Karl E. H. Seigfried is a Theology and Religious History Faculty at Cherry Hill Seminary, Adjunct Professor in Humanities at Illinois Institute of Technology, and goði (priest) of Thor’s Oak Kindred, an inclusive organization dedicated to the practice of the Ásatrú religion in Chicago.
At the University of Chicago, Karl was President of Interfaith Dialogue and served on Spiritual Life Council, the advisory board for the Spiritual Life Office. He has also taught Norse mythology at Loyola University Chicago and Norse religion at Carthage College.
Karl’s website, The Norse Mythology Blog, was named the world’s Best Religion Weblog in 2012, 2013, and 2014. His writing on mythology and religion has been broadcast on the BBC and published in Herdfeuer (Germany), Iceland Magazine, Interfaith Ramadan (Italy), MythNow (Joseph Campbell Foundation), On Religion (UK), Religion and Ethics (Australia) and Reykjavík Grapevine (Iceland).
Karl was editor of The Illustrated Hávamál: Sayings of the High One and The Illustrated Völuspá: The Prophecy of the Seeress, dual-language (Old Norse and Modern English) editions of the medieval poems with new illustrations by artist Sam Flegal. He wrote all definitions relating to Ásatrú in the Religion News Association’s Religion Stylebook, co-authored the Heathen Resource Guide for Chaplains for the U.S. Department of Defense, and wrote the first piece by a practitioner of Ásatrú published in Sightings of the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
“‘In their lord’s great need’: A Succession Myth in the Rāmāyaṇa and Beowulf ” was published in The International Journal of Indic Religions, and “Beowulf: History, Legend, and Mythology ” was commissioned by the Newberry Library as a Digital Collection for the Classroom.
“Ásatrú and Hindu: From Prophecy to Dialogue” appears in Learning from Other Religions: Leaving Room for Holy Envy (Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue Series, Palgrave Macmillan), “Children of Heimdall: Ásatrú Ideas of Ancestry” is in Radical Transformations in Minority Religions (Routledge Inform Series on Minority Religions and Spiritual Movements), and “In and of the World: Seigfried and Seigfried’s Pragmatism and Ásatrú Public Theology” is in Pragmatist Feminism and the Work of Charlene Haddock Seigfried (Bloomsbury Academic).
“One Crime over the Line: Śiśupāla in the Mahābhārata” and “Magic and Power in The Laws of Manu, the Arthaśāstra, and the Kāmasūtra” both appeared in the Journal of the Oriental Institute, published by MSU of Baroda (India).
After receiving an academic scholarship in 2014 and earning an MA in 2017, Karl is now the first practitioner of Ásatrú to hold a graduate degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He also has degrees in literature and music from the University of California at San Diego, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and the University of Texas at Austin. He studied literature and art history at Loyola University Chicago Rome Center in Italy and has taken Icelandic language courses through the University of Iceland’s distance learning program.