Asatru Folk Assembly - 11⧸6⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 122 - Goði Þorsteinn Guðjónsson

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00:00:28.620 We'll be right back.

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00:02:58.620 Hello, and welcome to another exciting edition of Victory Never Sleeps.

00:03:14.440 Got some cool things to talk to you about this evening.

00:03:19.000 First and foremost, I want to introduce our special guest that is going to be presenting the information this evening.

00:03:26.420 um apprentice folk builder Chris Savage this is his first appearance on Victory Never Sleeps

00:03:35.900 so welcome and can you tell folks a little bit about who you are what you do for the AFA

00:03:45.740 how you came to Alcetru and how you found the Alcetru Folk Assembly in specific yeah sure so

00:03:55.400 My name is Chris Savage, and I'm the apprentice folkbuilder in Michigan currently.

00:04:01.060 As far as what I do folkbuilder things, I've been trying to do a lot of, to help with

00:04:08.800 Ossetree history stuff, with gathering up a lot of the information that we've had floating

00:04:16.580 around just kind of vaguely, even before there was an internet for it to be on, really.

00:04:25.400 just kind of tying that into where i how i got here uh my parents just kind of let me loose on

00:04:33.640 the internet as a kid and that can have absolutely disastrous results or it can have very good

00:04:38.920 results uh but um and i was up in the keweenaw uh with my grandparents uh on a on a vacation

00:04:50.600 michigan is shaped like like like this and uh yeah like like that right he when i was up here

00:05:01.360 right um did i get the state wrong i'm trying to do it anyways yeah it was inverted it was inverted

00:05:08.620 tippy top thumb of michigan um and i ended up seeing a thing about uh kennewick man

00:05:18.400 and it was in this without going into too much it's not really all that important

00:05:22.900 there was uh this discussion i was reading about on my laptop about uh you know people who are

00:05:31.560 serious about their beliefs and their religion and some fella says like well there's this uh

00:05:37.560 supposed dead white guy out in california and the indians have his body if you people were serious

00:05:42.480 you know you'd want to get that body at least to perform burial rites on it right and someone

00:05:48.180 pointed out there was actually one person who was trying to do that there was a fellow by the name

00:05:51.620 of steven mcnalen and his his organization the austro free or austro folk assembly excuse me i'm

00:05:57.220 not that old um i was actually born on the day that uh i was born on the day that steve mcnalen

00:06:04.820 was starting on yule of 1994 was starting the aussage of folk assembly really yeah pretty pretty

00:06:11.460 funny i didn't realize that no no but um and so i was like somewhere between 10 and 14 at the time

00:06:20.260 i can't remember i was too young to really do anything with this it's just like something i

00:06:24.100 like knew you know and so i'd be floating around these internet circles and i'd see people who

00:06:29.300 would act as if this wasn't real and i'd be i'd be like but there is people do do this you know

00:06:34.500 this is something that exists and then uh i went off to college in sous-saint-marie which is

00:06:42.580 pretty pretty far away from a lot of everywhere in america and so this was always just something

00:06:48.580 on the back of my mind that i was floating around in until i actually heard your uh the episode you

00:06:55.060 did with full house i was like wait a minute i i remember i i know that wait that's not the guy

00:07:02.100 that's nothing i thought and one thing led to another and i uh reached out to john rock and

00:07:07.940 here i am fantastic well we're glad that you found us what uh for reference about when was that

00:07:16.820 john reaching out to john rock 20 i think i first emailed him near the tail end of

00:07:24.820 in december of 2022 and then i actually actualized that in early uh 2023

00:07:35.060 then i started folk building in june of this year all right well

00:07:44.900 so we will get to the meat and potatoes of the show but i wanted to do a couple of top

00:07:48.740 of the show announcements now that we have introduced our uh our guest for tonight

00:07:54.820 couple of housekeeping things we are only a few days away from feast of the einherjar in south

00:08:00.820 dakota if you have not already and you are able to we would love to see you there go ahead and

00:08:06.580 get registered nick's got the link there any of our folk builders can get you all set up again

00:08:14.260 not a lot of notice but there is still time if you are in driving distance and want to make it

00:08:20.660 we would love to see you there um it's a really nice event myself uh steve and sheila mcnallan

00:08:31.380 witten clifford erickson will also be there and then you know a lot of the local leadership will

00:08:37.860 be there but us from a distance will be there also and i would love to see all of you guys there

00:08:43.220 other than that kind of an update we have made really good progress as of late on trying to get

00:08:53.420 the remaining monies paid off on New York's off currently 69.7% paid off which is fantastic

00:09:03.720 um you know remaining is 74 205 dollars uh it's a lot of money but comparatively we've paid off

00:09:18.460 a tremendous amount in a very short time those of you who may not know we got the uh we got

00:09:24.900 New York's Hoff for $245,000 in August of 2022. So in two years and two months and a little tiny

00:09:37.160 bit of change, we have been able to pay down almost 70% of that. So that's fantastic. Something

00:09:48.240 as kind of a point of reference, if every member of the Ask True Folk Assembly were to donate

00:09:54.580 $98 today, that Hoff would be ours free and clear tomorrow. And that gets us ready to start

00:10:05.100 serious planning on Frey's Hoff. So we will get there. It's just a matter of how quick.

00:10:10.340 And I appreciate everyone's generosity. If you are interested, Nick, put a link up where you

00:10:16.120 can donate to that um but yeah any anything helps and we really appreciate it and i'm very thankful

00:10:25.140 for everybody who has donated so far we've had some very generous people who've gone above and

00:10:30.540 beyond to make sure this happens so we appreciate that quite a bit speaking of stuff we appreciate

00:10:35.880 gw farnsworth once again uh bought us five coffees it's 25 donation we appreciate that tremendously

00:10:44.580 uh mr farnsworth is a you know a weekly donor to the program and to uh to our church so we really

00:10:54.200 appreciate that thank you so much and producer nick looks like he is throwing a hundred dollars

00:11:00.120 at the cause thank you nick we appreciate all that you do and we appreciate your generosity

00:11:05.760 in this endeavor so thank you um and i will forego my message that i normally send you

00:11:13.000 please update the thermometers for the hoff to indicate your hundred dollar donation thank you

00:11:17.800 nick um those of you who don't realize our producer for this program is is such a huge part of

00:11:34.120 accomplishing the goals and the things that the afa sets out to do especially in this day and age

00:11:40.520 where everything has an interface through our website through any of our back-end systems

00:11:47.880 anything technology related as well as the list is long in my arm as my arm of things that nick

00:11:55.400 does he does them quick and he does them willingly because he's devoted to our gods

00:12:01.960 our house true folk assembly we appreciate it so very much um i don't think he gets as much shine

00:12:08.440 as he deserves on it so uh yeah we appreciate you nick thank you

00:12:18.840 okay so we got that going on um kind of brings us to the point of the program tonight so we

00:12:30.680 we've been thinking about this gentleman and elevating him to

00:12:35.240 uh one of our our heroes that we honor with a day of remembrance we've been thinking about that for

00:12:42.600 for some time now and uh trying to learn more about him about his contributions to

00:12:53.560 also true about you know his life and it's been very difficult because a lot of the source material

00:13:01.240 is in his native tongue of Icelandic

00:13:07.520 and it's hard for us to get a hold of

00:13:10.760 or to access some of the materials

00:13:12.460 we may have more available

00:13:14.120 where he, in the Anglosphere.

00:13:18.720 So it is, that's been daunting.

00:13:21.780 We've looked for a while.

00:13:22.840 He first came up to our attention

00:13:25.700 earlier this year

00:13:28.620 and I think it was before Midsommar

00:13:30.940 But Witten Erickson was talking to me about him and trying to find more because it was a standout that this is a gentleman we wanted to look into more.

00:13:42.840 We were knee deep in this process of research when we had a viewer participant in this program, a gentleman named Kevin, that wanted to suggest maybe we honor him as a hero.

