A B É F H I N S T W Þ
Fo Fr Fy

Fyrnsida

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Concept of Sidu

The Old English term sidu (plural sida) appears in most Germanic languages in some form, and is central to the preservation and transmission of Heathen Germanic beliefs. It could be translated as ‘manner of conduct’, but also ‘tradition’ and ‘custom’. What we set out to do in this section, is identify a core set of Heathen customs we can support with sources, that would provide a framework for creating a modern set of living traditions as a sort of prototype of Ingwine Heathenship. Those customs which can be associated with pre-conversion or at least pre-industrial Heathen practices, we sometimes call Fyrnsida, ‘Old Ways’. From these documented or reconstructed customs we will extract what we believe to be the inherent value to us as modern people, and create a forward-looking Heathen tradition in the spirit of the old. The assumption is that modern practitioners who derive value from it will no doubt form their own variants among their kindred groups or fellowships.

Each topic below constitutes a fyrnsidu, and includes a core thesis, a proposition about early Heathen belief and practice, that we will then support with evidence. While we wish to envision a living religious practice on this site, we feel that in order to extract maximum value from the accumulated wisdom of generations, we should predicate these modern traditions on a foundation of authentic pre-conversion Heathen religion, to the extent we can know what that really was. It is fair to say based on the evidence (or lack thereof) that Heathen customs were for the most part organic and originally unwritten, and varied not only over time, but from place to place, and from tribe to tribe.

The word sidu itself is derived from Proto-Germanic *siduz, and that from Proto-Indo-European *swedʰ- (‘custom, habit’). We employ this term today to indicate social norms among Heathens. These social norms are derived insofar as we can, from from those we understand to have been prevalent among many polytheists in the Roman and Early Medieval periods of Anglo-Saxon England and the North Sea surround, but there are two caveats to this.

Firstly, as discussed earlier, there is the problem of evidence and attestation. We don’t always know what these traditions were, and when we do, we are not always able to tell with certainty what their religious significance was, if any.

Secondly, given this limitation, it is sometimes the case that we need to fill in the gaps in in our knowledge by borrowing from, or doing a comparative study of, sources that are not strictly in our Ingvaeonic scope. We may need to take recourse to Scandinavian, early Germanic, or even Celtic lore, to help rationalize the limited data we have. Nevertheless, there are clues as to what these Ingvaeonic traditions may have looked like, and ironically, it is the Catholic Church that was instrumental in preserving them.

In his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, (written some time around 1010) Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, admonishes his flock at some length on the various nefarious traditions still being observed by the English people, and for which he blames a 30 year long spate of Viking raids that he saw as a sign of the Christian God’s anger with the English. At one point he inveigles against the peoples’ alleged “human trafficking, and Heathen Malpractice”, referring firstly, perhaps to the act of nýdþeówige, compelling indentured servitude from those who cannot repay a debt, and second to a surviving pagan folk-custom among the common English, if not any longer among the social elite:

þurh mannsylena and þurh hǣþene unsida

He continues to cite additional “manifold” misdeeds and crimes, some of which stem from acts of apostasy and fornication, and others explicitly from the tolerance of “witches and furies”:

…and hēr syndan wiċċan and wælcyrian;

It should be noted here that the OE wælcyrian is cognate the the Norse valkyrie, a hand-maiden of Óðinn and “chooser of the slain”.

While some debate continues on whether or not the Anglo-Saxons viewed these sorcerous women as being quite the same thing as their later Norse counterparts, this uncertainty falls under the heading of “absence of proof”, rather than “proof of absence”. The connection of the wælcyrian to the Anglo-Saxon god Woden, is not ironclad but it certainly is nowhere refuted in the lore. Clearly, they were considered to be female entities of great spiritual potency, and of very real concern to the poor Archbishop, desperate to claim the souls of the English for Mother Church.

So it would seem that even in the time of Wulfstan, in the 11th Century, some traces of a native (and to Wulfstan, unwanted) Heathen folk-tradition (‘hǣþene unsida’) remained, though it is hard to credit it with the wholesale debauchery of the English nation, which the loquacious Wulfstan laments so passionately, and at such length!

