What "Heathen" Actually Means
The word heathen comes from Old English hǣðen — it originally meant "one who lives on the heath," the open uncultivated land outside the Christianized village. The implication was "outsider to the church." It is the Germanic equivalent of pagan, which Latin-speakers used for rural people who had not converted. Both words were originally insults that practitioners reclaimed.
Modern Heathens use the term deliberately: it is a way of naming the tradition without borrowing from the word "pagan," which many practitioners feel is too broad — too much of a catch-all for anything non-Christian and non-Jewish. Heathenry is specifically Norse and Germanic. It has specific gods, specific cosmology, specific practice rooted in a specific body of historical sources. "Pagan" by contrast includes everything from Wicca to Hellenism to Kemetic reconstructionism. They are not the same thing.
The Old Norse term for the pre-Christian religion was forn siðr — "the old way" or "the old custom." It was not a religion in the sense the word carries today. It was not a creed. It was a set of practices, relationships with the gods, obligations to community and ancestors, and a way of understanding the cosmos. The Norse did not have a word for their religion because it was not separate from the rest of life.
Asatru, Vanatru, Theodism — What the Names Mean
The modern revival is not monolithic. Several distinct movements use different names to signal different priorities and approaches. Understanding the differences matters.
Ásatrú
Literally "true to the Aesir" — loyalty or faith directed toward the Aesir gods (Odin, Thor, Tyr, Frigg, and the rest of the main Norse pantheon). The term was coined in 1972 by Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson when he registered Ásatrúarfélagið (the Ásatrú Fellowship) with the Icelandic government, making it the first legally recognized non-Christian religion in Iceland since before the Christianization in 1000 CE. The term is now used broadly — especially in Iceland and Scandinavia — for the reconstructionist revival of Norse religion generally. In the United States, "Asatru" and "Heathenry" are often used interchangeably, though different practitioners draw the line in different places.
Heathenry
The broadest umbrella term, used primarily in the English-speaking world. Heathenry encompasses practitioners of Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and continental Germanic traditions — not just specifically Scandinavian. Someone practicing Anglo-Saxon Heathenry (sometimes called Fyrnsidu) honors Woden, Thunor, and Tiw — the Old English names for the same gods — and draws from Anglo-Saxon sources (Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem) alongside the Norse Eddas. Heathenry is deliberately wider than Asatru.
Vanatru
Literally "true to the Vanir" — a smaller movement focused specifically on the Vanir gods: Freyr, Freya, Njord, and the older fertility/earth deities. Vanatru practitioners often emphasize the older, more earth-connected aspects of Norse religion that predate the Aesir-Vanir war mythology. The distinction matters: the Aesir are associated with sovereignty, law, and sky; the Vanir with fertility, the sea, and magic. Some practitioners feel the dominant Asatru focus on Odin and Thor represents a later, more martial overlay on an older earth-honoring tradition.
Theodism
Founded in the United States by Garman Lord in 1976, Theodism is a highly structured, explicitly reconstructionist approach to Germanic religion. It emphasizes the theod — the tribe or people — as the fundamental unit of practice. Theodism is deliberately hierarchical (with formal ranks of ring-giver, thane, and thrall), requires oaths of loyalty, and focuses intensely on community cohesion and historical accuracy. It is the most demanding of the main branches — you cannot practice Theodism as a solitary. It is fundamentally group-based.
Practitioners argue intensely about these labels. Some Heathens consider "Asatru" too Iceland-specific; some Asatruars consider "Heathenry" too vague. Some reject all revival-movement labels and simply call themselves practitioners of forn siðr. What matters for practical purposes: know what tradition a particular source, community, or teacher is drawing from, because they are not all drawing from the same one.
The Modern Revival — When and Why
Norse religion was never entirely absent from European consciousness. The myths survived in Iceland — written down by Snorri Sturluson in the 13th century precisely because he was afraid they would be lost — and in the folk practices, superstitions, and calendar observances that persisted under Christianity across Scandinavia and Germany for centuries. But as an active, self-conscious religious revival, Heathenry is a 20th-century phenomenon.