00:13:58.400 uh kevin mentioned that when we were doing our our show on king world's fame um

00:14:05.840 so yeah we're in the process of working on it there but it's digging up information and getting

00:14:12.320 it figured out has been a huge challenge the break in the case came with the gentleman who

00:14:17.680 was sharing the screen with me this evening um amongst folk builder stuff that chris says he

00:14:25.440 does he also is tremendous at doing research for us and able to um really tease out detail

00:14:36.000 and find sources and materials that the rest of us are not as able to get a hold of he's

00:14:43.920 got a real knack for it he's done that on a number of projects that you'll be you know

00:14:48.800 hearing about we'll be learning from in the months and years to come but one of those

00:14:55.840 was finding information on this gentleman so without further ado chris would you tell us

00:15:02.320 about gothy thorstein guthjansson yeah sure so um thorstein uh was born to malfrithi einars doter

00:15:12.240 i'm not gonna try and pronounce these icelandic names all viking like um she was a writer

00:15:18.320 uh a pretty a noted one i couldn't actually find anything that she wrote but she was active in the

00:15:26.480 like the 20s um and he was the son of guthion ericsson who was a teacher in

00:15:32.400 reykjavik he was born 3 112 years after the trojan war that's october 4th 1928.

00:15:41.280 he caught tuberculosis as a child and that's always been one of those

00:15:45.760 diseases that like usually exist as far as i've been aware he caught it and the treatment involved

00:15:53.680 like sticking a like puncturing his lung through the ribs and that resulted in the lung collapsing

00:16:00.320 and not working right i don't know what that what that cures but that's what the that's what i was

00:16:05.360 told um he was a sickly but uh vigorous man from then on uh having i don't know if it was a conscious

00:16:15.360 decision or not but chose the you know he chose that if he couldn't live a physical life he would

00:16:20.800 at least continue living in the realm of the mind and he was a very intellectual man um

00:16:28.560 he went to college at a time when most people did not uh he held professor professorship in

00:16:35.200 multiple countries he studied in mainland scandinavia he was fluent in icelandic uh he

00:16:41.920 He also learned Old Norse, and it's not that difficult if you are fluently, but whatever.

00:16:52.880 He learned Latin, and perhaps fluently, he did do English, too.

00:16:58.220 Chris, can you follow up for a second?

00:17:00.380 We had a delay, and it's like you were silent, and then it, at chipmunk speed, tried to bring us back up to speed.

00:17:09.720 so when you mentioned he had learned old norse everything from there until now was unintelligible

00:17:16.760 he knew old norse because he presumably studied it but also knew icelandic and he at college learned

00:17:25.240 latin and english to a degree of fluency because i'll go into that later but he knew english

00:17:32.760 and it's kind of tragic that he's not better attested given that he was a very early

00:17:39.520 uh participant in the broader anglo asatru kind of discourse that was going on like he wrote

00:17:47.040 articles for vortru and stuff but um he was ebs was a very much a renaissance man um he was for

00:17:56.120 a time the island's foremost expert on giordano bruno for example who was a very interesting but

00:18:02.740 but frankly not at all related to Asatru figure from the Italian Renaissance.

00:18:09.200 He also was very, did appear to have an interest in Asatru lore at one point, like relatively

00:18:17.340 early.

00:18:19.300 But unrelated to that, he also fell under the sway of the theories of Helgi Pieters,

00:18:25.020 who was a spiritualist in Iceland.

00:18:28.380 was this movement in the mid to late 1800s and early 1900s

00:18:36.040 that was all about contacting ghosts.

00:18:39.020 Like the reason why ghosts are like,

00:18:41.120 they look like they have a bed sheet on

00:18:42.800 and they leave ectoplasm,

00:18:44.400 but you can't touch them because they're incorporeal.

00:18:46.660 That came about at this time.

00:18:48.280 Up until then, ghosts were physical, like drowder.

00:18:58.380 all right so chris a little bit glitchy we're going to try to get that figured out

00:19:07.560 um appreciate your patience on it um yeah so we'll work on it is everything glitchy or is it just

00:19:18.240 chris i believe it is just him i hear and see you fine then if the rest of us are good we can kind

00:19:26.920 to keep on some stuff so while uh chris has been frozen or tricking us by being uncannily still

00:19:35.640 uh different chris one from ohio has donated 40 to victory never sleeps we appreciate that a lot

00:19:44.060 thank you so much um we'll get chris back as you can tell he has been able to find out quite a bit

00:19:51.880 about uh thorstein which is awesome his lament that uh gothi thorstein is not

00:20:02.040 better known and better celebrated amongst alsatruar

00:20:08.520 we share that and it's a big part of what we're doing um

00:20:11.240 it's a challenge and talking to a lot of the elders of of modern house a true

00:20:24.920 we all almost all of us who are who have come home to us and sure we have a love of history

00:20:32.760 be it recent history different parts of history history in general but we've done a really poor

00:20:40.840 job of keeping track of our own history and one of those things is just a matter of perspective

00:20:46.680 um i think very often especially at the beginning of something

00:20:51.480 it's easy to not see the time that you live in as being historic we only recognize

00:20:58.920 you know the historicity of something with the uh virtue of hindsight um so it's been really

00:21:07.000 important to me and to the rest of the leadership of the Astro Folk Assembly to try to

00:21:11.960 capture and save what history we have available to us of, you know, the modern reforging of

00:21:20.800 Alcetru, and also to celebrate the heroes of our faith that have for too long gone unsung.

00:21:28.680 And as much as we want to shake it, we all are infected to one degree or another with, you know, modernity and deviant.

00:21:46.680 Deviant, and I don't necessarily mean that in your typical sense, but in the sense that it deviates from tradition, our way of approaching things, like having pride, like celebrating people, like celebrating and honoring heroes, we don't do enough of that.

00:22:05.820 And a lot of these people have gone above and beyond for the cause of our gods, have done substantial things because of their trough to the Aesir.

00:22:18.580 And our gods and our ancestors recognize that, and they celebrate these people beyond the veil.

00:22:28.260 These people achieve a level of ascension, and we want to acknowledge that, and we want to spread and build their fame here in Midgard in the hopes and the, I guess, the reasonable belief that that fame carries over and is taken note of by those on the other side of the veil.

00:22:53.920 So it's important to give these people their due, and that's what we're attempting to do.

00:22:58.260 And we got Chris back here. Last thing I recall was your talk about him knowing English being an, oh, you were talking about spiritualism.

00:23:15.340 and you mentioned that ghosts prior to that time were conceived of as like zombies as opposed to

00:23:23.740 as you know ectoplasmic we're have wearing a sheep with a couple of holes and it kind of goes

00:23:32.060 the ectoplasm was uh in i guess you could say invented as a what how do you know the ghost was

00:23:39.660 there if you couldn't touch it well look it left the ectoplasm behind and helgi pieters had the i

00:23:45.980 apologize there's like a storm or something going outside and i had to fiddle helgi pieters uh had

00:23:52.700 the i guess for spiritualism innovative idea that the spirits of spiritualism were not um ghosts

00:24:01.020 living in the hereafter but you know physical beings with telepathy living on other plants

00:24:08.220 out in the out in the cosmos and uh helgi pieters uh passed away before uh thorstein could meet him

00:24:18.060 but his ideas were very influential um and thorstein would go on to found an organization

00:24:25.180 called the felag neosina that would gather a number of important and influential people to it

00:24:32.380 But the felag is the same felag as in Asotrar Felagith.

00:24:37.220 It means like fellowship or something like that.

00:24:41.180 Someone who knows more can correct me.

00:24:44.220 Nyal Sina has something to do with Nyal's saga.

00:24:47.680 I couldn't find an actual explanation.

00:24:50.680 I was, it just, it's just said.

00:24:53.720 So he founded this organization, the felag Nyal Sina,

00:24:57.860 somewhere uh early 1960 possibly a little bit before that and he met in that organization three

00:25:06.660 men who would be very important for ossature in iceland um spanjorn baintinson and jormundr ingi

00:25:13.620 hansen and dagar thor leifson all four of them were members of this organization that thorstein

00:25:18.020 had founded and for about 10 years they talked about the collective intellectual body of works

00:25:28.260 for helgi peders was referred to as niall for some reason they talked about niall and about

00:25:34.020 norse mythology and such and at some point they heard about steve mcnallan and what he was doing

00:25:42.100 and that there was like these rumblings elsewhere about this like hey why can't we've been talking

00:25:49.680 about thor and odin and the old gods why can't we actually do that and um on the first day of

00:26:00.560 summer which is an actual holiday in iceland uh 4-27-1972 they founded the asaturar feligeth

00:26:08.120 In the winter of 1972, those four men would go before the Minister of Justice, Olafur Johannes' son, to try and get the organization formalized.

