Scandinavians have always hated their gods life is hard enough between 55 th and 70 th latitudes North, where the soil is poor and winter is lethal, so the last thing you need is a bunch of cosmic bullies demanding sacrifices from you. The irony in Ásatru, of course, is that atheism is an age-old tradition in Scandinavia, and it predates Christianity. So, who knows? Two centuries from now, there might be an Ásatru temple in every American town. In Iceland, the first Ásatru temple is being built for worshipers to carry out their religious rituals, and it could be architecturally interesting if it is ever completed. It dates back to 1972 when a group, including farmer and poet Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson, decided to relaunch a pagan religion. However, the same can be said of the Bible, the Qur'an, and the Book of Mormon. This is difficult to pull off, as the Norse myths, like other ancient texts, are incredibly spotty, contradictory, and prone to mistranslation (just ask Wagner), and were written down hundreds of years after the events recounted in them allegedly happened (insofar as they are even meant to be historical). Ásatru (sometimes called Odinism, Wodenism, Wotanism, and Odalism) is an attempt to cobble together an actual religion from Norse mythology and pre- Christian Germanic religious practices.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |