an area that is frequented by ravens. When I first moved here there were times when I would go outside because I felt restless and confused, and when I cast my eyes upward I was sometimes rewarded by the sight of a raven (or occasionally two) flying overhead.

I especially remember one time when I was out walking my dog and a raven flew over, circled overhead as if to check us out and then sped off.  Another time when the dog and I were skijoring in the same area, I could hear the ravens quorking to one another nearby, as if they were discussing the unusual spectacle.

These encounters with ravens seemed special and exciting, and I couldn’t help wondering if I could consider them as omens, or as messengers of some sort. As a Heathen Humanist from a scientific family I try to avoid a lot of magical thinking, especially the kind where the world is supposed to revolve around me. Still, the thought was there and would not go away.

I decided that the best thing to do would be to learn more about ravens, and I read Ravens in Winter by zoologist and animal behavior expert Bernd Heinrich. There I learned that among their many hunting and scavenging strategies, ravens apparently follow wolves so they can feed off their kills. A biologist in Alaska reported the following:

The only instance of a raven ever closely approaching me as I was hiking through the study area was the one occasion when I had a dog with me; it resembled a wolf very closely. … It would seem advantageous for ravens to keep close contact with wolves, especially during winter when daylight is so limited in the Arctic.

We do not have wolves here but we have coyotes, and my Siberian Husky looks a lot like an Eastern Coyote. So in a sense my feeling that the raven was checking us out was probably true — but he was not interested in me, he was interested in my dog!

Now I’ve seen more of them over the years, and noticed that they tend to fly in certain patterns, often from north to south above our small valley. Repeated observation has made me realize that their flights are not omens: they are out flying in regular hunting patterns, searching for food, just trying to make a living like the rest of us. Nothing magical about it.

It’s certainly a pleasure to be able to learn more about them by observing them in their natural habitat, a privilege not everyone has. But when I gained this knowledge, I lost something: a sense of connection, a sense that the movements of time and nature and animals have meaning.

Perhaps there is a larger pattern or power at work, that makes the raven leave its nest at just that time and fly over me and my dog, sometimes issuing a friendly quork. Or perhaps the ravens just have their own agenda.

The Economist has a story on a supposed glut of bees in California. Their scenario for the fall and rise of commercial bee populations has as much to do with economics as ecology:

This year’s Californian bee glut, then, has been caused by a mixture of rising supply meeting falling demand. The price of almonds dropped by 30% between August and December last year, as people had less money in their pockets. That has caused growers to cut costs, and therefore hire fewer hives. There is also a drought in the region, and many farmers are unlikely to receive enough water to go ahead with the harvest. Meanwhile, the recent high prices for pollination contracts made it look worthwhile fattening bees up with supplements over the winter. That may help explain why there have been fewer colony collapses.

The rise and fall of the managed honeybee, then, owes as much to the economics of supply and demand as it does to the forces of nature. And if the nutrition and disease theory is correct, next year’s lower contract prices may see beekeepers cutting back on supplemental feeding, and a resurgence of CCD.

Although the article implies that CCD (colony collapse disorder) is treatable and expresses skepticism about the thesis that there is a larger pollination crisis, there is still plenty of material to give pause to anyone who cares about the environment. If other pollinators such as butterflies and bats are perishing for other reasons such as habitat depletion, this is still bad. And if the bees are being depleted by serving monocultures, this is just one more reason that monocultures are bad. I’ve also learned from this article that growers hire apiaries through middlemen called “pollination brokers,” which for some reason sounds mildly creepy, as if it comes from some sci-fi dystopia. But alas, it’s not sci-fi, it’s the industrial agriculture that surrounds us — which is creepy enough.

