Some things that have occurred in the online Paganverse have led me to believe, I should address this. Let’s talk about Fyrnsidu.
Origins of Fyrnsidu
Fyrnsidu, which translates to “The Old Custom” in Old English, is a modern term coined to describe a particular reconstructed form of Anglo-Saxon Heathenship. To my knowledge, this term had never been documented prior to 1999, when I first introduced it.
The development of Fyrnsidu began in the late 1990s within my congregation, based out of the Front Range of Colorado. We began networking with other folks who were seeking a “non-theodish” alternative form of Anglo-Saxon Heathenry with formalization occurring in the early 2000s. We published the core doctrines of this faith in 2001 on the website fyrnsidu.org, outlining our vision for a reconstructed, traditionalist form of Anglo-Saxon Heathenry. This initiative led to the creation of a nonprofit organization aimed at teaching and advancing our interpretation of Heathenry, while actively networking with those who resonated with our perspective.
Core Principles
Our version of Fyrnsidu was rooted in reconstructionist principles, seeking inspiration from Iron-Age Germanic cultic practices and ethical frameworks. We sought to make this faith practicable yes, but wanted to adhere to something our Anglo-Saxon age forebears would recognize, as faithfully as possible. The faith was theistic, focusing predominantly on Anglo-Saxon gods and customs, and consciously excluding significant elements of Hellenism, which already had a robust revival underway.
Challenges and Evolution
Around 2008, the official organization known as the “Fellowship of Anglo-Saxon Heathenry” was dissolved due to organizational challenges and a split between myself and another leader, Alaric Albertsson. Despite the dissolution, our core group continued to practice the faith in real life, uninterrupted, evolving and refining from that time until now. Our Facebook group remained open until 2019.
As time passed, we observed that the term “Fyrnsidu” was adopted by various online communities, who explored it in new directions, to put it blandly. These new directions included incorporating far-right English nationalism, far-left activism, and introducing syncretic and Hellenistic elements as well as lax and largely unarticulated ethical positions that diverged from its original intent. A number of blogs began appearing in the year or two following the official suspension of operations by the Fellowship, purporting to be sources of reliable information on Fyrnsidu. I will say now, that these blog authors were not, any of them, members of the Fellowship during a very recent past in which they had been interested in Heathenry, and the Fellowship had still been operating. To be clear, most of these blog authors had a window of opportunity to contribute to the state of the Heathen revival in the form of Fyrnsidu, but declined to do so until after the official ministry we had founded, was defunct. Then they appeared in droves, in some cases presenting as “leaders” of one person congregations, and began holding forth on what Fyrnsidu was, using what appears to be largely personalized revisions our our body of work. This body of work was the collective output of several of our founding members, who had done countless hours of research and written many articles on what we understood, at the time, to be the firmest reconstruction of core Anglo-Saxon Heathen practices we could put forth, with the sources then at our disposal.
In some cases, this new wave of uncurated Fyrnsidu “remixes” in the 2008-2015 timeframe incorporated radical politics, or other ahistorical or New Age elements not present in the version of Heathenry that our founding kindred had continued to teach and practice locally by that name, which we had coined specifically for the purpose of describing our faith, as opposed to other adjacent traditions like Irminism or Theodism. In other words, our brand had been essentially appropriated by practitioners of of various neo-pagan practices we ourselves found unrecognizable as the Fyrnsidu we had developed, practiced, and then set forth in writing.
Reestablishing Traditionalist Roots
In 2019, having recognized that the Fyrnsidu we sighted in the wild was not largely representative of our vision and that these practitioners were not folks we would call co-religious, we had a decision to make. We had decided that having grown wiser, and having learned many things, we would once again try to share our work and our vision with others who may be searching for a complete and practicable modern West Germanic Faith. Several other thought leaders and myself talked, and aligned a few bullet points.
- Fyrnsidu means “Ancient Custom”, and our customs are inspired by ancient customs, yes. But they are, unequivocally modern in many respects, and adapted to modern life. Calling our religion “Fyrnsidu” is both vague, and maybe even sort of inaccurate. Similar terms have been used in older writings to refer to Judaism, rather than Heathenry, and so the term is a bit ambiguous in some situations.
- The term had been absconded with by enough unrelated modern groups, that we would simply never wrest full control of it again without a lot of arguing on the Internet, which we really weren’t interested in. We declined to fight these folks for it, a favor they’ve largely not repaid in civility.
Thus, the Ingwine Heathenship movement was launched to realign with the historically based, traditionalist faith that the original practitioners of Fyrnsidu envisioned. This movement aims to bring forward teachings that remained true to the core principles we initially set forth, continuing to share this vision with anyone who may find value in it, on a global scale. Recently, during a private conversation, our movement was characterized as “A new name for a new direction”. I want to now correct this for the record. Ingwine Heathenship is NOT a new name, for a new direction. It is a new name, for the old direction.
It is Fyrnsidu that has gone in a new direction. For what it is worth, that is the honest perspective, rendered as dispassionately as possible, of the guy who literally coined the word decades ago. And if I may, as a parting thought, before I end this post:
One may not construct the verb fyrnsidian in OE, it isn’t a word, and if it was– it would mean ” to ancientishly lay down the guidelines” or something. Therefore, one may not derive from it the masculine agent noun, “fyrnsidere”. I know one of those bloggers from the 2010s who subsequently quit Heathenry said you could, but you can’t. Even if you could, it would mean something like “Former Coach”, but it doesn’t mean follower of a Old Custom. It’s gibberish, I’m sorry. And in my view, when I see the defense “other heathens I talk to on the Internet do it, so I’m doubling down” being offered, it just makes the cognitive dissonance in claiming “ancient” status for your siduOE - A custom, manner of moral conduct, or tradition. See: https://bosworthtoller.com/27640 More seem even more glaring. If you must have a neologism for this, consider fyrnsidfylgend or something that makes sense. I think it’s silly to make up impossible words in a language you cannot read, just to apply them to a New Age religion whose very name implies ancientness, and then refuse to accept new information, about what is actually old and what isn’t.
That’s just me.