This and similar ecclesiastical documents can reveal much about the tension between Christian and Heathen notions of virtue and morality, a tension which survived well into the late Medieval period, despite some contrary claims of a swift and enthusiastic “conversion” of the English. Indeed, it is astutely observed by Tylluan Penry in The Magical World of the Anglo-Saxons (2012), that Penitentials and other church edicts reveal much about Heathen customs surviving in Medieval England, if only by being so explicit in what they forbid people from doing!

Medieval English Heathenship almost certainly involved numerous cults and local customs which would seem to have conflicted with one another or at least shown considerable variation, and yet ancient Heathenship largely tolerated and incorporated such differences. As such it was a religion (if this is the even right word) of tolerance for diverging beliefs, that had little in the way of a unifying orthodoxy, beyond mutually agreeable ethical codes and manners. What exactly a person believed was less important than how one conducted oneself among others. Even the notion of a single “Pantheon” of gods was something of an innovation. Appropriately, the form of Ingwine Heathendom being described here is not being held out as the only legitimate West Germanic traditional religion, and even within Ingwine Heathendom there will be regional variations, and household traditions that are not uniform across the entire “religion”. This is not only to be expected, it is entirely acceptable.

Spiritual Relationships built upon Sacrifice

The Old English word most often associated with Heathen worship rites is probably the world gield, which means to sacrifice, or to offer up as a gift or tribute. The relationship of human to God was seen as one of reciprocity. Feasts were held in honor of the Gods, and a portion of the feast offered to them in sacrifice. This was hoped to bring the celebrants closer to the God or Goddess being honored, just as gifts exchanged among mortals was seen as key to forming friendships. While the Gods might enjoin mortals to behave well and cultivate strengths while redressing their faults, it is not primarily through obedience, or through adherence to complex forms of pious behavior that the Medieval or Roman Age Heathens thought to grow closer to their Gods. The Gods of the Ingwine were liley seen as guides, protectors, even exemplars of certain virtues, but probably not “supervisors”. There are doubtless many small ways that the ancient Heathens sought to earn the good regard of Gods or other holy wights, but the most formalized of such practices was probably that known as the blót.

We have numerous, overt as well as somewhat oblique references to the sacral feast known as the blót in literature, however many of these are to be found in later, Scandinavian poems. Nonetheless, the term is attested in Old English, as well as Old Norse, and stems from the Proto-Germanic *blōtą (‘sacrifice’).

The compendium Heimskringla, penned by the poet Snorri Sturluson mentions this rite a number of times, including an attestation of Haust blót (‘autumn sacrifice’), in the heroic Yngling Saga. While this Christian poet has been known to take considerable license with regard to Heathen ideas and his reliability is considered dubitable at best, enough corroborating evidence exists around this festival to for us to accept the celebration of an autumnal sacrifice in Scandinavia as historical in the broadest sense, at least.

We also have a firsthand account of the Álfablót (‘Elf blót’), in the skaldic poem called Austrfararvísur, by the Norwegian skald Sigvatr Þórðarson. In this account, we learn that this feast, sacred to the Elves or guardian spirits, was a private matter only to be discussed among the household or local community, and not a time during which the intrusion of strangers was welcome…to the discomfort of the Christian Þórðarson, who chose this exact time to intrude!

These attestations come from fairly late, and from Scandinavian sources, but we are not without clues to the usage of this term in Old English. Given the context provided by Bosworth-Toller for the terms blót and geblót in Old English glossaries, it seems clear the usage was much the same in pagan England. A further clue can be found in the Old English Martyrology, a fragmentary document likely compiled in the 9th Century, which includes the work of such luminaries as Bede and Isidore of Seville, where it is written:

Se mónaþ is nemned Novembris on Léden, and on úre “geþeóde blótmónaþ”, forðon úre yldran, ðá hý hǽðene wǽron, on ðam mónþe hý bleóton á, ðæt is, ðæt hý betǽhton and benémdon hyra deófolgyldum ða neát ða ðe hý woldon syllan.

‘The month is called Novembris in Latin, and in our language “bloodmonth”, because our elders when they had been heathens, always in this month sacrificed, that is, that they took and devoted to their idols the cattle which they wished to offer.’

Furthermore, as late as 690, Arch-Bishop Theodore of Canterbury was said to have proscribed eating food that “had been offered in sacrifice to devils” and the burning of grain after a man had died, “for the well-being of the living and the house”, (Frank Stenton as quoted by Stanfield 2014: 166) which would seem to suggest that well into the 7th Century, the custom of offering consecrated food to the Gods, or ancestors persisted. This tradition remains a core part of our practice today.