Fredrik Gregorius, a scholar of religion at the University of Lund, has just defended his dissertation on contemporary Asatru in Sweden: Modern asatro: att konstruera etnisk och kulturell identitet [Modern Asatru: Constructing Ethnic and Cultural Identity].  The dissertation is in Swedish, but a member of Sveriges Asatrosamfund has reviewed the dissertation in English on YouTube. Six pages of the dissertation are in English, and there is a brief English summary available on the university website cited above:

The purpose of the study is to examine contemporary followers of Asatru in Sweden. Central to the study is the way Asatru today can be seen as an ethnic religion. Due to this will the ideas about Asatru as a folk religion among followers and the idea of Asatru as a form of “sed”, a term that can roughly be translated as a form of custom, be explored. Related to the idea of ethnic identity and Asatru is the question as to why people living in Sweden today feel a connection and identifies themselves with a culture that ceased to exist around a thousand years ago. In order for such a relationship to exist is it necessary for a follower of Asatru to imagine some form of essential cultural identity that defies other cultural changes. That is some form of cultural and ethnic essentialism. The study deals primarily with Sweden but Asatru in other countries, especially the United States are also included due to the influence they have on the Swedish scene. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction; discussion of methodology, previous studies and also presents some definitions used. Chapter 2 deals with the theories used in the study. Chapter 3 presents an historical background from which Swedish Asatru appears. Chapter 4 gives an historical background to the Swedish Asatru scene. Chapter 5 presents an overview of the Asatru scene in Sweden today regarding numbers of followers, why people join, and so forth. Chapter 6 presents ideas about culture in the Swedish Asatru scene. Chapter 7 deals with the attitude towards nature. Chapter 8 deals with the ideas about gods and goddesses in Asaru. Chapter 9 is about religious rituals like modern forms of “blot”. Chapter 10 discusses the use of magic, like rune magic and sejd, in Asatru. Chapter 11 serves as a form of analysis and deals with the relationship between Asatru and other social fields.

Chas Clifton recently reviewed Emma Restall Orr’s book Living With Honour: A Pagan Ethics. Even before reading the book, I found the review (and accompanying discussion) well worth reading, and they have already pushed me to think more about how Heathen values relate to other systems and about the nature and origin of my own ethical values.

In one sense, the Heathen concern with family and community bonds, and with honor and reputation have always made sense to me: growing up in a New England village of 1,100 souls with relatives in neighboring towns, I knew that any actions I took would be a reflection upon my entire family as well as myself. I lived (and still live) in a culture where reputation definitely matters.

I find this culture satisfying in many ways but am less inclined to idealize it than my coreligionsts who come from the city or suburbs. People have always escaped to the city because they found their close-knit communities to be stifling, and I don’t ever want my decisions to be guided primarily by “what the neighbors would think,” which to me is a form of cowardice.

I’m afraid that I have nothing more profound to contribute on the nature or origin of Heathen ethics, and I don’t know that I will have a whole lot in common with Orr. However I’ve already found the review and discussion on Clifton’s blog to be delightfully refreshing, if only because an arbitrary system of rules laid down by [insert deity here] simply wasn’t part of the equation.

There are some deep archives of scholarly material in Old Norse studies and archaeology being made available for free in PDF format. Goody the first: the Viking Society for Northern Research is making nearly its entire publishing archive, from 1895 until the present, available for free. For more info, see their web publications page.

Goody the second: the Scandinavian archaeological journal Fornvännen has made its entire journal from 1906-2005 available in PDF as well.  There is a free-text search facility, and while most of the articles are in Swedish, Danish or Norwegian, there are numerous English abstracts as well as entire papers in English.

The third issue cannot really be called a goody since it involves protracted litigation, but Google has reached a settlement (pending court approval) with book authors and publishers over its large-scale book scanning program. When I first read James Gleick’s rather breezy Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, my heart leapt: all of those inaccessible out-of-print scholarly books finally made available to us readers, standing outside the academy with our noses pressed against the glass!

By now the company has digitized at least seven million titles. Many are old enough to be in the public domain — no issue there — and many are new enough to be available in bookstores, but the vast majority, four million to five million, are books that had fallen into a kind of limbo: protected by copyright but out of print. Their publishers had given up on them. They existed at libraries and used booksellers but otherwise had left the playing field.