00:26:19.940 This is the event when the blackout happens, when the storm knocks out power across the entire island.

00:26:26.160 and um i believe the ulterior ability can tell this story a little better than i can

00:26:32.500 but he did the yoha what's his name sorry olafur didn't want to he thought it was like a joke at

00:26:41.120 first he thought it was like that he was like being pranked and he didn't want to do it and

00:26:46.520 then the power got taken out across the entire island and he got told like hey you got you got

00:26:51.960 do this like it's the entire island right and so he he put his rubber stamp on it and

00:27:02.680 uh there was actually a little bit of a legal uh quandary regarding can this even be done

00:27:09.400 because the way the religious freedom laws were worded it implied monotheism

00:27:14.680 and the problem was that like the literal letter of the law implied no you can't be a polytheist

00:27:19.880 in iceland at this time but everyone in the parliament knew when they wrote the law they

00:27:26.360 actually meant like yeah you can just do whatever they didn't necessarily like that though so in may

00:27:32.680 of 1973 the organization was actually recognized despite technically not being legal and then in

00:27:40.600 1975 they changed the law to for one allow for polytheistic religious organizations but also

00:27:47.880 to put a bit more bureaucratic red tape around just making a religion and getting it recognized

00:27:55.320 by the state. The bishop of Iceland, Sigur Bjorn Einarsson, he initially was pretty critical of

00:28:03.560 the organization for, he thought that polytheism was too close to Nazism. He was apparently a

00:28:12.920 a fiery-souled right-winger in his youth and cooled down later in age and became a good

00:28:18.780 liberal.

00:28:21.300 But he also perhaps made a few good points in that the Asitur-Rfelgi that might have

00:28:27.320 been putting the cart before the horse, they had four people, technically no list of members,

00:28:32.600 no doctrines, no dogmas, no buildings, no organization, and technically not even a leader

00:28:37.000 when they came to him the first time, at least from what I've seen.

00:28:40.500 Um, everything before, uh, the current, uh, all-saryrgothi of Theosaturafelgith takes over is not looked at too highly by secondary sources I've seen.

00:28:54.500 Um, so on 8-5-1973, the first public legal outdoor bloat in 1,000 years was held in Iceland.

00:29:05.500 I believe that's the one with the big Thor statue.

00:29:09.080 I sent Nick two pictures of it.

00:29:10.920 They're not very high quality, though.

00:29:13.740 I have to give a shout out to Thor Sanhet and his buddy William Fox.

00:29:19.360 They, for a long time, if you Googled certain people,

00:29:24.920 the only things that would come up were the transcribed Vortru articles that he put up.

00:29:31.460 And if he's listening, he should join the AFA.

00:29:34.460 But they were very helpful in getting this information, and, again, I want to just thank him for that because, again, for the longest time, like, even before I joined the AFA, I'd, like, Google certain things, and it'd just be his stuff that I could see on this.

00:29:53.000 One of those things was an interview that I believe her name was Shirley, a journalist from America, did.

00:30:05.000 She was, I should actually get her name correct here, I couldn't find anything else on this woman, yes, Shirley Keller.

00:30:15.000 I couldn't find anything else on this woman.

00:30:17.760 It's these, the big Thor, there we go, statue.

00:30:23.240 That's based off of the one where he's holding his hammer

00:30:26.140 in the little idol, and it's kind of like,

00:30:29.360 the hammer is also his beard from just how it looks.

00:30:35.700 But, sorry, without going too far afield,

00:30:40.240 Thorstein was the brains of the Æstarárfélgíð, if you would say that Svenjörn was the heart.

00:30:49.240 He was the guy who knew how to make organizations. He was the guy who knew how to interface with the government.

00:30:55.240 He was the guy who knew how to interface with people outside of Iceland.

00:31:00.240 he was very important in starting the european kind of pan polytheistic community which is now

00:31:17.960 characterized by like the european congress of ethnic religions he was very big on trying to get

00:31:26.040 something like that started he wrote in vortru uh vortru was the ostrich reliances i mean i guess

00:31:33.080 it's proper to say that the ostrich reliance was vortru's uh religious body it started as the

00:31:38.040 magazine and they kind of spun off into the ostrich reliance which is a whole separate thing

00:31:44.680 but they ran the publication vortru for a very long time and valgaard maria would just like let

00:31:50.680 you send in letters and stuff so thorstein was a contributor to that publication and he also ran

00:31:58.680 an english language publication called hugen and mugen which i have never been able to find

00:32:03.800 anything on i know i've been i know it exists but i haven't been able to see any examples or

00:32:09.000 digitizations or even uh paper copies not that i have scoured everywhere on the internet for that

00:32:15.000 but um thorstein was uh as i said a founder of organizations um he founded in 1982 an organization

00:32:27.960 called noraint mankin um which literally translates to something like northern mankin

00:32:34.360 um uh the spanish translation is la raza nordica which i think is a little more apt for what they

00:32:40.680 They believed it was a right-wing political, I guess you could call it a political action committee or a political advocacy group in modern American terminology.

00:32:51.680 In 1975, Sveinbjorn published an article in Morgenbladiv, and that's the name of the Icelandic newspaper over there that I got a lot of this from,

00:33:04.680 basically saying that the Ossetarophilie was not a political organization and that he was taking a sort of ex-Cathedra stance where, like, just because the organization proper has to say something,

00:33:17.060 you can't just take something off the cuff that Thorstein or Svenjorn or anyone else was saying as doctrine for this organization.

00:33:25.000 And I've looked at secondary sources, and they seem to be of the opinion that this is because Thorstein was a bit more spicy in his rhetoric than some people would have liked.

00:33:37.560 which is kind of funny because Noraint Mankin and the Fela Gnausina were both apparently oddly

00:33:46.060 influential. There was a bit of a scandal in the 90s where a number of Liberal Party MPs,

00:33:55.940 members of parliament, were members and active participants in Noraint Mankin,

00:34:03.020 and it didn't really go anywhere it didn't impact the australia from what i saw it just

00:34:09.500 turned into politicians pointing fingers and he said she said about politician in internal drama

00:34:18.060 um so if i can break in for a second for audience that may not be familiar um

00:34:27.100 iceland has has had and continues to have

00:34:32.300 And it's really cool in a lot of ways. They have done a lot culturally and legally to protect Icelandic culture and Icelandic traditions.

00:34:45.140 A lot of this comes in in preservation of their language, in preservation of their traditional poetry and art forms, in naming things.

00:34:58.280 like you have

00:34:59.840 you have some legal options

00:35:01.940 on what you can and can't do for naming

00:35:03.920 in Iceland

00:35:05.160 you can't introduce

00:35:07.960 a bunch of foreign names and foreign

00:35:09.840 stuff over there because maintaining

00:35:11.840 their history

00:35:13.680 their tradition, their culture is really

00:35:15.580 important

00:35:16.240 this comes at a time

00:35:19.680 where

00:35:20.240 you have a big

00:35:23.760 interest in preserving

00:35:25.520 Icelandic

00:35:28.280 culture but it's becoming on and when I say this is a time I mean like the 80s and 90s when this

00:35:37.820 controversy is occurring is a time where you've got the dual interest of that but also the growing

00:35:47.480 growing leftist tendencies to not mention or talk about race and that becomes compounded

00:35:54.740 in nordic countries that are completely homogeneous so it it's very easy domestically for it to seem

00:36:05.940 eccentric and like you're just being mean-spirited and harping on something because

00:36:11.300 those aren't present concerns like it goes without saying you making a big point about 0.99

00:36:18.180 race just sounds like you're like you're being a jerk when you're in a country that has only 0.97

00:36:25.460 icelanders in it it becomes different you know we see that in our day and we see you know maybe he 0.99

00:36:32.980 was ahead of his time in in recognizing the reality of some some demographic things but

00:36:40.420 it's really interesting and i want to it's worth noting and i don't want to break the narrative

00:36:46.180 too hard here but i do want to want to mention the also true or fail i guess as it is in 2024

00:36:53.140 is completely degenerate and abhorrent but it wasn't always that way and i don't think people

00:37:00.740 realize the original the original fellowship of men that brought this into existence of course

00:37:08.980 it's focused it only makes sense that it's folkish that's common sense a deviation from

00:37:14.420 that is relatively recent and within within iceland in my understanding of that organization

00:37:25.140 the growth of um quote unquote progressive ideas was part and parcel with a growth of atheism

00:37:36.980 within the organization because where it originally was just a few of these men that

00:37:42.740 were genuinely devout in belief in our gods and you know they were religious men

00:37:51.700 once it got legally recognized in europe in scandinavian countries in specific a portion

00:37:57.460 of your tax money goes to the church tax so it goes to the government and in a previous age when

00:38:05.860 it was you know one religion it would all go towards that in iceland for a very long time

00:38:12.100 all of that church tax would go to support the lutheran church and then slowly it would go to

00:38:19.220 you could specify it to go to your church if you had something a different christian denomination

00:38:24.980 that was not under the umbrella of lutheranism this represented an opportunity to not give your

00:38:33.620 money to christianity and to give it to other and a lot of people checked the other box without

00:38:40.500 having sincere faith in the gods but as a statement that they don't want their tax money to go to

00:38:48.660 support christianity and that really introduced a massive numeric surge in membership but a

00:38:56.420 a significant deviation from the

00:39:00.080 the simple but very sincere piety of a lot of the original founders

00:39:07.980 I just wanted to throw that out there for perspective while we continue with this

00:39:12.560 I apologize for rambling on just to kind of oh no you're doing exactly what we brought you here for

00:39:19.180 and you're providing so much richer amount of information than we could have hoped for so no

00:39:25.660 this is fantastic please so so to kind of walk it back in a little bit just for clarity here

00:39:31.320 there's about 350 legal americans in the u.s let's not interrogate that term too much you

00:39:37.980 know what i mean there are 350 million legal americans in the u.s for clarity at the 2024

00:39:45.460 icelandic census there were 399 189 icelanders there are more people in my county that i live in

00:39:55.100 than there are Icelanders, just for clarity.

00:39:58.100 So when Norent Mankin put out a statement saying,

00:40:03.100 I'm reading this in for Svan,

00:40:07.100 ,

00:40:12.100 which is apparently translated as,

00:40:15.100 it would be a detriment to humanity if the Nordic stock came to an end. 0.96

00:40:18.100 Their two big things that they didn't want were 1.00

00:40:22.100 legalization of abortion and the importation of the so-called Muslim races. We know what that 1.00

00:40:28.700 means, even though it's technically not correct, blah, blah, blah, blah. So again, this is an

00:40:33.280 organization, nor ain't mankind, to be clear, not the Australophilogies, that was founded as a sort

00:40:39.440 of, I guess you can almost call it defensive measure. They saw something they didn't like,

00:40:44.400 and they didn't want that to happen. And it's important, I need to stress here, that if you

00:40:49.920 look at secondary literature there is this attempt to make thorstein sound as this kind of like

00:40:55.520 crazy kook who leaves the australia felgi because spain mjorn tutted him you're not allowed to be

00:41:01.120 too right wing i have no evidence i have evidence that he stayed with the organization he did not

00:41:06.320 leave because spain mjorn said hey don't don't this is a religious organization don't get too spicy

00:41:14.560 on the church's letterhead right which i don't actually know the specific reason why spain

00:41:22.560 bjorn put out the newspaper statement in 1975 for clarity they were getting criticism to my

00:41:28.800 understanding from different sources people were concerned and something interesting that

00:41:33.920 you made this statement earlier um about spain bjorn being the heart and thorstein being being

00:41:41.600 the the brain of of that operation it's it's it's i mean i guess if you guys get the reference it's

00:41:52.800 like uh you know in a way swain bjorn is the sun and uh thorstein is the lightning there's

00:42:01.760 he had a very swain bjorn to my understanding and the best i've been able to to understand and i

00:42:09.280 wish i i knew knew him better and knew better of him um it's a very simple farmer and poet

00:42:19.680 who loved his people his tradition and his gods um he was a

00:42:29.120 you know i i guess prime primarily may not be the right word he was

00:42:32.880 focused more than others on uh asa thor and you know he's a simple man that wanted to see this

00:42:45.360 happen and it's easy to see like you know yeah they didn't really have their stuff you know they

00:42:51.360 didn't have their ducks in a row as it were when they went to the parliament and the the folks to

00:42:57.760 get the stamp on on approval of their religious classification but you don't know that till you

00:43:03.200 go in there and try i think it's always worth noting we live with privilege that's provided to

00:43:13.680 us by those who've come before us who've taken those first steps that's why it's very important

00:43:21.440 that we honor them and we acknowledge that it's so easy to look back and see all the ways you

00:43:27.280 would have done it differently or you would have gamed it in a different way

00:43:32.960 but up until then nobody did i'm sure a lot of people had the idea

00:43:37.520 but nobody had the follow-through until that first guy steps up and makes that attempt

00:43:42.000 which these gentlemen did and that's extremely important so in doing this

00:43:49.200 swain bjorn is the first i was here to go the he doesn't in in the organization he doesn't

00:43:56.720 know what to do or how to manage this stuff or how to all of a sudden he's getting

00:44:02.240 newspaper criticism for whatever he's just out there trying to you know raise goats or whatever

00:44:10.240 and make some poetry and all of a sudden people are making noise so feeling the need to like hey

00:44:16.320 hey hey we're not trying to do some big political thing here we're just trying to worship the gods

00:44:21.440 so dorstein can have whatever ideas he wants to have that doesn't mean that we require you to

00:44:27.840 have that in the astro failure and i think that's there's a very genuine

00:44:38.560 and without any of the negative connotation but a naivety

00:44:42.080 to sveinbjorn in his involvement with it because he didn't seek out attention he didn't seek out

00:44:48.640 grandeur he just wanted a place for the icr in his country of iceland and for the those who wanted

00:44:59.360 to worship them to come home to house of truth and thorstein did what he could to to shape and to

00:45:06.400 develop that vision in a secure way so uh yeah please continue chris um so just just to say

00:45:17.520 sometimes people will describe sveinbjorn's religiosity as like nature worship

00:45:25.200 and i think they're uh anachronistically applying snippets of things that yormander ingi said um

00:45:32.160 um we'll get into him later but um regarding the the gods as natural forces in a certain sense and

00:45:40.500 I think for Spain you're on a lot of that was a very genuine love of Iceland and its culture

00:45:45.240 like you can go on YouTube and find him singing edic poetry of his own composition or just stuff

00:45:53.580 that whoever whichever hand literally wrote down the poetic edda scribed down and he's just seeing

00:45:59.880 He, his song has been sampled by numerous musicians, including Vard Vikernes, here,

00:46:06.640 worstly enough, his religiosity is almost, I would describe it as like a kind of folk 0.74

00:46:15.060 ancestor worship, in my opinion, like, not like Chinese style, here's my complex genealogy,

00:46:23.080 but like a love of Iceland and all of the people in it and its gods who they're, say

00:46:28.120 who the people of iceland are descended from and all of that and it wasn't very intellectual right

00:46:35.640 so as i was saying uh a journalist by the name of shirley came from america and actually stayed

00:46:42.520 with thorstein's family for on two separate occasions for a few days and shirley was american

00:46:50.440 so she was monolingual thorstein knew english and spain bjorn only knew icelandic as far as i'm aware

00:46:56.360 And so Sveindorn would be asked questions through Thorstein, and a few of them were sent by Thor Sanhet, and Mr. Sanhet was an American, and he was keyed into the discourse in America.

00:47:14.260 And here we have been subjected to like weapons grade theological assault in a way that they really weren't like, you know, you look at some of the people in non-AFA, Asatru, heathen, whatever discourse.

00:47:34.960 And it's, like, the moment one of these people comes into contact with, like, one of these real hardcore evangelist apologists from Christianity or Islam, they're going to get torn apart, right?

00:47:46.560 And that sort of figure just doesn't exist in Iceland.