Veneration of High Gods

Ancient Germanic Heathens, and presumably Medieval English Heathens, revered High Gods of their tribe or nation, who embodied various virtues, powers, or forces of nature that they hoped to channel in their everyday lives. They assigned the Gods a cultic significance that at times is not reflected in warrior-class heroic poetry of later ages. Place-names in England, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands show that certain Gods were clearly in the forefront of the people’s consciousness, even though few written accounts of the mythical feats or exploits of these Gods remain in the Western Germanic body of literature. In fact, it could be argued that the popularity of certain gods as “Action Heroes” actually diminished their status as objects of worship, over time (Stanfield 2014:23). Our version of Hæþenscipe places emphasis on the reverence of our Gods as aspects of Divinity, rather than as literary figures in adventure stories. Moreover, since so few of these heroic tales involving the High Gods themselves survive in Ingvaeonic languages, this point is somewhat moot, as there is little chance of ever reconstructing a modern belief system based primarily upon heroic myths of the Gods.

So, who were these gods? We have in some cases a fairly robust amount of evidence for a god or goddess’s pre-conversion cults, characteristics, and myths. In other more numerous cases, we have very little. In some few cases, we have only a handful of references or a single paragraph from a single source, to lend credibility to many decades of reverence among modern Heathen communities. Yet, as we seek to rediscover our spiritual heritage, let us not despair of the dearth of evidence, but instead seek to reacquaint ourselves with these divine beings, starting with what we have. We will embrace the veneration of gods known to be holy to the Anglo-Saxons, and the Frisians. We will also consider gods and goddesses known to have been worshiped by ancestor tribes such as the Chauci, and (with a critical eye toward relevance) those beings worshiped by closely proximate Istvaeonic tribes such as the Cherusci.

Veneration of Ancestors and other Wights

Early Medieval English Heathenship involved veneration of the dead/ancestors, and valued a sense of connection to the past. As Semple eloquently observes in 2013:

The powerful dead—whether remembered or imagined, commemorated as ancestors or as mythical heroes—provided unrivalled opportunities for creating a sense of place and importance in early medieval societies.

Given the archaeological evidence that continues to come to light as of this writing, it seems clear that Ingwine Heathens used cemeteries as places of assembly, and offered food including grains, meat animals, and even entire cooked feasts in tribute to the honored dead, ostensibly in the hope that they would look kindly upon the living.

As noted by Sanmark in Signals of Belief in Early England (2010):

In Anglo-Saxon England evidence of drinking and feasting associated with burial has been noted in a few cemeteries; at Sutton Hoo evidence of a cattle feast following the construction of Mound 5. At Snape in East Anglia seven pits have been interpreted as cooking pits used for ritual feasting or cooking at the time of the burial.

Sanmark also goes on to say, that annual feasts were evidently held for some highly-regarded ancestors, which brings to mind putative traditions of feting the Ancestors on such occasions as Mōdraniht, or (‘Mothers’ Night’) when it seems the Idese would have been worshipped. (See below: Idese). Turning once again to the early Church teaching in Anglo-Saxon England, we find clues as to observances venerating the ancestors, to which Christianity had begun to turn a critical eye. The Confessional of Egbert prescribes one year of fasting for “Anyone who burns corn in the place where a dead man lay, for the health of living men and of his house”.

As is often the case with such Penitentials, these penalties can offer insight into what it was the Heathen did that the Christian feared, as the Church sought to control the narrative of death and afterlife in Early Medieval England. This and similar admonishments from other Church officials would seem to indicate that Heathens sacrificed burnt offerings of grains at the graveside, in the expectation that good luck would accrue to themselves and their families. We know that in the dangerous and fast-changing world of the pagan Anglo-Saxons and Northmen, kinship was incredibly important, and one’s ancestors were evidently felt to remain an influence on the lives of the living. Indeed, some ancestors may have grown so great in reputation, so formidable even in death, that they were raised to the status of Æelf (‘male guardian spirit’) or ides (‘female guardian spirit’). While the common thinking of the ancient Heathen Anglo-Saxons on the subject of the transformation of ancestors into Æelfe or Idese is not transparent to us today, scholars such as Turville-Petre have strongly equated these beings with Ancestor worship. The OE term Ides for example, is cognate to the ON dísir, which is interpreted as (‘dignified lady’) or (‘goddess’). The dísir are associated in the minds of many with the Latin matronae, Germanic goddesses that typically appear in threes, evoking images of the Eddaic Nornir, the goddesses that decree the fate of men. This classification of goddesses may include Baduhenna, Hludana, and possibly Nehalennia.

