Stephen A. McNallen
Biology, culture, and spirituality are all intimately connected, and
any attempt to separate them is doomed to frustration. The ancestry of
the group, what the group does, and the spiritual perception of the group
are not three different things, but only aspects of a greater whole.
This Folk-centered essence of Ásatrú often comes under attack from those who
are new to our ancestral ways, or who have not shaken off the conditioning of
modern culture. The idea that religion, culture, and biology are intertwined
runs against the political dogma of our day, and is sometimes labeled
"racist" by those who do not understand the deeper truths involved.
Sometimes, those who consider themselves Ásatrú are the first to criticize the
Folkish view. Since these are people who, like us, follow the Aesir and Vanir
it is all the more important to respond fully to their objections.
Four Arguments
Their criticisms take several fairly predictable forms. I have summed up some
of their arguments in the paragraphs that follow, and provided some possible
answers.
1. "The Vikings spread their seed far and wide on an equal
opportunity basis, with no regard to race, religion, or culture."
First of all, this is not really true. The Viking colony in Greenland left many skeletons which have been
exhaustively studied by scientists who marveled that the Greenlanders seem not to have intermarried
with the natives. Back home in Northern Europe, it is true, Nordics and Celts
married and intermingled rather freely, and the genetics of Iceland shows
very strong Irish intermixture. However, the Scandinavians and the Celts are
two very closely related branches of the Indo-European family. Biologically and
culturally, they are very much kin.
Secondly, the Vikings are hardly ideal role models for Asatru. The Viking
Age is very late in the history of the Germanic people. It was a time when our
traditional culture was being eroded by outside forces, a time of change and
cosmopolitanism. To judge Asatru by the behavior of a Viking adventurer in Byzantium, for example, makes as much sense as judging
Christianity by the actions of an American sailor on port leave in Manila. Neither is likely
to epitomize the religious values practiced in Norway
or Nebraska,
respectively. A fire in the loins should not be mistaken for spiritual
enlightenment.
2. "All men and women are descendants from Ask and Embla, the
primordial man and women who were found, as tree trunks on the strand, by Odin,
Hoenir and Lodur and given life. Thus, Asatru is the legacy of all
humans."
This is part of the lore of the Northern people. There are thousands of such
stories told by cultures both ancient and modern, from the Old Testament to the
interior of the Amazon today.
Humans in their tribal state were extremely ethnocentric, and often their
various groupings bear names that mean something like "the true
people" or "the real human beings" to distinguish themselves
from their neighbors. Likewise, their creation myths tend to be ethnocentric
and to pertain only to themselves - not to all of humankind, with which they
are not particularly concerned.
To argue that all humans are descended of Ask and Embla is to say that the
myths of every other native culture are wrong, and that only ours is right.
From the Australian Outback to the depths of Africa,
groups have their own explanations for how they came to be. It is the height of
arrogance to assume that our stories apply to them, and that the sacred tales
of their own people are false. Unless we assume that their lore is inferior and
inaccurate, we are forced to the logical conclusion that each group is right -
so long as it speaks to its own people, and no other.
Indeed, to say that our creation story is the only true one is to deny the
existence and validity of other peoples' Gods - for it imposes Odin, Hoenir, and Lodur upon these other folk, shoving their Gods
rudely out of the picture and negating their own religious explanations for the
nature of things. Most Asatruar would not support such religious imperialism.
To say that ours is the "one, true" story of human origin smacks not
only of religious intolerance but...well, racism!
3. "The Gods and Goddesses have sex with all sorts of beings -
dwarves, giants, and the like. This is more evidence that discrimination,
particularly in the realm of relationships, sex, and marriage, has no basis in
Norse culture!"
The stories of our Gods and Goddesses are written down in the Prose Edda and
the Poetic Edda. The Eddas are valuable resources, but they are symbolic, not
historical. Their contents were subject to all sorts of factors that affect the
way we use them religiously - human interpretation and bias being the main
ones!
Nothing in our lore suggests that the Eddas are meant to be taken literally,
and to do so puts us in the same category as those fundamentalist Christians who take the Bible, word for word, as the exact and
infallible word of their God. To take the tales of our Gods and Goddesses as
lessons urging us to mate outside our kind (or outside our species!) is as
wrong as the Christian who argues that the Genesis creation story should be
taken as scientific truth. Myth is bigger than that.
4. "Asatru is a religion, and joining it is no different than
becoming an Episcopalian, a Muslim, or a Wiccan. Asatru is no more 'European'
than Islam is 'Arabic' or Buddhism is 'Asian.'"
This is a modern fantasy. No indigenous group really believes that its
religion is just a set of practices and abstract concepts, separate from membership in the community, to be adopted or set aside at will
by outsiders. People may decide to become a Baptist or a Lutheran, but no one
looks in the mirror while brushing their teeth in the morning, and thinks
"Hey, I'm tired of being a Catholic. I think I'll become a Lakota
Sioux."
Native religion is not something apart from the life of the tribe. Religion,
politics, economics, values and customs are all part of one thing. There is no
real separation among them. Taken as a whole, this aggregate is the
"Way" of the group; religion becomes one particular fraction of
"the way the tribe is in the world, and what the tribe does."
Some religions, in contrast, are not based on the experience of a particular
group, but on abstract philosophy or a revelation divorced from any tribal or
national group. The monotheistic religions are the best examples of these. One
can drift from Methodism to Mormonism, or from Catholicism to Islam, based on
abstract reasoning or emotional attachment. It is here, not in indigenous
belief, that the proposition of our critics finds its natural home. Those who
attack Asatru because of its Folkish basis still carry with them the mental
assumptions of Christianity and the other philosophical, universalist sects.
Shedding the Psychic Remnants of Christianity
Most of the lore-based arguments against our Folkish worldview are based on
the four presented above. In general, they show a common thread - namely,
Christian thinking!
First, the idea that all humans spring from Ask and Embla may be appealing
from a simplistic viewpoint, but it implies the non-existence of other peoples' Gods and thus reflects the same religious
imperialism we find in historical Christianity.
Likewise, to propose that the Aesir and Vanir have sex outside their
"race" (species?) is to use the Eddic texts in the literal way
that fundamentalist Christian uses the Bible.
Finally, to suggest that religions can be chosen in the same way one chooses
a hat or a new car is to divorce the group of people from their Way, which is
characteristic of the monotheistic religions.
Those who reject the Folkish viewpoint often accuse us of not really being
true to the Aesir and Vanir. Ironically, though, a closer look shows their
arguments against us to be much more in line with Christianity than with the
inherently tribal and ethnocentric nature of indigenous religions!
