Others, less focused on heritage, nevertheless sought alternative faith systems whose intellectual
practice and historical foundation felt authentic and meaningful. The followers of these faith
systems would come to call it “Heathenry,” a term used to demarcate it from other Neopagan
religions whose sources are more modern. Although other Germanic reconstructionist NRMs
refer to themselves as “Heathen,” this work is concerned mainly with the practitioners of Ásatrú,
which endeavors to reconstruct the beliefs and practices of the Germanic peoples in Germany,
Sweden, Iceland, Norway, and Great Britain around the time of the Viking age, from the 7
th
to
10
th
centuries.
Stephen McNallen formalized American Heathenry in 1974 by founding the Asatru Folk
Assembly (Linzie 2003, Gardell 200?, Kaplan 1997). In this respect, Ásatrú is both “new” and
“old,” a phenomenon that Martin Marty (1985) calls an “old new religion,” and Robbins (2000)
refers to as a “revitalization movement.” The religion's origin is lost in antiquity; however, at its
peak, it covered all of Northern Europe. In 1000 CE, Iceland was peacefully converted to
Christianity, and Sweden was ruled by a Heathen king until 1085 CE, after which Heathenry
became a memory. It was another hundred years, at least, until Christian Monks in Iceland
recorded “the lore,” tales of their forebears, known to us as the Icelandic Sagas, along with the
Eddas (Poetic and Prose) and other peripheral resources, including archaeological, linguistic, and
historical research.
METHODS
This study is a blending of ethnographic methods and research roles, in an endeavor to
“engage with real life in all its glory and mundane horror” (Behar 1999:476). It is informed by
insights from feminist methods in that it involves reflexivity with a recognition of the
interactional nature of the relationship between the observer and observed (Coffey 1999).
3
Convention