As a way through the impasse, the authors persuaded Google to do more than just scan the books for purposes of searching, but go further, by bringing them back to commercial life. Under the agreement these millions of out-of-print books return from limbo. Any money made from advertising or licensing fees will go partly to Google and mostly to the rights-holders. The agreement is nonexclusive: If competitors to Google want to get into the business, they can.

This means a new beginning — a vast trove of books restored to the marketplace.

This access to copyrighted books would be provided through Google’s so-called Public Access Service, and while it may prove to be a great leap forward, it could be cumbersome and will involve (as yet undetermined) fees for individuals. After reading the FAQ at the Association of American Publishers’ website, I am guardedly optimistic.

2. If approved by the court, what will the settlement offer?

If approved, the settlement would provide:

• More Access to Out-of-Print Books — Generating greater exposure for millions of in-copyright works, including hard-to-find out-of-print books, by enabling readers in the U.S. to search these works and preview them online;
• Additional Ways to Purchase Copyrighted Books — Building off publishers’ and authors’ current efforts and further expanding the electronic market for copyrighted books in the U.S., by offering users the ability to purchase online access to many in-copyright books;
• Institutional Subscriptions to Millions of Books Online — Offering a means for U.S. colleges, universities and other organizations to obtain subscriptions for online access to collections from some of the world’s most renowned libraries;
• Free Access From U.S. Libraries — Providing free, full-text, online viewing of millions of out-of-print books at designated computers in U.S. public and university libraries; and
• Compensation to Authors and Publishers and Control Over Access to Their Works — Distributing payments earned from online access provided by Google and, prospectively, from similar programs that may be established by other providers, through a newly created independent, not-for-profit Book Rights Registry.  The Book Rights Registry will locate rightsholders, collect and maintain accurate rightsholder information, and provide a way for rightsholders to request inclusion in or exclusion from the project.

3. In what new ways will this agreement enable users to access books?

The agreement significantly expands access to millions of in-copyright books through Google Book Search.

Specifically, readers will be able to access books through:

• Preview — Allows users to freely preview a limited number of pages of in-copyright works to help users decide if the book is right for them to buy. Generally, out-of-print books will be available for preview, and in-print books will not unless the rightsholder decides to activate previews through their participation in this settlement or through the Book Search Partner Program.
• Consumer Purchase — Offers individual users the ability to purchase access to view an entire in-copyright book online.  The rightsholder may set the price or allow the price to be set by a Google algorithm.
• Institutional Subscription — For academic, corporate, and government organizations.  Gives members of the institution full access to in-copyright, out-of-print books.
• Free Public Library Access — Authorizes free, full-text, online viewing of in-copyright, out-of-print books at designated computers in U.S. public and university libraries at no charge to the library or the reader, with added revenues to the rightsholders through per page printing fees.
• Future Services — The agreement allows for other services and uses, such as Print-On-Demand, Consumer Subscription and others, to be agreed in the future.

I hope that the court will approve the settlement, and that they can move forward with this project.

In July of this year the Danish organization Forn Sidr received permission to establish a Heathen cemetery in the town of Odense. Although this isn’t exactly breaking news, the coverage in English-language media has been somewhat sparse, so here is a translation of the original Danish story in the (yes, Christian) newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad.

Admirers of Odin and Thor get their own cemetery
July 7, 2008   Now Asatruar can be buried in a shared Heathen grave in Odense. Yet another sign that the Danish government is demonstrating openness toward smaller religious groups, says expert

Laura Elisabeth Schnabel
For the first time in a thousand years, Danish admirers of the old Scandinavian gods Thor, Odin and Loki will have a burial ground that is theirs alone. The municipality of Odense has given the green light to the establishment of a Heathen cemetery at the Assistens Cemetery in central Odense by the end of the year.