00:47:52.140 And so just to describe these two men here, at one point, Shirley asks via proxy, I can't remember if it's from Thor Sanhed or someone else,

00:48:03.400 um Sveinbjorn the the seemingly perennial question of do you think that Tyr used to be the original

00:48:11.000 Skyfather right because his name blah blah blah we don't need to get into this but and you know

00:48:16.720 who should be in charge Odin or Tyr and Sveinbjorn says well I think Icelanders should worship Thor

00:48:22.020 the most because we have a special relationship with Thor and just looking at the the you know

00:48:30.100 written words of uh thorstein translating spainbjorn's speech it it feels to me he didn't

00:48:37.940 even know what was really being asked like he just didn't get that this is about like in your opinion

00:48:44.100 if you reconstruct the name tier going back to t vas and dios peter and he just did not he didn't

00:48:51.300 if anybody is a has watched more than one or two episodes of this show

00:48:58.980 this illustrates the point that i try to make a lot very well um religion isn't

00:49:09.860 like scholastic nerding out it's a sincere faith between a parishioner and their gods and

00:49:22.020 it can certainly be more than that and it can certainly be expressed very intellectually and

00:49:27.860 very eloquently but it doesn't have to be the root of it the value of it the beauty of it

00:49:34.660 starts from something that's very simple and doesn't need to be more than that there's no

00:49:40.500 requirement i don't think if you went to any of the ancient gothar and ask them about

00:49:46.020 you know odin or tear being the sky father and whatever and they would be baffled at your

00:49:53.520 question and what you're doing they'd be like uh we are we are worshiping odin you know get in the

00:50:01.180 circle we're doing bloat like what do you stop because it's it's just noise and that's kind of

00:50:08.580 thing that we see a lot that's also interesting during this period but you know continuing well

00:50:17.300 into the 90s and i think people do it today as well you just don't have the same organized

00:50:22.580 groups of them doing it there is a there was a fetishism in the united states for icelandic things

00:50:34.820 because that's kind of the land of the sagas and because early

00:50:41.380 also true development in the united states is kind of

00:50:51.940 it's a it's an obsession on vikings and viking stuff and how cool viking stuff is so

00:50:59.140 there was some kind of an illusion that if you go look for your answers in these you know old

00:51:06.420 bearded men in iceland they're going to be able to elucidate these mysteries for you

00:51:12.980 when in fact i mean only by a matter of months but also true was was established

00:51:18.180 here in the united states in a modern sense before it was in iceland um four years uh

00:51:26.340 steve mcnalen founder mcnalen's oath is in 1968. the astra felgi is formally established in 1972.

00:51:33.700 so spiritually in four years legally

00:51:40.180 like what was it six months or so i because i believe it was in the winter of like the

00:51:48.500 early part of the year in 72 that we got the taxi that the free assembly or the viking

00:51:54.580 brotherhood i believe got the tax exemption yes yes so so yeah and that's not to discount anything

00:52:02.180 but americans would go there and they would ask these completely american questions

00:52:07.860 and it was often very confusing and they would make

00:52:15.140 i don't think it's always dishonest i think sometimes it was but i think we see this

00:52:19.380 in a number of different instances and we see it into the 90s with uh jorman jorman

00:52:26.100 during hansen um he actually came to the united states and everybody wanted to like

00:52:32.980 get them to say yes to whatever their ideology was so you could put it to this guy who's confused

00:52:39.540 that doesn't speak english good that doesn't have any context ask him super leading questions get

00:52:45.780 him to say yes on something like aha see he agrees the icelanders agree with me i'm doing it right

00:52:51.220 and i'm not even exaggerating um but yeah just keep that in mind so we're

00:52:58.420 having context as we follow through the story and i keep derailing you chris i don't mean to

00:53:03.780 it's it's totally it's totally fine i'm gonna ramble endlessly of you okay so um

00:53:08.580 Um, Sveinbjorn and Thorstein were aware of things going on in America, presumably through Thorstein's curiosity and knowledge of English.

00:53:21.260 They knew who Stephen MacNallan was, but they hadn't read anything by him and lamented not knowing him better.

00:53:28.060 They knew Freya Aswin, um, Aswin, excuse me.

00:53:30.920 In the Vortru article that Thor Sanhet is transcribing on amfirstbooks.com, no relation to America First's usage today, it starts out as initially Shirley is just asking questions to Spain Dioran through Thorstein, but then eventually Thorstein starts...

00:53:56.920 I used the word editorializing in the paper that I wrote, but I think more so just answering is better.

00:54:03.800 And it demonstrates a difference between the two men.

00:54:07.920 Spainbjorn was very genuine, very down-to-earth, folksy.

00:54:13.080 He's described as a sheep farmer by people and like period things, I think,

00:54:17.680 because they can't really come up with anything else zany to describe him by, you know.

00:54:23.440 But Thorstein was a bit more of an academic type.

00:54:26.420 so like he knew about runes he knew the basics of them they're these little symbols and they have

00:54:33.700 like a kind of deeper meaning and there's a sigil and you can do divination with them

00:54:38.340 i don't i don't believe that svein bjorn didn't know about such a thing but i don't

00:54:44.200 he doesn't strike me as the kind of person who'd be like pouring over these tomes to figure out

00:54:48.620 like what's the true meaning of faku you know what i mean and um the fact that thorstein felt

00:54:57.100 it appropriate to uh speak freely i guess you could say as somewhat of an authority when

00:55:05.260 ostensibly there's surely the journalist is there to talk to spain jorn is a demonstration i think

00:55:11.340 of lorstein's position in the asituraf elegies so by law in iceland

00:55:20.220 so by by law here in the us you know you file for 501c3 and then you just have to do certain things

00:55:26.140 and not do certain things and it's like all right you have your your there's the also your gothi

00:55:31.260 and it's monarchy matt and it's like this top-down authority and the like or you can be like pastor

00:55:37.820 bob and what do you guys want to talk about what do you want the sermon to be about or you can have

00:55:43.180 all these esoteric political ecclesiastical polities is the proper word for like how do you

00:55:49.100 run a church in iceland it's not necessarily that way a lot of the germanic europe countries it's

00:55:58.460 not just iceland that has like a state church where it's like all right which religion do you

00:56:02.460 want we're going to make you a lutheran unless you mark that you're a catholic kind of thing

00:56:05.580 um i believe sweden also does that anyways so there is a board of directors who is the real

00:56:14.620 power in any given um religious body in iceland they're the people who actually run the church

00:56:23.820 and um that is a sort of parallel leadership to the actual

00:56:31.980 also your gothi the gothar and i don't know if he was ever given this title given that it's an

00:56:38.860 anglo-saxon word but i would describe thorstein guthjonsson as frankly being part of spain

00:56:44.140 spainbjorn's way realistically like if we're mapping afa terms and structures onto the astro

00:56:50.300 i think that was where we would put him because he was apparently a gothi despite attempts to

00:56:56.360 distance him from the, uh, Asajara Felgi between, from 1975 or so onwards by secondary sources,

00:57:05.820 he does appear to have been in very good standing if he was Sveinbjorn's translator, if he was

00:57:11.900 housing the journalist, if Sveinbjorn was even doing this, presumably because Thorstein set it

00:57:18.820 up i guess swainbjord doesn't strike me as the kind of guy to be setting up you know uh communiques

00:57:26.820 with foreign journalists for this nebulous body of like steve mcnallan and garmin lord and steven

00:57:34.020 flowers and all these other guys that don't know icelandic i mean maybe steven flowers did i don't

00:57:39.300 whatever um and he is described as a gothy in his obituary so uh swain bjorn on december 23rd 1994

00:57:52.180 spain bjorn's uh spirit journey to the halls of his ancestors and on uh i might have gotten this

00:57:58.260 Yeah. On the 6th of January, 1995, they performed a joint Lutheran-Ossetru funeral for Sveinbjorn.

00:58:11.260 That comes about because Sveinbjorn was, he wanted to obey a dictum in the Havamal that says that you shouldn't keep, you shouldn't separate graves.

00:58:23.260 And I think he was interpreting that possibly a little over the middle. I don't know the specific stanza. I am not a Gothi, so I can't tell you how to interpret it anyways. But he wanted to literally be buried with his kinfolk, like physically, right?

