Culture

Column: Loki in the White House

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Pagan Perspectives

A Note from the Editors Regarding Loki in the White House

December 2nd, 2018

Dear Readers of The Wild Hunt:

Since the publication of Loki in the White House, the column has been discussed at length across the Pagan internet. To say that its portrayal of Loki, and its comparison of Loki to Donald Trump, has been regarded as controversial would be an understatement. The Lokean community in particular has strongly criticized the column, with many feeling that it was tantamount to a call for Heathens to cut ties with Lokeans altogether. (A group of Lokeans sent a letter to The Wild Hunt calling for amendments or a retraction to the column; that letter can be read here.)

At The Wild Hunt, we are proud to have writers from many different backgrounds represented in our roster of regular columnists, including multiple writers of color, writers from outside the Anglosphere, and writers of queer identities – not to mention writers from many different approaches to Paganism. We see our commentary section as a place for these voices to have the freedom to analyze, critique, and debate issues of interest to Pagans in deep and challenging ways.

News

Dragons, giants, and dwarves: Didrik saga translated into English

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CUMBRIA, England — For Didrik of Bern, battling a queen who shape-shifts into a dragon, dueling with giants who wield iron bars, fighting alongside the son of Weland the smith, and hanging out with Attila the Hun were all in a day’s work. The exploits of King Didrik, a legendary, heroic, but not always victorious warrior, were told in the Middle Ages in Germanic regions and Scandinavia. The saga of Didrik (also called Dietrich in German or Thidrek in Old Norse) was written down in Norway in the 13th century, and a Swedish version was written around 1500. For years the only English version was a 1988 translation of the Old Norse text by E. R. Haymes, titled The Saga of Thidrek of Bern. That book is out of print, and copies on Amazon run from $369 to $2,034.

Hounds

Unleash the Hounds! (link roundup)

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There are lots of articles and essays of interest to modern Pagans and Heathens out there, more than our team can write about in depth in any given week. Therefore, the Wild Hunt must unleash the hounds in order to round them all up. 

The Iceland Monitor has reported that the long-awaited Ásatrú temple in Öskjuhlíð in Reykjavik will be completed by summer 2018. The article states that this information was confirmed with the Ásatrú organization’s head chieftain Hilmar Örn Himarsson. The construction proved to be more difficult than planned; however, the work is ongoing. The United National Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has added to its “Memory of the World” registry 130 Roman curse tablets that “bear messages from the Roman occupants of Bath seeking revenge from a goddess.”  They are the “only artefacts from Roman Britain,” reports UNESCO.

Paganism

Column: Memory, Prophecy, and Social Justice, Would You Know Yet More?

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[ Today we welcome once again guest writer Tamilia Reed. Reed is a devotional polytheist, spirit-worker, mystic, rune reader, Witch, and traveler of the otherworlds. Her spiritual work centers on building strong relationships with the denizens of this and other worlds, while seeking an intimate understanding of the magical ties that join all beings. You can find Reed’s writing on her personal blog at Wandering Woman Wondering, at Wayfaring Woman via Agora, or at Daughters of Eve: Pagan Women of Color Speak.]

The Völuspá (the Wise-Woman’s Prophecy) is the first poem in the Poetic Edda. The Poetic Edda along with the Prose Edda and multiple sagas form the main body of Norse mythology.

News

Heathen community continues the struggle to distance themselves from extremism 

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UNITED STATES — When two men were fatally stabbed and another injured on a Portland train in May, officials and journalists began to follow the predictable course of profiling the attacker in an effort to understand why he would resort to such actions. After a few short days, several sources began to speculate on his Heathen religious practice, more specifically on Odinism. This assumption rests squarely on Facebook posts made the attacker over the past year. On May 9, he wrote, “Hail Vinland!! Hail Victory!!”