The Æelfe or (‘Elves’) on the other hand, seem largely to have been masculine originally, with female elves being introduced into the English lexicon fairly late (Hall, 2004). Like their female counterparts, Alaric Hall suspects Elves to have been seen as largely as aligned with the Ése, the Heavenly Gods, and with Men, more often than monsters. The later association of elves with disease and with misfortune seems to have been the result of Christian efforts at demonizing these beings, which bear a great resemblance to the subset of Norse gods known in the Eddas as the Vanir. Indeed, Professor Hall and Stephen Pollington in his 2011 volume, The Elder Gods, seem to concur that the Vanir are an artificial construct on the part of Snorri Sturluson to “systematize” the Gods, placing them within the neat taxonomy he had created. In fact, it is the Æelfe who are seen paired with the Ése in most other poetic sources, and who seem to exhibit the characteristics one might associate with “earthborn” or terrestrial Gods. In fact, Ingui Frea who in Norse sources is called Freyr, is referred to as “King of the Elves”, which recalls the words of Tacitus, who observed in Germania:

In the traditional songs which form their only record of the past the Germans celebrate an earth-born god called Tuisto. His son Mannus is supposed to be the fountain-head of their race and himself to have begotten three sons who gave their names to three groups of tribes – the Ingaevones, nearest the sea; the Herminones, in the interior; and the Istaevones, who comprise all the rest.

One might reasonably suppose then, that the Æelfe and the Idese comprise a type of earthy or chthonic gods or demi-gods, who linger closer to the physical reality of humankind than perhaps do the Ése, and over whom Ingui Frea (and perhaps to some degree, his brothers) hold power. It may be agreeable to assert that the spirits of particularly noteworthy mortals can join their ranks, explaining the close association of the cults of the Æelfe and Idese with ancestor worship.

Venerating and Personifying the Earth

There is every reason to believe the Anglo-Saxons knew and revered “Earth Mother” as a personification of the fruitful earth itself. The existence of such Earth-Goddess cults can be inferred not only from early Germanic sources such as Germania (Tacitus, 98 XL), but also from medieval Anglo-Saxon sources that would appear almost entirely devoid of Christian metaphors, such as the Æcerbot or “Charming of the Plough”, a magic spell for healing barren land, which despite the inclusion of a few paternosters and a sprinkling of references to the Christian God, seems to wholly ignore the pagan ramifications of the ritual’s content as though it needed no apology (Stansfield, 2014 pg 149-160; Penry 2012 pg 138). In this charm or spell, designed to remedy barren soil, the practitioner is urged:

…when that all is done, then take unfamiliar seed from an almsman and give him twice as much as you took from him, and gather all his plough gear together. Bore then into the beam frankincense, fennel, blessed soap and blessed salt. Take then the seed set it on the plow’s body. Say then: Erce, Erce, Erce, Earth’s Mother! Give us All-wielder, ever-ruler, acres fruitful and flourishing. Fertile and strong, high shafts, bright abundance . And there broad barley crops. And there white wheat crops. And there all Earth’s abundance.

Grendon 1909: 173)

As can be seen throughout the text of the Æcerbot, there are several invocations of an Anglo-Saxon Earth Goddess, as well as allusions to the Christian God. The text reads like a prayer at times, though the inclusion of herbs and incense thought to be efficacious, as well as other ritualized preparations of the plough, would seem more properly to belong in a magical ritual. Certainly, the over-arching formula is similar the that of other magical charms, making it an odd fit for a Christian service! Certainly, seeking the blessings of Earth’s Mother, or Folde, “Field, the folk’s mother”, does not align with Christian doctrine whatsoever. This obviously pagan charm, which seems to have survived into 11th Century with much of the Heathen imagery intact, certainly invites speculation on just how completely England had been “converted”. At the very least this would seem to indicate that the “conversion” in England involved a great deal of syncretism, at least early in the process, and was neither the abrupt nor complete transition from one faith to another than has been portrayed in some outdated scholarship. Here we have a rite than can not be considered anything other than magical, and is even self-referential using the term gealdor (‘magical chant’) and involves a direct invocation of an Earth Goddess, not once but several times. Here, she is called Folde, and Fira Modor (‘Mother of the Living/Mankind’). In other metrical charms, she is referred to simply as Eorþ. This goddess is likely reflected in later Norse mythology, in the persons of Fulla (‘Bountiful One’) or Hlóðyn, the mother of Thor. It is also a safe assumption that this is the goddess Nerthus whom Tacitus identified as being revered among the ancient Angles, as ‘Terra Mater’, the Mother Earth.