00:58:36.240 And so he had to have a Lutheran funeral, but he was also the Ulster Agothi, so they did an ostracized funeral alongside it.

00:58:45.400 They had to come up with a regent who could administer the funeral, and I'm not entirely sure why.

00:58:54.280 One thing might have been hierarchy. It seemed proper for a mere Agothi to officiate the funeral of an Ulster Agothi, but that doesn't seem their style at the time.

00:59:03.600 I remember reading somewhere that it was a big deal when they got their second slot for

00:59:08.640 officiants. Apparently in Iceland, you are given a number of slots that you can fill by the

00:59:15.840 government. So like here, any number of our gothar, we could theoretically, we could make

00:59:22.740 every member of gothar. That wouldn't be a good idea, but we could, and every one of them could

00:59:26.620 legally officiate marriages. In Iceland, for a time, it seems like if you wanted to get married

00:59:33.040 in an ostrich ceremony, you had to get Sveinbjorn Bainteinsson to show up, and he had to take

00:59:38.800 time off from sheep farming to come down and officiate your wedding. Because at the time,

00:59:44.800 this probably wasn't a full-time, like in terms of the money they had coming in, this probably

00:59:48.880 wasn't a full-time job. And I know it wasn't for Jormunderingi for his term. Thorstein was an

00:59:58.640 intellectual but he was not rewarded for that monetarily he was a manager of fine icelandic

01:00:06.960 wholesale and retail uh outlets which is to say he was a store manager for like shops he was a

01:00:15.440 merchant by like trade um which kind of puts it into perspective where like you have this guy 0.73

01:00:21.920 who's a gothy who knows about runes who's helping found a religion doing arguably one of the most 0.99

01:00:28.560 important things in his country's history in literally a thousand years but he has to sell 0.93

01:00:34.000 like sweaters to make ends meet um so they had a big deal when they got like a second officiant

01:00:43.840 and they were also being run by this board effectively that comes into the like the board

01:00:51.440 of directors comes into play when we get to yormundur ingi and the kind of uh tale of where

01:00:56.640 to where the Ossetur-Raphaelgith goes after Sveinbjorn's grasp is finally released from the organization.

01:01:05.640 But so, I'm sorry, Thorstein's grasp is kind of released from the organization.

01:01:12.640 So Sveinbjorn had his joint Lutheran Ossetur funeral and was presided over by some kind of regent.

01:01:18.640 He then led a Njall seance 17 days after Samjorn's death, three days after his

01:01:26.800 unearthment, which is kind of cool on the one hand. On the other hand, it's a little...

01:01:33.600 Do they still do that? I don't know, you know? But so in...

01:01:41.120 So on December 24th, 1999, five years later, Thorstein would suffer a stroke, and that would hospitalize him.

01:01:54.120 He would die on the 21st of January in 2000. So he made it through the new millennium. He beat Y2K.

01:02:03.640 His funeral was held 10 days later on the 31st of January in 2000 in Langholt Church.

01:02:11.120 Now, that's kind of odd, given that he was a gothi and the founder of the Estorafelgid.

01:02:16.920 I looked into this, and Langholt Church is like a local parish church, like one of these buildings where it's like, it's not necessarily 100% denominational, per se.

01:02:27.980 I mean, today it's very non-denominational.

01:02:29.820 You can just rent it for whatever you want.

01:02:32.020 So I'm thinking that possibly the reason his funeral was there is because they needed a building, and it was in the middle of Icelandic January.

01:02:39.400 You know, it might not have been the ideal conditions to hold an outdoor funeral.

01:02:46.400 Throughout his life, he was fascinated by the idea of astral projection, travel to other worlds, life out in the vast, starry, expansive space.

01:02:54.400 And in his obituary, one mourner was consolatory by saying that while Thorstein had died, he had been reborn, as per any all theories, on another world with a new and beautiful body, free of the defects of the old one.

01:03:07.400 And he was one of the lucky individuals who lived, if only for 21 days, through the transition of millennias.

01:03:15.360 In a poetic sense, he might not have been able to contact one of the astral travelers in the far-flung reaches of space,

01:03:22.180 but he himself did, in his last days, cross a great boundary of time and space with what little time he had left.

01:03:29.220 Although his body was damaged by disease at both a young and old age,

01:03:32.600 he carried, it carried his mind and spirit across the threshold to another world twice.

01:03:39.260 One, the transition from an Iceland without Asatru to an Iceland with Asatru, and once

01:03:44.920 into the new millennium. It's fitting that this is the kind of man who did that, a man 0.92

01:03:51.260 who was so interested in that idea of these transitions across a vast empty space that

01:03:57.020 might as well be a boundary.

01:04:01.360 In his obituary, most of the well-wishers were family

01:04:05.020 and fellow Njalla enthusiasts, except for one fellow.

01:04:09.020 I believe his name also had Thor in it.

01:04:12.920 But he confirmed that Thorstein was a Gothi

01:04:17.820 and was a long-time aide of both Svengjorn and Jörmunder Ingi.

01:04:25.880 so uh i'm trying to find if there's anything else i should talk about before going into

01:04:31.480 uh they where are the ostrich the ostrich goes from here and

01:04:35.880 uh why perhaps they should have listened more to thorstein um

01:04:46.840 we do have some people who are trying to find out about his uh current resting place do we not sir

01:04:53.080 um so we know the location we're trying to get boots on the ground to go take pictures and kind

01:05:00.280 of physically establish contact with it for what it's worth um one of the once you get over the 1.00

01:05:09.360 initial hurdle because there's so few icelanders some things are made easier because it's not like

01:05:16.800 you got to sort through millions of people you've got to sort through hundreds of thousands

01:05:21.060 um the other thing is that's tricky is with their patronomic naming system

01:05:29.940 you get a relatively small amount of names shared by lots and lots and lots of people so whereas

01:05:42.180 i don't know it seems like in some of my looking if you're trying to find

01:05:46.980 you know depends on how obscure the name is but because of how they do and because they only have

01:05:54.860 a certain amount of um legally recognized names and a cert and everyone is somebody's son or

01:06:03.000 somebody's daughter it means those combinations are relatively limited so there is a whole lot

01:06:09.160 of Thorstein Guthiansen's fun story when I was looking him up I I was initially told like hey

01:06:17.840 look into this fella Thorstein Guthiansen I'm like all right and I just google him

01:06:22.260 and the first guy that comes up is actually some dude that died in the 80s on Mount Everest

01:06:26.740 yep like and I'm like is this him I don't because it's not like there's pictures you know

01:06:33.580 That's what makes it confusing. My understanding, looking stuff up, and again, Svon's talking about it over in the chat, but if we can mobilize some boots on the ground, it would be nice to, I don't know, see that and get a picture and kind of touch base with that literally.

01:06:54.800 I know that he also has, as far as I know they're living, he had three children, I believe, one of which preceded him in death, but two of which, to my knowledge, are still living.

01:07:08.400 I don't have any idea about grandchildren he might, you know, have or, you know, at this time, great-grandchildren.

01:07:16.160 But it'd be interesting to make some sort of connection there at some point.

01:07:20.900 So the fellow who wrote the obituary that I was referencing was Sigurður Þórðarsson, and he – there was an issue in the printing of the Morgan Bladhith where they basically chopped his obituary in half and published it a week early and published the rest on the second anyways.

01:07:43.420 so uh seeger there confirms a few things for us he says he was apparently some kind of uh

01:07:49.180 australian insider i didn't i wasn't able to find much on him maybe he wasn't too big in it i don't

01:07:55.660 know but um he tells us that uh thorstein was a a big aid to both um spanger and bainty's son who

01:08:06.700 for clarity led the astrophilic youth from 1972 to 1993 and for his successor uh yurmundur ingi

01:08:14.220 hansen whose ulterior gothic term was 1994 to 2002. i believe yurmundur ingi hansen passed away

01:08:23.100 in like 2017. don't quote me on that but he he lived for a number of years after uh no longer

01:08:30.460 being installed i guess you could call it so as a deviation here for a second that's kind of a point

01:08:39.260 of interest um we are i mentioned earlier that chris is a huge part of our endeavor to

01:08:53.820 flesh out our own history and to preserve it and

01:09:00.460 I don't know, remove the fog of time of things that have been obscured.