The Romantic Precursors (18th–19th century)
Before there was a revival, there was a romantic rediscovery. The publication of the Prose Edda in accessible Latin translations (17th century) and the Poetic Edda in modern editions (18th century) introduced Norse mythology to European intellectual circles. German Romanticism in the early 19th century — Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm collecting folklore, Richard Wagner building his operas on Norse myth — created a cultural hunger for something pre-Christian and specifically Germanic. This was not yet religious practice. It was cultural nationalism dressed in mythological costume. The Nazis would weaponize it in the 20th century. But the romantic impulse laid the groundwork for people who would eventually want to practice, not just appreciate.
Iceland 1972 — The Formal Beginning
The formal starting point of the modern revival is Iceland, 1972. Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson, a farmer and poet who had been practicing what he called Ásatrú privately for years, petitioned the Icelandic government for official recognition. The government granted it. Ásatrúarfélagið — the Ásatrú Fellowship — became a legally recognized religious organization, able to perform legally binding marriages, funerals, and naming ceremonies. Iceland had been Christian since 1000 CE. It now had an officially recognized pre-Christian religious organization. Beinteinsson served as allsherjargoði (chief goði, or priest) until his death in 1993. The Icelandic Ásatrúarfélagið today has thousands of members and is the fastest-growing religion in Iceland.
The United States — Parallel Origins
Independently of Iceland, the revival also took root in the United States. Stephen McNallen founded the Viking Brotherhood in 1971, which became the Asatru Free Assembly (AFA) in 1974. McNallen was drawing on similar impulses — a felt connection to Norse and Germanic heritage, a sense that something had been lost in Christianization, a desire for a religion that was ancestrally rooted rather than universalist. The AFA dissolved in 1987, but was refounded as the Asatru Folk Assembly in 1994. In the intervening years, the Asatru Alliance and other organizations emerged to continue the work. American Heathenry has always been more fragmented and more contentious than its Icelandic counterpart — partly because of the larger culture, partly because of the racism controversy that never fully went away (more on that below).
The Broader Expansion (1990s–present)
The internet transformed Heathenry. What had been a scattered, locally organized movement became a globally connected one. Practitioners who were geographically isolated from any local community could find resources, debate, and community online. Academic scholarship on Norse religion became more accessible. The Troth — an explicitly inclusive Heathen organization founded in 1987 — grew into an international presence. New organizations, online kindreds (local community groups), and regional gatherings proliferated. Today Heathenry is practiced on every inhabited continent, in dozens of organized traditions and thousands of individual households. The exact number of practitioners is impossible to count, but survey data consistently places Norse/Germanic Heathenry as one of the larger contemporary Pagan movements in the Western world.
The Reconstruction Problem
Every branch of modern Heathenry is built on incomplete sources. This is not a small problem. It is the central problem, and every honest practitioner has to reckon with it.
"We have lost more than we have saved. The Eddas represent a fraction of what was believed and practiced. The sagas tell us how people behaved more than what they believed. The archaeological record is mute about inner life. We are reconstructing a living religion from fragments of a world that was systematically destroyed."
— A working description of the sources problemThe primary written sources — the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda — were written down in Iceland in the 13th century, more than 200 years after Iceland's Christianization in 1000 CE. Snorri Sturluson, who wrote the Prose Edda, was a Christian. He was preserving the myths because he wanted Icelandic poets to understand the kennings (poetic metaphors) that referenced them — not because he was a devotee. The Poetic Edda was compiled by an anonymous Christian scholar. Both were working from oral tradition that had already been through two centuries of Christian overlay.
Before that, there are the sagas — historical and legendary narratives written in the 12th through 14th centuries about events in the 9th and 10th centuries. They tell us how people in the Viking Age acted, what values they held, how they organized society. They are invaluable. They are not liturgy or theology.
There are runic inscriptions — over 6,000 of them, most from the Viking Age. Most are memorial inscriptions: "Sigrid raised this stone for her husband Gunnar." Some record journeys, transactions, or formulas. Very few give us doctrinal information.
There is Roman testimony — Tacitus's Germania (98 CE), written when the Germanic tribes were still pagan, describes their religious practices in some detail. It is invaluable and unreliable: Tacitus was a Roman senator writing for a Roman audience, interpreting foreign practice through Roman categories.
What we do not have: written liturgy. Detailed accounts of ritual procedure from practicing insiders. Theological treatises. Records of what people actually prayed or said during blót. Almost everything we know about actual practice is inferred, extrapolated, or reconstructed from hostile or distant sources.
Reconstruction is legitimate. Archaeology, comparative Indo-European religion, linguistic analysis, and careful reading of the sources can recover a great deal. But reconstruction is not the same as direct continuity. When a modern Heathen performs a blót, they are doing their best to honor an ancient practice based on fragmentary evidence — not repeating an unbroken tradition. Intellectual honesty about this distinction is one of the things that separates serious practice from historical cosplay.
The Folkish / Universalist Divide
The deepest ongoing split in organized Heathenry is between folkish and universalist (sometimes called inclusive) approaches. This divide is not primarily theological. It is about who the religion is for.
Folkish Heathenry holds that the Norse and Germanic gods are specifically the gods of the Norse and Germanic peoples — defined by ancestry. In this view, a person of Scandinavian, German, Anglo-Saxon, or related descent has a natural, ancestrally-rooted connection to these gods that a person without that heritage does not. Folkish organizations restrict full membership, oaths, and sometimes even practice to people of demonstrably Germanic heritage. The most prominent folkish organization in the United States is the Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA), founded by Stephen McNallen.
Universalist Heathenry holds that the gods call who they call, regardless of ancestry. In this view, the Norse gods are not the exclusive property of people who can trace DNA to Scandinavia — they are divine beings who engaged with human beings across history and who can engage with any human being who approaches them with sincerity and integrity. The Troth is the most prominent universalist organization. Declaration 127, a public statement signed by dozens of Heathen organizations in 2016 explicitly distancing themselves from the AFA's racial policies, represents the organized universalist response.
This is not a small disagreement about emphasis. It is a fundamental difference in what the religion is. And the folkish position, in its American expression in particular, has a history of attracting — or at minimum tolerating — white nationalist and explicitly racist practitioners who use the religion's ancestral framing as a cover for racial exclusion.
The pre-Christian Norse were not racially homogeneous, not racially conscious in any modern sense, and not operating with anything resembling modern racial categories. The Viking Age Norse raided, traded, settled, and intermarried across a range that extended from North America to the Middle East. The Varangian Guard — Norse mercenaries in service to the Byzantine Emperor — were bodyguards to one of the most cosmopolitan courts in the medieval world. The folkish claim to be recovering an "ancestral" religion in a racially bounded sense is a 20th-century construction, not a historical one.
What Heathenry Is Not
For new practitioners and curious observers, a list of common misconceptions worth clearing up immediately:
It is not Marvel.
The MCU Thor, Loki, and Odin are entertainment products built on Norse mythological names and superficial aesthetics. The actual gods of the Norse tradition are deeply strange, morally complex figures whose behavior would make for much harder cinema. Odin sacrifices himself to himself, tears out his own eye, engages in ritual magic associated with femininity, and regularly deceives both gods and men. Loki is not a villain — he is a chaos agent whose relationship with the divine order is genuinely ambiguous until Baldur's death forces the issue. Entering the tradition through Marvel creates expectations the actual mythology does not meet.
It is not Wicca with Norse names.
Wicca is a modern religion largely created in the mid-20th century by Gerald Gardner, drawing eclectically from ceremonial magic, folklore, and romantic reconstructions of pre-Christian religion. Its theology (a Goddess and a God, the Wheel of the Year in its modern eight-sabbat form, the Rede, the Rule of Three) has no direct historical parallel in Norse religion. Norse Heathenry does not have a version of the Wiccan Rede. It does not operate on a karma-like "Rule of Three." Its moral framework is based on honor, reciprocity, and duty — not "harm none." The gods are not a generic Lord and Lady who can be interchanged. They are specific, named, individual beings with complex personalities and specific domains.
It is not a nature religion in the New Age sense.
The Norse did not have an environmental ethic in the contemporary sense. They were not pre-industrial conservation advocates. The Norse relationship with nature was one of navigation — of understanding and working within forces that were not yours to control. The runes encode concepts like hail (destruction without warning), ice (dangerous beauty), need (necessity that strips you bare). This is not romantically gentle nature spirituality. It is a framework for understanding a world that does not care about you personally.
It is not a path for people who want easy answers.
The Norse cosmology ends with Ragnarok — the destruction of the gods themselves. Odin knows this and prepares for it anyway. The Norse concept of a good death was dying in battle with your eyes open, having lived with integrity. The tradition does not promise salvation, does not offer a loving god who forgives everything, and does not provide a neat moral framework that tells you what to do in hard situations. It expects you to think, to act with honor, and to bear the consequences of your choices. That is the path. It is not comfortable.
What Heathenry Is
After the what-it-is-not, the what-it-is:
Heathenry is a polytheist religion — it holds that multiple gods exist as distinct, individual beings, not as aspects of a single divine unity. The gods are not archetypes or metaphors in most Heathen theology. They are beings with histories, personalities, and relationships. They can be approached, honored, and engaged with in genuine reciprocal relationship. They are not omnipotent. They are not omniscient. Odin is still gathering knowledge and preparing for a war he may lose.
Heathenry is a religion of orthopraxy — correct practice — rather than orthodoxy — correct belief. What you do matters more than what you believe in the abstract. You honor the gods through action: through the blót (sacrifice and sacred feast), through the sumbel (ritual drinking and oath-taking), through maintaining an altar, through marking the seasonal observances, through living with integrity in daily life. There is no creed you must recite. There are acts you must perform and values you must embody.
Heathenry is deeply communal in its historical form. The pre-Christian Norse did not have solitary practice as a religious ideal. The blót was a community event. The hall was the center of religious and social life. Oaths were made in the presence of witnesses and the gods. Modern Heathenry has adapted to a world where most practitioners are geographically scattered — solitary practice is common and accepted — but the tradition's roots are in the group, the kindred, the tribe.
And Heathenry is a path that requires honesty. Honesty about the sources. Honesty about what is reconstructed and what is attested. Honesty about the tradition's hard history with racism. Honesty about your own relationship with the gods, which may not look like what the books describe. The worst thing you can bring to this path is performance without substance — wearing the aesthetics without walking the road.
"The gods do not need your belief. They need your loyalty, your integrity, your right action in the world. Belief is internal. Honor is visible."
— A working principle for modern Heathen practicePrimary Sources and Further Reading
- The Prose Edda — Snorri Sturluson (c. 1220 CE). The primary mythological source. Anthony Faulkes translation (Everyman/Dent) is the academic standard; Jesse Byock's Penguin Classics translation is more readable.
- The Poetic Edda — Anonymous (compiled c. 13th century). Carolyne Larrington's Oxford World's Classics translation is the most widely used. Jackson Crawford's translation (Hackett) includes useful scholarly apparatus and reads naturally.
- Germania — Tacitus (98 CE). Roman observer's account of Germanic tribes, including religious practices. Essential and unreliable in the ways described above. Available in many translations; the Penguin Classics edition is fine.
- Our Troth — edited by Kveldúlfr Gundarsson (The Troth, 2006). Two volumes. The most comprehensive reference work on modern Heathen practice, produced by the Troth organization. Covers theology, history, practice, and the gods in depth.
- A Practical Heathen's Guide to Asatru — Patricia Lafayllve (Llewellyn, 2013). A grounded, historically honest introduction to modern practice. Good for new practitioners.
- Elves, Wights, and Trolls — Kveldúlfr Gundarsson (iUniverse, 2007). Detailed coverage of the lesser beings of Norse cosmology — the landvættir, álfar, dísir, and others — that are important in practice but rarely treated with depth.
- Gods and Myths of Northern Europe — H.R. Ellis Davidson (Penguin, 1964). An academic but accessible survey of Norse mythology and religion. One of the best starting points for academic study.
- The Road to Hel — H.R. Ellis Davidson (Cambridge University Press, 1943). Focused specifically on Norse beliefs about death and the afterlife. Essential for understanding Heathen eschatology.
- The Well and the Tree — Paul Bauschatz (University of Massachusetts Press, 1982). Academic study of wyrd, örlög, and the Norse conception of time. Dense but foundational.