The membership of the largest Asatru organization, Forn Sidr, has tripled to 600 members since it was recognized as a religious community by the Ministry for Ecclesiastical Affairs in 2003. Thus the cemetery is also badly needed, said Søren Fisker, Forn Sidr’s vice president and cemetery liaison.

“When you establish a religious community, you should also be able to serve your members from cradle to grave, so getting a cemetery is a big breakthrough,” said Fisker.

In the past, Asatruar have had to have their ashes scattered at sea or be buried in a churchyard. But not everyone is happy with this arrangement:

“Many Asatruar define themselves precisely by being different from the majority of Christians. Therefore they don’t want to have parochial Christian church councils deciding on the gravestones, symbols and plants at their gravesites either,” says Søren Fisker.

Forn Sidr has already chosen a row of large stones that will form the outline of an 18 meter-long Viking ship, thus forming the boundary of the shared Heathen cemetery. Søren Fisker hopes that other municipalities that operate cemeteries in larger towns will also be sympathetic to establishing cemeteries for Asatruar.

If the Center for Cemeteries, which oversees the five cemeteries in the municipality of Copenhagen, is approached by Forn Sidr, the Center would be positively disposed right away.

“They could certainly rent an area. We have a very broad definition of what is permissible. But of course we would say no if they suddenly wanted to raise stones that were 15 meters high,” said Tom Olsen, the daily director of cemeteries.

Forn Sidr is the only one of 35 Asatru groups in the country that has been recognized as a religious community.

René Dybdal Pedersen of Aarhus University, who has done research on Asatru and written a book on new religious groups, estimates that there are a couple of thousand Asatruar in Denmark in total.

According to Pedersen, the Heathen cemetery is part of a general movement in which people from different religious communities want to be buried in separate places under separate conditions.

“I think this will develop into a liberalization of burial practice, so that there will be an opening for people to be buried according to their wishes,” he said.

He sees the Asatru cemetery as an expression of greater openness toward religious communities other than Christianity.

“Previously the Ministry for Ecclesiastical Affairs recognized religious communities. Now this is done by a committee of theologians, lawyers and sociologists of religion among others, which has created a greater opening for the government not to focus exclusively on Christian groups. We have been living in a religiously diverse society for a long time. Now this is spreading to the public system,” said René Dybdal Pedersen.

Among other things he points to the fact that Muslims have gotten their own cemetery, and to a new law that makes it possible to establish cemeteries in Denmark’s forests.

I’m spending a a week in Stockholm, and today I made a day trip out to Gamla Uppsala, which I hadn’t visited since 1987. While the somewhat murky Blackberry photo shows a quiet scene, it’s actually a fairly busy place, with people coming and going and the air ringing with the chatter of birds, tourists and schoolchildren.

The sixth-century mounds are indeed monumental in size, rising from rich agricultural land that must have helped Uppsala become the power base and population center it was by the third century.

At the entrance to the mounds is a round museum building reminiscent of a yurt or a muffin. The locals objected when it was built, saying it looked like a spaceship had landed, but once you are inside the design seems absolutely right: one wall of the museum is made of glass, providing a remarkable view of the mounds that is echoed by the round interior space.

I was slightly alarmed to find that I didn’t really know how to respond to this place. There were so many fences and trails and signs in the visible landscape and such a jumble of fragments from Adam of Bremen and Ynglinga Saga floating around in my head that a pure emotional, aesthetic or spiritual response was simply out of the question.  However I felt better after seeing a museum exhibit showing how the site had been used over the centuries as a backdrop for all sorts of political and romantic statements, from Gustav Vasa to Rudbeck to Bernadotte, from students drinking horns of mead to Pope John Paul holding mass there in 1989. (There was no mention of the return of practicing Heathens to the site.) Nearly every illustration showed the mounds absolutely crawling with people, all watching some sort of spectacle and with no idea what the hills they were standing on represented or contained.  And indeed very little seems to be known about their contents, even to this day. For me this place remains even more of a mystery than it was before.