01:09:06.880 And one of those events, Yarminder Inge was brought over here for an event called the Gathering of the Gothar in 1996 in Arizona.

01:09:18.620 And we're trying to find more detail on that.

01:09:21.440 If any in the audience have any detail on that, want to send it our way, please do it.

01:09:25.680 BNS at runestone.org.

01:09:27.840 You can also send any questions you might have to bnseverunestone.org.

01:09:33.260 That said, there was a gap between the Austro Free Assembly from 1987 until the establishment of the Austro Folk Assembly, you know, over the Yule of 94 to 95.

01:09:52.060 So there was this gap there, and the Ashtu Folk Assembly didn't begin ordaining Gothar until a few years later.

01:10:01.920 So within that gap, we mentioned one of our Gothar and a good friend of mine, Thorgrin Odin, who just passed away this last summer.

01:10:12.160 He is the only one of our Gothar that was ordained outside of the Astru Folk Assembly or Steve McNallan's direct Gothic lineage.

01:10:24.320 He was actually received his ordination from Jormundur Inge Hansen at the gathering of the Gothar in 1996.

01:10:33.440 So that's just kind of an interesting overlap factoid also.

01:10:37.660 And it looked like we had give you Sheila McNallan in the chat room.

01:10:41.700 It's always an honor to have you here, Sheila, if you're still with us. 0.97

01:10:45.560 But, you know, she was telling me part of it is, you know, everybody's going, like I mentioned earlier, everybody's going to this, this old Icelander and trying to like contort him and twist his arm into validating whatever their viewpoint is on things. 0.61

01:11:01.800 And this guy's over there in his Icelandic like wool suit in the middle of summer in Arizona, had to be just melting so far out of his element with all these, you know, thirsty, out-to-true groupies, like trying to get some of his, you know, his Icelandic nectar for there to validate.

01:11:31.800 whatever their positions were on out of his element i read in uh one publication that it

01:11:38.640 was a hundred degrees it was a hundred degrees fahrenheit in arizona at the gathering of the

01:11:43.280 gothar that would have been yeah that would have been nice that would have been that would have

01:11:48.700 been a cool day at that time of year right like so speaking of that plug if you are in michigan

01:11:56.280 and you're not a member you should get in contact with me at csavich at runestone.org

01:12:01.000 c-s-a-v-i-c-h at runestone.org there's a few people who should do that but um i'm going to

01:12:09.160 send out an afa-wide email one of these days um if you have copies of iduna or vortru or any of

01:12:17.400 these magazines that aren't like actual books books like that aren't like you know actual book

01:12:26.840 books if you have any of those please get in contact with me so we can get those like recorded

01:12:32.840 you would be surprised how hard it is to find like fortrue number 59 in the runic year 2246

01:12:41.720 for true for true uh did this thing called the runic year where when they started the oldest

01:12:47.480 runic inscription was found in 250 bc so that they would count years by runic era which is

01:12:54.600 80 plus 250. um that's about enjoy having obscure and eccentric dating methods yeah

01:13:04.360 chris when he answers any of the inquiries i have always dates things to the fall of troy

01:13:09.720 it's the i find it amusing but he also translates for me so i don't have to do the math as long as

01:13:17.160 those are in the brackets i appreciate it runic year is a little bit trickier for me to figure

01:13:22.440 out when i'm trying to place things with that particular dating system um but yeah we're

01:13:30.120 cataloging those things and i think that we'd be remiss we've tried for a really long time to get

01:13:35.160 copies of the very earliest rune stones and through brandy's persistent harassment of sorts

01:13:48.120 amazingly because i didn't know that it could be accomplished i can only i mean if sheila's

01:13:53.560 on there she may have some insight if she is sitting next to our founder he might also have

01:13:58.440 some insight but i have no idea how many copies ever existed of those you know first couple of

01:14:05.720 years worth of rune stones at least one of one of whenever number one is through somewhere in 1980

01:14:13.960 because i got them i got them in our hand in our digital hands so yeah they so someone was able to

01:14:21.320 come up with them and as according to the best of my understanding we have you know like the first

01:14:28.280 i think five digitally preserved and we're working on the rest we've got quite a bit

01:14:34.840 if you are interested in these things as they become preserved and we keep them we have them

01:14:39.960 in our library at ringstone.org um we have quite quite a few of the latter ones from the folk

01:14:49.240 assembly days we have a lot of them from the 80s and the early 90s there was a gap from i think

01:14:56.840 like 87 to like 92. but we have we have a lot we have one through whatever the first one on the

01:15:06.320 list is currently I got those they're in our our internal teams I got them okay so we're working

01:15:13.820 on getting all that stuff uploaded to our library that we maintain at runestone.org if you haven't

01:15:19.940 checked it out you should it's kind of cool it's interesting it's very informative to watch the

01:15:24.980 development of this of our faith over time and it's it's fascinating this stuff is things that

01:15:35.480 I really wanted access through when I first came home to Alcatru and it's hard to find it it's hard

01:15:42.020 to find it digitally um a lot of our elders are you know unfortunately passing beyond the veil

01:15:50.000 over time and when folks go their stories and some of our history goes with them and we want

01:15:56.240 to make sure that's preserved so we can celebrate the people that have got us here um yes chris a

01:16:02.880 big part of cat thank you sir yes lucat it does technically in a really altered dystopian

01:16:14.000 and yeah unfortunately I I can talk about that for a while too but let's not that's yeah but

01:16:20.540 yeah it's it's not we don't need and well that's the thing so we are um

01:16:27.980 kind of to the end of his life talking a little bit about where stuff's gone whatever is informative

01:16:36.440 um just for people's perspective and you know please continue your story of what you got

01:16:41.120 but while i'm still plugging here um if you have vortru 59 or 60 those would be helpful i think

01:16:49.120 that's those two have the gathering of the gofar some of this stuff just doesn't appear on the

01:16:54.340 internet like i was i was talking i had to get something that was that took place at uh east

01:17:00.840 coast thing 2010 i had i had to ask law speaker turnage because it's like you know what happens

01:17:08.980 you google that event you get some dude's live journal article saying yeah i was there it was

01:17:14.180 awesome that's it like that's it that's probably not going to be here in a decade as as ridiculous

01:17:21.300 as it sounds awesome i've been able to get um i'm glad somebody decided to live journal yeah

01:17:29.860 yeah it's amazing because and i you know i'm trying to remedy this

01:17:38.980 it's really easy to realize what you wish you had after it's gone and so I'm we're trying our best

01:17:49.300 to correct what we can to document what we can but you know a lot of a lot of folks some through

01:18:00.460 just not caring enough or being negligent or being whatever didn't record things but others what I

01:18:07.240 a lot some of our leaders know they're too busy doing to stop and write it down and document it

01:18:14.360 and i can't fault them for that certainly but i want to know about i want to know the lessons of

01:18:19.960 the past i want to know their stories i want to say and sing their songs i want to extol their

01:18:26.120 fame for those that are worthy of it that's such a huge part of our faith and it uh

01:18:31.000 it's very important so yeah anybody out there that has stuff to contribute please do we would

01:18:39.660 love to benefit from you know the bits and pieces that maybe you've collected or know about

01:18:45.160 and yeah we're always very very interested in hearing that and we would love everyone out

01:18:52.140 there this is another time since we're plugging stuff if you are listening to this or if you're

01:18:57.260 watching this either now or in the future which is now to you i would encourage you if you

01:19:07.740 if you are you know a heterosexual white person that either has a sincere faith in the icer or

01:19:17.580 sincerely wants to you should join the astro focus assembly at runestone.org we are doing amazing

01:19:25.020 things we would love to have you be part of that with us we are living history each and every day

01:19:33.820 and you could be a very big part of that if you want to we'd love to have you come home and help

01:19:40.780 us do this more do this better or accelerate this into the future we want all our folk to

01:19:48.300 come home to our rightful relationship with our gods and we would encourage you to do so

01:19:59.340 but also know this you're welcome to consume this show no matter who we are if you like it

01:20:06.780 we appreciate you if you don't like it but you still come here and pay attention i don't know

01:20:11.580 why but i appreciate you being here and anybody who's got questions is always welcome to ask as