In light of this relatively strong evidence from primary and secondary sources, let us accept the premise that “Earth Worship” is a part of our hereditary practice. We refer to this Earth goddess elsewhere as Hludana (almost certainly the earlier form of ON Hlóðyn), and also as Folde as is done in the Charming of the Plough, though Earþ or possibly Erce would be appropriate, though the later is the subject of some controversy.

Offerings at Prominent Topographical Features

English Heathenship clearly involved sacrificial offerings (gield) not just in settlements or putative “temples” but in cemeteries, wells, rocks, groves and prominent natural terrain features, signaling a powerful association of such places with the concept of Holiness. As Sarah Semple observes in 2013 in her Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England, the Anglo-Saxons lived in a “numinous and sacred natural landscape“ where the animals, plants, trees and even stones were likely seen to have been imbued with an animating principle, mysterious and “alive” in a real sense. Liminal features such as rivers, wells, crossroads, or the howes of the dead, in particular would have been seen as potent places, where the mundane world and the otherworldly might meet and co-mingle. Abbot Aelfric says in his Lives of Saints, written well into the 10th Century:

Neither shall the Christian inquire of the foul witch concerning his health, though she may be able to tell something through the devil, for it will be harmful, (126) and all will be poisonous which cometh from him, and all his followers shall perish in the end. Some men are so blinded, that they bring their offerings to an earth-fast stone, and eke to trees, (130) and to well-springs, even as witches teach…

This gives some strong indication that even at this very late date in the timeline of ancestral English Heathenship, the Church was still struggling to suppress the custom of making votive offerings at natural features in England (Skeat 1881). Such offerings or observations at wells in particular may very well (if one will pardon the pun) have survived in England into modern times, in the form of “Well Dressing”, a custom still prevalent in places like Tissington, in Derbyshire (Jewitt 1863). This custom involves decorating or “dressing” wells with ribbons, garlands, painted placards or flowers. While this custom is anecdotally connected with Heathen practices intended to thank the Gods or other wights for supplying a reliable source of water, it would seem this is speculative, though I find the connection quite reasonable. This tradition of connecting the divine, or otherworldly influences to topographical features strongly implies a belief by ancient Anglo-Saxon Heathens, in the notion of animism, the belief that natural objects, natural phenomena, and the universe itself possess an animating, spiritual force, and can perhaps even be said to have intention. This principle is key to understanding the magical practices of these people, in which herbs, animals, and even stones were thought to possess qualities that could be harnessed to provide protection, ease illness, or protect one from harm. We shall explore this tradition briefly in the next topic, where we establish the thesis is that pre-conversion West Germanic peoples including the Anglo-Saxons, practiced a well developed system of magic involving the use of runes, talismans, herb-lore, and the principle of animism for the purpose of exerting influence on events in the material world. This segues nicely into our next old custom.

A Magical Worldview

In this section we briefly review the historical evidence which lends support to the idea that the worldviews of many practicing heathens in pre-conversion times were inclusive of mysticism, and indeed embraced it. It may be worth reiterating the observation made by Sarah Semple in a previous section of this chapter, that the world of the Heathen Anglo-Saxons and sister tribes was inherently “numinous”, which is to say, full of mystery and otherworldly influences.

