Heathenry
2
Odinists, not Vikings
I would like to reflect on those who associate Odinism with the Vikings. It is a stereotype that has been imposed from outside (as the pagan term when the Christianization of Europe occurs was imposed from the outside) because, although our religion goes back to the native European beliefs of Prehistory, it is in the Viking Age of where most of the sources come from and the Nordic countries were the last redoubt of the old Germanic religion. Likewise, the fact that the Eddas, the main historical source of our faith, are written in Old Norse and that, therefore, many terms are used in that language (in the same way that Christianity uses terms in Latin or Greek) or that is denominated to the gods with the Nordic names by that question, causes that from outside the Odinism is associated with the Vikings. The problem comes when the stereotype is assumed by the odinists themselves and they call themselves Vikings. I would especially encourage them to ask certain questions:
Do you live in the 9th century? Do you have a drakar and loot monasteries the summers? Are you Scandinavian? If the answer to all these questions is no, I'm sorry but you're not a Viking, no matter how much you like the Viking Metal or the Vikings series.
What was a Viking?
I suppose this is the first question that must be answered to make it clear why a Odinist of today is not a Viking. The word Viking refers to a Scandinavian pirate or assailant who carried out looting expeditions in the century between the 8th century and the 11th century, in what is called the Viking Age. It must be said that during this period the Christian sources refer to these assailants as Normans (men from the north) or with other names, but the term Vikings began to be used during the 19th century Romanticism, as well as the stereotyped image of dirty people , barbarian, with helmets with horns ...
This means that not all the Scandinavians were Vikings and that it is a term used from the Christian perspective, not from the Nordic peoples, full of negative connotations, because the Vikings are presented as a kind of pagan demons that looted and massacred to peaceful monks ... at a time when the customs of Christian Europe were as or more wild than those of the Nordics. To know more about this topic I recommend the book by Laia San José Beltrán "Quienes fueron realmente los vikingos".
What we really are
If odinism is associated with the Vikings it is mainly because in Scandinavia it is where the old European religion lasted the longest (only the Lithuanians, who endured until the 14th century, and the Saami, until the 18th century, resisted more) and also where the Christianization was much more superficial and folklore better preserved the previous tradition. Likewise, it was in Iceland that for the first time the modern Asatrú was recognized by a sovereign State, in 1973. The Nordic language is the language of the sagas and the Eddas and in short the Nordic countries are the last redoubt of the old faith of the Germanic peoples, which has its roots in the common European trunk. Something similar happens with the Celts and Ireland, although there were Celtic peoples from the Danube to the Iberian Peninsula, there is a tendency to associate the Celtic with Ireland and the Gaelic language for similar reasons.
But we must understand, to begin with, that there is a common European religion for 40,000 years. The peoples of southern Europe received the eastern pollution more than those of the north, so the Greek or Roman religion has much more similarity with religions of the Near East, which was seen by its state nature and by existing a priestly caste. In central and northern Europe, pollution was lower. On the other hand, Odinism is an expression of that European religion, that of the Germanic peoples such as the Saxons, the Goths, the Franks, the Swabians, the Vandals, the Jutes, the Queruscans ... who spread throughout the continent. If we use the Nordic names to refer to the gods it is for convenience, but we must not lose sight of that common ancestral trunk.
Let's see for example the name Odin. The origin of the divinity that we honor as the Father of All is Woþanaz, a proto-Germanic god who represents warrior fury. The German verb woudden means "to rage" or "to anger". Woþanaz derives Woþan and hence Wotan, which is the name given by the continental Germans to this god. In Scandinavia it evolved from Woþan to Woðan and from there to Oðan, Oðinn. Change its name to the Castilian Spanish form, Odín. We use the name Odin for being the most modern reference, the same as a Christian uses the name God and not the Latin Deus or use the name Christ and not the Greek Χριστός, Messiah and not Māšîaḥ in Hebrew, and so on.
Why are you odinist if you are not Scandinavian?
In short, a Spaniard today has no Viking heritage, nor does a Frenchman (unless he is Norman) or an Italian. The appellant asks what they sometimes do to us: why are you odinist if you are not Scandinavian? It is the result of ignorance about what Odinism is. Instead of making us Vikings, what you have to do is analyze things and take into account several things to answer that question.
In the first place, Odinism has its roots in the old European religion and that the differences between Germans and Celts were often simply linguistic or the name that Greeks and Romans gave to these peoples. Secondly, since protohistory, we have a Germanic presence in the Iberian Peninsula. There were tribes who emigrated from beyond the Rhine and settled in Iberia, assimilating then the Celtic or Iberian customs, for example the oretanos.
On the other hand, our Celtic and Iberian heritage survived in the countryside in the face of Romanization, which was eminently urban. When the Empire fell, the field became the most common way of life, so although Latinized and Christianized, our ancestors maintained their previous customs. The arrival of Germanic peoples such as Swabians and Vandals and the settlement of these in rural areas fundamentally merged with the Celtiberians. With the establishment of the Visigoths, in the cities Christianity would settle, but in the countryside the old customs were maintained.
