| I read about the Norse gods as a child, and felt a strong kinship with them, with their mostly rural world, their sense of honor, their warlike nature. They were the only gods that seemed to really relate to me and my world. But there was far less material on them than on the Greek and Roman gods, who seemed much slicker and more cosmopolitan, and who were represented by far more artists and authors from the time of Homer to the present. It was easier to know them, and when I studied Greek and Latin, I felt that I knew them even better. I largely got over my original childhood feeling that they were somehow culturally alien to me and my background. But still, they remained someone else's gods, and belonged to a warmer and easier world than the one I knew. One day while my girlfriend, Catherine, was teaching a night class I was waiting for her and looking around on the internet. I stumbled onto an Asatru site, and then others. After class I showed her, and she was very excited. Catherine had read the D'Aurlies big book of Norse gods as a child, and had always felt at home with the Norse gods. At that point we were seriously considering joining the Asatru religion. But then, with more research, I discovered that there were some virilantly racist Asatru groups in the U.S., and decided that this was a can of worms I didn't care to open, so the matter was dropped for a month or so. But the gods would not go away, and we shortly decided that this was our religion. We were married that fall in an oak grove on our farm by an Asatru gythia (something like priestess). Since then we have joined The Troth, a large, non-racist Asatru group, and attended Trothmoot, their big yearly gathering. The Troth is the largest single Asatru organization, and involves a wide range of activities and services. | |
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