We see throughout a number of literary sources, as well as in the material evidence found in mortuary and other archaeological sites in England and in Europe, that Early Medieval Anglo-Saxon Heathenship (and certainly that of the even older Germanic progenitor tribes) affirmed the efficacy of divination, healing magic, and herbalism. In fact, the archaeological record and literary corpus can illuminate the presence of folk-magic and wort-cunning more strongly than many other aspects of pagan practice, and indeed, much of the surviving literature in Old English consists of Herbals, and outright magical “spells”. Prominent examples would be the codex known as Lacnunga (“Leechcraft” or Remedies) and also Bald’s Leechbook. Other surviving works written in Anglo-Saxon from the Early Medieval period are characterized as charms or spells, many of which differ from herbal remedies only in that they contain more overtly “magical” ritual elements. One such case would be the Nine Herbs Charm, wherein the god Woden uses herbs or “glory twigs”, to effect a cure:

Wyrm cóm snícan tóslát hé man ðá genóm Wóden nygon wuldortánas, slóh ðá þá næddran, þæt héo on VIIII tófléah. Þær geændade Æppel and áttor, þæt héo næfre ne wolde on hús búgan.

‘A snake came crawling, it bit a man. Then Woden took nine glory-twigs, Smote the serpent so that it flew into nine parts. There apple brought this pass against poison, That she nevermore would enter her house.’

A further study of Medieval English and German metrical charms cements the notion that even when the use of herbs or naturopathy is not explicit, the Gods were quite often viewed as a source of healing, and healing lore. The so-called Merseberg Charms, a fragmentary document containing what remains of two healing spells written in Old High German, tell us:

Phol ende uuodan uuorun zi holza. du uuart demo balderes uolon sin uuoz birenkit. thu biguol en sinthgunt, sunna era suister; thu biguol en friia, uolla era suister; thu biguol en uuodan, so he uuola conda: sose benrenki, sose bluotrenki, sose lidirenki: ben zi bena, bluot zi bluoda, lid zi geliden, sose gelimida sin!

‘Phol and Wodan were riding to the woods, and the foot of Balder’s foal was sprained So Sinthgunt, Sunna’s sister, conjured it; and Frija, Volla’s sister, conjured it; and Wodan conjured it, as well he could: Like bone-sprain, so blood-sprain, so joint-sprain: Bone to bone, blood to blood, joints to joints, so may they be glued.’

One pertinent conclusion the author derives from this review of old charms and Herbals, is that Heathen religious and magical rites overlapped, if one is willing to stipulate that an invocation of the highest Heathen Gods in a charm or healing spell is by definition, sacred in nature. Certainly, the Charming of the Plough or any of the other charms thus cited could have been expected to have been performed by a qualified individual on behalf of another community member, making it something of a sacerdotal service. Thus, the arbitrary categorization of some rites and practices as magical and others as religious, may ultimately be tantamount to creating a distinction without a difference (Storms 1948). In her excellent volume, The Magical World of the Anglo-Saxons, Tylluan Penry offers considerable insight into this overlap, and explores in some depth the concept of Animism as it relates to Heathen belief, and further explores Medieval English practices of divination and talismanic magic that are beyond the scope of this work. The reader is highly encouraged to peruse this book for more historical context, but the following recapitulation seems warranted and agreeable at this point; Early Medieval English Heathenship involved the ritual use of oils, perfumes, crystals, gems, glass-work, knives, talismanic objects, herbs, woods, and incense. Practitioners engaged in divination, naturopathic medicine, and ritual magic for the purposes of healing, protection, and wonder-working. Many modern Heathens find such accouterments and practices appealing, and this is entirely appropriate.

Virtue-based Ethics

It seems that notions of “morality” and “good manners” would have been largely interchangeable in pre-conversion Heathen worldviews. Religiosity (and by extension ethics) in Germanic Heathen culture was defined by social norms that proved agreeable to everyone involved. Morality was not codified in scripture, as one sees in Middle Eastern faiths. While Heathen Gods and spirits have been seen in the lore to “punish” wrongdoing (as does Odin in the Eddaic poem, Grímnismál), and even to hand down laws on rare occasion (Fosite in the Codex Unia), one will notice a lack of asceticism, commandments, or proscriptions in primary Heathen sources. Good moral conduct mainly came down to proper modes of interacting with others, as well as conducting oneself in a manner that fulfilled social and religious obligations within the community. Such modes of conduct were called (þeáwas ‘thews’), a concept that overlaps considerably with that of sida. To offer a dowry for the hand of a lady in marriage might be a thew, or conducting a rite to dedicate oneself to a religion. Many thews would have been shared across broad swathes of Germania, while others were more local to a single community or grouping of communities.

