Paganism

Column: Remember the Shield-maidens

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In late June, Jade Pichette started the #HavamalWitches hashtag on Facebook. Her explanatory post referenced the Old Norse poem Hávamál (“Sayings of the High One”) and was addressed to women who practice Ásatrú and Heathenry, modern iterations of Germanic polytheism. She called upon her audience to share their experiences of sexism within their religious communities:
So a hashtag #HavamalWitches has started to critique sexism in the Heathen community. Overall the women and femmes in the Heathen community have put up with a lot of sexism and this is basically us letting off steam and making transparent what we experience. It references the fact in the Havamal there are some really sexist stanzas so we are the Witches the Havamal warns you about.

Paganism

Column: Iceland: Fire, Ice, and Sustainable Energy

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In seventh grade world history, I learned two things about the country of Iceland. The first was that the name of the capital city was pronounced “REJ-a-vik.” This was incorrect. The second was that Iceland, despite its name, is a land full of fire. It utilizes natural heat from the earth to provide heating and electricity to its people. This second part was true.

Paganism

Column: Kjötsúpa

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Nothing smells quite like cutting a rutabaga. There’s a small acrid tinge to the air when the knife bites into the yellow flesh; even poor rutabagas like these, which seem to have sat on the grocer’s shelf too long, their stiff hulls gone soft, release that sharp scent in the cutting. It’s the sign that I have cut down to the sweet part of the vegetable, the part to be kept and eaten. I discard the outer skin and chop the rest into cubes. Potatoes and carrots and onions and cabbage will follow the rutabagas onto the cutting board, but I eat these things all the time.

Paganism

Column: Bergtatt and the Mountainborne Faith

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While I may live in a relatively tiny city by most standards, my Norwegian hometown of Tromsø, with just over 70,000 inhabitants, still has all the characteristics of a much larger metropolis, including a unique architectural heritage. While some of the town’s most famed constructions are old wooden wharfs and shoddy fishermen’s cabins, the one building that is maybe the most closely associated with the image of the city is, as it is often the case with other cities in Europe, its church: the Arctic Cathedral. Designed and built in 1965 by the Norwegian architect Jon Inge Hovig, the church, which is in fact not a cathedral but a “mere” parish church, was thought of from the start as a symbolic focal point for the town. Located across the bridge leading to the mainland, the church, which can be seen from any point in the city center, attracts tens of thousands of visitors every year who come to gaze at its inspired architecture or attend one of the numerous concerts organized daily in its main hall. The Arctic Cathedral is, by all means, a beautiful building.

Paganism

Column: Sonatorrek

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In a matter of weeks, I will be getting on a plane to England. It is a part of my good fortune that I occasionally get to go searching for my ghosts; in this case, I will be looking for the ashes of one of my dead forbears, Deryck Alldriht, who founded what would become my coven and then promptly disappeared from the lives of everyone who knew him in America. I don’t know what I will find once I start digging.[1] I hope to learn something more of who Deryck was – what led him into the Craft, to America, to his grave – but I could just as easily find myself staring at an anonymous graveyard in a few weeks as ignorant as before. This is a problem with quests, and questions: we never really know where they end. As I prepare for this new spectral investigation, I think back to Iceland, two years ago now, the last time I went hunting for the dead who have shaped my faith: in that case, Egill Skallagrimsson, a far older shade than Deryck Alldriht.