This means that Spaniards today have a Germanic heritage that is visible in folklore, in names like Carlos, Fernando, Alfonso, Gonzalo, Blanca, Matilde, Rodrigo ... in surnames ending in -ez or -iz, typical of Castilla, or in -es or -is, typical in Catalonia, Portugal or Galicia, which are of Visigoth origin and mean "son of". We are Swabians, Vandals, Visigoths, Celts, Iberians, Latins ... and therefore European natives. We do not have to have any kind of complex or want to be Vikings to be odinists because simply, in our heritage, we can find those roots.
A religious belief can not be a laboratory reconstruction, it is not a rational, scientific, archaeological process ... or whatever we want to call it. This may clash with the mentality of our time where the main religion is the cult of Holy Science, but above all a religion has a Mystery component. That means that it is first of all an internal call, something that wakes up inside, in the heart before in the head. First intuited and then understood. When enough maturity is reached by going deeper into the path, it will be shaped. In this sense Ásatrú is an expression among others of the old native European religion, but concretely it is "the call of the North" if we want to say it that way, with all that this entails. But when one inquires more, inevitably it arrives at a pan-European position over labels placed by scholars to one or another tribe of Mother Europe: this is Celtic, this is Germanic, and so on. That is why you do not decide to follow the Æsir and the Vanir; you are called the gods of the North, which is different.
But what about Netón and the Iberian gods? What at first sight may seem strange to the one who does not know it, is much better understood when one delves into the very essence of beliefs. The Iberian gods, called numina by the Romans, are essentially the Indo-European gods, only with the name given to them by the Oretans, Bastetans, Turdetans ... all of them European tribes, even though the Academy wants to look for three feet to the cat . I insist, this is a spiritual path, we must follow it with the heart, not be blinded by technicalities or be blinded if such a tribe was Celtic, or Iberian, or Germanic; but for the most punctilious, some of these Iberian tribes (like the oretanos) were native of the Rhine and were called germani by the Romans. The Iberians developed their own theology, but this has not reached us. Even so we see the same patterns, values and worldview in them that in the rest of European towns. Likewise, its alphabet is similar to runes and, although its phonetic value differs, we must assume that the magical component of these symbols was similar.
The lesser spirits of the iberos or daimones, as the Greeks called them, can be perfectly equated with the elves or the landvættir and it is understood that when the spirits of the earth are honored in a blót, they are being honored. Likewise, there would be many female deities whose name has been lost but who surely adopted the Christian mask of the Virgin Mary in their different invocations. The profusion of the Marian cult in Spain is undoubtedly a symptom of the importance of the cult to these goddesses, which we can perfectly identify with the disir and that therefore we are also worshiping when we worship them. Likewise, all the malignant beings of Hispanic folklore are undoubtedly a local expression of the destructive forces of chaos, known since the night of time, or Christian deformations of the old gods.
In this sense, the Ásatrú not only does not oppose the old Iberian gods but rather constitutes a continuity and in a certain way a restoration of these. The same happens with the heroes or demigods and other elements of the Iberian religion and naturally with the ancestors. We can appreciate all the elements of European religiosity in what we know of the Iberian religiosity, even with Eastern influences in its last period (which on the other hand also had Greek or Roman religion). We can see a similar funerary pattern, with a celestial destiny for the heroes and earthly destiny for the rest, a great importance of the feminine priesthood that closely resembles the Germanic cult of Nerþus, and so on. Why the Nordic pantheon instead of the Iberian pantheon? Well, above all, as I said before, for an intuitive question. But in addition to this, because although the differences between the different branches of the European religion are rather regional varieties; we must bear in mind that each pantheon is complete in itself, each town developed its theology and therefore each pantheon must be taken as a whole. In the Iberian case it is practically impossible to go deeper than in the name of the gods and in some attributes, but we do not have theological texts, nor do we have a mythical cycle, we do not have enough information.
But this should not be seen, I think, as "we choose the Nordic instead of the Iberian" but rather as "the Nordic (or Gothic) version is the most complete and the most spiritual response can offer us both versions, totally valid and ours, of the native spirituality ". My particular vision with regard to Spain is that our ultimate root, our essence, is in pre-Roman Iberia, which the Germanic Hispania (Gothic and Swabian) what it came to do was restore and revitalize the Celtiberian and that this, religiously speaking, It is expressed in this way. I believe that Iberian spirituality is perfectly integrated into Ásatrú, just as an Ásatrú practitioner from Eastern European countries in no way renounces his Slavic substratum. In antiquity this has happened thousands of times, for example with the arrival of the Celts in the British Isles, who saw the dolmens and other megalithic monuments as sacred places of power and as such they converted them into sanctuaries, integrating them into their beliefs. The Germanic element, throughout Europe, is the germ of modern nations and in all cases was built on a previous basis. The only thing that happens is that in some countries the tribal identity is more rooted and it is not necessary to explain these things, while in Spain people assume as "ours" only the Roman Catholic, which, in my opinion, is not really understand the essence of what is Hispanic.
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Originally Posted by Token
England
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