In terms of how ethics and manifestations of ethical thinking were broadly characterized, the pre-conversion Heathens would seem to have had a virtue-based model similar to the one so famously put forth by Aristotle, except of course, with a Germanic cultural bias. Strong evidence of this virtue-based model of ethics can been seen in surviving Anglo-Saxon primary sources such as the epic Beowulf, in heroic poems such as The Battle of Maldon, or in the wisdom poetry collected by the early Church in anthologies such as the Exeter Book, a 10th Century compendium of collected gnomic verses from various anonymous authors. While the scribes of the Exeter Book were certainly Christian, much of the wisdom within its pages is reflective of the Anglo-Saxon worldview of the proceeding several centuries, and while references to Christian ideas certainly exist within the body of work, they are not integral to the whole, as each poem and indeed each gnome of this sort of wisdom poetry tends to stand on its own, thus Christian influences are easily identified and discarded. Some of these gnomes stand out as being particularly canny and very much applicable to a Heathen mindset, such as this one from Maxims I, which the philologist Leonard Neidorf has postulated was first composed in either the seventh or the eighth century, placing it as (almost certainly) contemporaneous with still-practicing Heathens on the British Isles:

Ræd sceal mon secgan, rune writan, leoþ gesingan, lofes gearnian.

‘One should give counsel, write runes, sing songs, earn praise. ‘

(Maxims: 138)

From a study of the Old English poetry corpus both gnomic and heroic, it can be confidently asserted that the Ingwine found wisdom, loyalty, generosity, and courage to be admirable traits, among several others. Such traits might be referred to as heáfod-mægen ‘cardinal virtues’ and were exhibited by exemplars of Heathen virute such as Beowulf, or Offa of Angeln. The cultivation of these virtues lead to the accumulation of personal honor, or arweorþnes. Further codifying these many positive traits however, and proposing an authoritative “list” of virtues that can be held up as an honor code for all modern Heathens is problematic, and such efforts have met with mixed reactions among modern Heathen communities. It is however, important that we have some framework for teaching and self-evaluating ethical conduct. Therefore, in the interest of putting forth a complete set of practical teachings for the modern Heathen, we will attempt to condense the many laudable traits we understand to be of value in historical Heathendom, and present them into a list in a forthcoming section, for ease of study. It should be reiterated that such a “thew list”, while certainly espousing a historically accurate set of values, was not written down as such in pre-conversion times, and other lists or presentations may be equally valid. Our list is not the list, it is simply a list. It could be expanded, or possibly contracted, but we will present it in a manner that is hopefully teachable, memorable, and provides adequate guidance to the modern practitioner, without becoming dogma.

Strong Social Bonds and Community

As touched upon above, the Migration Age or Early Medieval period in Europe were full of change and upheaval, thus social stability and community were incredibly important to the Ingvaeones and their descendants. Regarding the Anglo-Saxons in particular, we see evidence of a people that lived in small, close-knit communities, and the foundation of those communities were families. These communities were not clans in the sense that the Scottish had large, territorial clans that were all blood relatives, but rather groupings of families and individuals, as theorized by Heinrich Härke in his paper Early Anglo-Saxon Social Structure:

Overall, the evidence seems to point to small communities made up of a few farmsteads each. It is suggested here that households formed the basic residential and economic units in the fifth to mid-seventh centuries. They comprised individuals and groups of different status, most likely the family of the master of the household, and unfree or semi-free dependants. This suggestion, based primarily on the archaeological and skeletal evidence, agrees well with Lancaster’s analysis of the Anglo-Saxon kinship system which led her to postulate that local groups are more likely to have consisted of househoulds with dependants, rather than extended kin groups (Lancaster 1958, 373-374).

Here we see a model for our basic social units within Heathenship today, local “clans” or congregations in the sense of communities working together for mutual benefit, and comprised of blood-related families and other individuals, all cemented together in so-called “fictive kinships” as partially defined by encyclopedia.com as:

…the extension of kinship obligations and relationships to individuals specifically not otherwise included in the kinship universe. Godparenthood (or coparenthood), in its many manifestations, is the most commonly cited illustration, but there are numerous other examples. In many societies, people have “aunts” or “uncles” who are merely their parents’ closest friends. Members of religious movements may refer to each other as “brother” or “sister” while observing the rules and prohibitions attached to those statuses.

