THE WILD HUNT – A group of attendees of a Heathen conference has called for a boycott of the event after alleging harassment from the organization’s leadership and double standards for community conduct.
The conference, the Northeast Thing, has been held annually in August since 2021. It grew out of a previous event, the East Coast Thing, which had been held since 1999. The Thing describes itself as “an annual event organized by individuals from regional Heathen communities and kindreds that offers the wider Northeast Heathen Community (and beyond) a safe, inclusive space to practice the religious traditions of Northern Europe and Scandinavia.”
The boycott letter has been signed by 19 attendees, which the group estimates is around 15% of the attendance of the Thing. The boycott statement was written by Miche Nickolaisen and relies on official complaints and evidence provided by Nickolaisen’s partner, Garrett White.
Northeast Thing logo
The boycott notice claims that there has been a “cascading series of events” that begin with a workshop at the 2024 Thing, in which the presenter, the author Elizabeth Sandifer, gave a talk on “Heretical Heathenry.” In the question and answer portion of the workshop, two members of the Thing’s planning committee – Ristandi, the workshop coordinator, and David Carron, the president of the Northeast Thing and overall head of the event – reacted to the workshop in a way that several people in attendance described as bullying that led some attendees to leave the workshop in tears. Carron has previously served on the Rede of the Troth and is currently running to serve another term on that body.
According to Sandifer, after the workshop a third party suggested a mediated conversation between Sandifer and Carron to settle the matter, but this conversation did not occur before the end of the event.
Following the Thing, discussions about the workshop and Carron’s response to it continued online, especially in Facebook communities surrounding the Thing. Sandifer characterized Carron’s actions in these discussions as harassing on the basis of perceived transphobia, and noted that in both the Q&A and the subsequent online comments, the people impacted by Carron and Ristandi’s comments tended to be younger queer and transgender members of the community.
The Thing’s executive board, not including Carron, found that based on testimony they received, the Q&A at the workshop was “heated” but was not discriminatory or harassing. The executive board also stated that the code of conduct extended only to the actual event itself and therefore the board could not take any action on statements made outside of the Northeast Thing. Ultimately no action was taken by the board.
Following this correspondence, Sandifer wrote a long essay, “Exiting the Draugr Castle,” which she published on her website in November of 2024. In it, she describes the experience of offering her workshop and her perspective of the conflict with Carron and Ristandi. On December 16th, Sandifer received another letter from the Northeast Thing Executive Board informing her that she had been banned from the event on the basis of her essay and other online comments, which the board described as “a series of public and intentionally malicious activities” which were in “direct violation of the Northeast Thing Code of Conduct.”
At some point between September 5th, 2024, and December 16th, the Thing’s code of conduct had been updated to allow for banning individuals or groups from the event on a case by case basis for “engaging in unethical, illegal, racist, homophobic/transphobic, or other intentionally malicious activities taking place outside of the Event.”
The organizers of the boycott criticize both the Thing’s response to Sandifer’s original complaint and subsequent decision to ban her from the event. They note that the board originally claimed that Carron’s comments identified by Sandifer that were made outside of the Thing itself could not be claimed as a violation of the event’s code of conduct, which they characterize as “a rule seemingly invented in response to [Sandifer]’s complaint.”
They also argue that it is “deeply hypocritical” to ban Sandifer over her essay, as it appears that the code of conduct had been changed to allow for her statements to be policed while ignoring Carron’s earlier statements. The boycott notice suggests it would have been “very easy to interpret this series of choices as updating the code of conduct with the specific intent of using it to punish [Sandifer.]”
The boycott statement claims that the members tried to address their complaints through formal channels, but felt the Thing’s planning committee “largely dismissed” them, claiming that questions about how the code of conduct is enforced and investigations are conducted were met with a statement that the organization’s internal operations were not appropriate to discuss with guests of the event.
“Despite us being clear about our concerns across multiple channels,” says the statement, “including private, semi-private, and public channels, and repeated offers by multiple parties to engage in a mediated discussion to resolve these concerns, these issues have not been addressed in any meaningful way. The consistent refusal to engage on these points puts serious doubt on the event team’s ability to carry out their stated goal of ‘making a safe, enjoyable, and memorable Thing for all.’
“Until such a time as event leadership is willing to engage in good faith discussion and institute appropriate reforms,” the statement concludes, “we will not be attending NET 2025, and would caution other Heathens to avoid the event.”
“We are aware of the boycott and support the right of those participating to choose how, where, and with whom they spend their time and money,” the Northeast Thing executive board told The Wild Hunt. “While we are disheartened over the news of the boycott, we wish everyone well, whether or not they attend Northeast Thing.”
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.