We know from surviving textual sources that three very important social structures to the pre-conversion Germanic peoples were blood-kinship, the fellowship of the community, and the bonds between companions and their lord in a warband. Regarding the importance of family and bonds of kinship, much can be gleaned from the attitudes of the ostensibly Heathen hero Beowulf, who tells us:

Sibb æfre ne mæg wiht onwendan, þam ðe wel þenceð.

‘Kinship can never in any way be set aside, for one who thinks rightly’.

Here we see the titular hero express in no uncertain terms the close bonds formed by blood kinship, a bond that should not be set aside without the gravest of cause. Particularly, the nuclear family was a core social institution in early Anglo-Saxon society. Marriage, parenthood, and the support of siblings were of paramount value. It is also clear, that fictive kinship in the form of companions and friends, was highly valued as well, and those who knew not friends or close kin were considered wretched, as we see in Maxims I:

Wretched is he who must live alone, to him fate has commanded that he dwell friendless. Better for him if he had a brother, both of them from one man, the heirs of an earl, if they must both go against a boar: that is a death-dealing animal. The warriors must always carry gear and sleep together. Never may they be hindered by speech, before they are parted by death. The two must sit at the gameboard, until their troubles glide from them, forget their sad happenings, have for themselves a game on the board.

Also from the same poem, we read concerning the fellowship of the community, that:

Often a man fares far from town, where he does not know to find a friend. Friendless, an unhappy man takes with him the wolves as companions, treacherous beasts.

This turn of phase brings to mind the Old English term (wearg, ‘A monster, a wolf, also an outlaw’), someone who is fit company for wolves. Thus we see, to be cast out of stable society to fend for oneself in the wilds was among the worst fates a Germanic Heathen could face. This flies in the face of the modern blogosphere which is replete with tropes about the “lone wolf” or the Heathen warrior so mighty he or she need not depend on anyone else. This stereotype is categorically false, and fails utterly to address the fact that that the Heathen tribes old old were hyper-social, and deeply interconnected. It is this sense of interconnection that defined Heathen society at many levels, not alienation, not “going it alone”. Themes which repeat again and again in Germanic wisdom poetry such as that found in the Exeter Book, or even much later in the Norse Havamal make it abundantly clear; strong friendships with like-minded people in the local community were highly treasured, as were marriage, children, and those who would stand by one in times of danger. The Migration Age was a dangerous time in which to live, and Germanic tribes found themselves, much as Heathens do today, in a rapidly changing political and ecological landscape with hazards, enemies and potential enemies always nearby. These tribes collapsed, coalesced, and recombined to form new, stronger tribes with their neighbors, and it probably should go without saying, thought it shall not– these tribes had no concept of genetics such as we do today. There is no evidence to suggest they even though of ‘race’ in modern terms, and no way they could have realistically evaluated a person’s genetic makeup beyond what was known of their immediate pedigree, or by simply observing their physical characteristics such as complexion, to which they seem to have responded with relative indifference. Atilla “The Hun” was certainly not what modern people would likely consider “White”, and while he certainly inspired fear, he also commanded the respect of Germanic peoples, including those that came into his empire such as the Ostrogoths and Heruli. Hence, there is no inkling whatsoever in textual or other sources, that these travelers, traders, and builders of communities would have sympathized with or even understood, the völkisch ideology of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Conclusions

Based on the points above (and bearing in mind that more on the subject is contained in the following sections) we can distill modern Ingwine Heathenship down to a short list of foundational, living traditions that will surely continue to evolve as our religious communities continue to grow, prosper, and adapt. These core building blocks will inform our theology going forward. This list is of course not an ancient writ or holy scripture, but a teaching tool, and represents the barest rudiments of what it means to be a practicing Ingwine Heathen. Thus for our purposes here, we define each principle, historical tradition or Fyrnsidu, that we will use for our foundation as:

Table 1:Fyrnsida Core Concepts
Spiritual Communion through Sacrifice and Gifting
Veneration of the High Gods of the West Germanic Tribes
Veneration of Ancestors, Elves and Ideses
Veneration of the Earth
Inclusion of Inspirational Topographical features in Rites
A Magical Worldview, Inclusive of Animism and Naturopathy
Cultivating Personal Honor, through virtue-based ethics
Cultivating Strong Social Bonds and Communities