01:20:17.900 long as they're phrased i wouldn't even say respectfully as long as they're not phrased

01:20:25.180 disrespectfully i'm very happy to give you an answer to the best of my ability and we encourage

01:20:30.780 everybody to to come check it out because one of the things is word of mouth is so huge for

01:20:38.620 the success of this show and for bringing people home to also true our biggest hurdle and i tell

01:20:44.380 our leadership this all the time and i don't really mean hurdle i guess our biggest kind of

01:20:48.620 threshold issue right now is so many people don't know we exist and would be here if they did so

01:20:58.940 spread the word you know if you're interested great please join maybe you're not but maybe

01:21:03.900 you've got a family member who is maybe you've got a friend who is we all have so many circles

01:21:09.580 in our lives that intersect with other things if you think this show is interesting or entertaining

01:21:15.900 or any of the above and you're here let somebody know we'd love to have more people participate and

01:21:24.060 get involved with what we're doing but we appreciate you guys being here we appreciate

01:21:28.140 our regulars we appreciate our newcomers and uh appreciate you sticking through our interlude

01:21:35.660 now let's get back to the narrative and uh take us home chris so real quick just to comment on

01:21:43.500 something that uh mr lucat said in the chat here regarding uh rod navary in continuing with the

01:21:50.380 spirit of thorstein's work as i said he was one of the founders of the well no the oscar fellow

01:21:58.380 youth was one of the founding institutions of the european congress of ethnic religions um

01:22:04.060 which used to be like the world congress of ethnic religions or something but then they changed it

01:22:07.820 i don't know um which was created as a sort of non-anglo international ethno-pagan

01:22:17.020 conference not like they're sharing theology but like you know banding together apart to work

01:22:23.100 together for common goals um in the face of an opponent that doesn't doesn't like what we're

01:22:28.060 doing and i really like that and it's always been very difficult to kind of gather this information

01:22:36.060 up and not just in some instances literally translate it like you can occasionally find a

01:22:42.060 rusky who knows english and he'll be talking about what they do over there but like sir do

01:22:48.300 do you know what the term for Estonian polytheism is?

01:22:56.720 I don't know how to pronounce it.

01:22:58.360 Not Radnavarin?

01:22:59.780 No, no, no.

01:23:00.740 One of them is...

01:23:02.100 No, no. 0.95

01:23:02.740 Ramuva is Lithuanians, Latvians are Liukdeva. 0.88

01:23:07.200 Like, even just this, like, what do they call themselves?

01:23:09.720 What do Finns call what they do?

01:23:11.280 You know, like, one thing I have wanted to do for a while is go through

01:23:17.380 and sort out a lot of this information for us internally.

01:23:22.740 So it's like, okay, but like, what does Rodnavri actually mean?

01:23:26.580 What are the sects?

01:23:27.600 What are the denominations?

01:23:28.580 Because it's a lot more complicated than Ositru,

01:23:31.220 like the modern stuff, you know,

01:23:34.020 but that would be continuing Thorstein's project.

01:23:38.060 And that is something that seemed to occupy him

01:23:42.200 because he did, again, he was writing in Vortru

01:23:44.340 and he was writing this publication, Hugen and Mugen,

01:23:47.380 in English from Iceland which I can't actually find evidence of existing other than like in

01:23:52.720 the back of vortus like other publications that you might be interested in listings well good thing

01:23:59.320 is um we got Chris on the case now so I'm sure we will get a lot closer um you know Chris talks

01:24:08.860 like he's been actively trying to dig this information up for some great amount of time

01:24:13.960 anybody who was here at the beginning of the program, Chris is like a year in.

01:24:19.280 There's a lot of stones that he is able to turn that he hasn't had the time to turn yet.

01:24:25.140 I engage a little bit inside baseball.

01:24:28.260 I kind of engaged Chris on some side projects over the past couple of months,

01:24:33.440 but just added him to our history team and stuff like a week ago, two weeks ago.

01:24:40.620 And he's been killing it.

01:24:42.200 He's been killing it.

01:24:43.080 we recently got you know a spreadsheet to record all the dates various really important things

01:24:48.040 within the afa um and he's you know going back decades fleshing things out getting dates

01:24:55.640 contacting folks doing things so really really beautiful things are going to happen with our

01:25:01.800 history endeavors and this gentleman is a huge part of it and we're very very appreciative

01:25:08.920 one thing that i wish i could get is what it actually meant to be a gothi in uh thorstein's

01:25:15.000 day in the astrophobia that term probably maps closer closely enough to our usage of it now

01:25:22.120 to use it but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's one-to-one mapping um sigur the

01:25:28.680 urlerson tells us that uh thorstein was a gothi he uses that term right and um he also says that

01:25:38.920 uh he he being thorstein would act as a deputy in the absence of he says in the absence of thorstein

01:25:45.960 that's got to be a typo just it's he's got to be referring to someone else or google didn't

01:25:50.840 translate this this construction correctly it thought active voice was passive voice or something

01:25:56.280 like or vice versa um but it's very telling then that if he's a deputy he's translating this foreign

01:26:03.320 journalist for uh for spainbjorn he's doing this spainbjorn is doing this for thorstein um as we'll

01:26:11.640 as i'll cover in a minute here i i do think in a certain sense that thorstein probably was the second

01:26:16.840 at least intellectually, in Sveinbjorn and Jörmunder's day.

01:26:24.080 And Sigurdur tells us that he was not only a,

01:26:30.240 he was a theological resource for Sveinbjorn and Jörmunder.

01:26:35.840 So he was seeking, those two men were seeking his wisdom

01:26:39.040 on these topics. 0.99

01:26:41.640 Interestingly, a number of the Njall guys who were writing

01:26:45.240 obituaries for thorstein also commented that he was super knowledgeable about icelandic lore

01:26:52.260 norse mythology ostature like all of the all of these stuffs right and it's kind of noteworthy

01:26:59.500 that like you know yeah i remember that guy he was great at the seance he wouldn't he wouldn't

01:27:04.540 stop talking about thor you know like that's very telling if you're going to put it in the obituary

01:27:09.200 where you only have like a few paragraphs um especially if your relationship with him wasn't

01:27:15.280 necessarily because of the astrotru stuff but was like for the nyal stuff for seances and

01:27:22.720 spiritualism and talking to aliens right um so thorstein's health probably wasn't in too good

01:27:32.560 of a state uh going up to his stroke but he did survive into your wonder inky hansen's term so

01:27:45.520 so spanger was in charge from 1972 to 1993 he passed in um the the end of 1993

01:27:53.200 yormander took over from 1994 to 2002. thorstein died in 2000 so he was with yormander for a good

01:28:04.080 six years acting as his advisor presumably until he literally was hospitalized right i would imagine

01:28:11.280 so this doesn't strike me as a man to stop doing this sort of work it's hard reading up on it i

01:28:17.040 don't know if he was like at his right hand advising him or if he was more like somebody that

01:28:23.280 he that uh i was here you go the uh hansen would like seek out for his thoughts on stuff

01:28:32.080 so i i'm unclear on that in my in my understanding of it but he was certainly sought for counsel by

01:28:39.280 both of the first two i'll share your gothar of that organization it's also not clear how like

01:28:45.440 physically congruous these people were um the low iceland is smaller than most u.s states

01:28:53.760 but so i don't necessarily know how easy it would have been for him to been you know like walk two

01:29:00.560 blocks through the snow knock on old thorstein's door hey man tell me about the runes you know

01:29:06.240 but even then you know correspondence by letters would have been ubiquitous at this time everyone

01:29:11.440 was writing letters back then presumably delivered by some kind of icelandic goat or something

01:29:17.440 i mean but it's not talking about the 70s 80s and 90s they also just pick up a phone and call them

01:29:22.640 right no stop i want to i want a goat to deliver these letters to the farm that's a much cooler

01:29:30.720 image so so in 1998 the world pagan conquer the world pagan congress almost said world pagan

01:29:40.400 conquest wouldn't that be nice uh was formed um the astra felgi was one of the founding organizations

01:29:46.560 it's now the european congress of ethnic religions that was during yermunder indy hansen's term and

01:29:53.440 i haven't done like a full in-depth look up into your wonder to the degree that i looked

01:29:58.080 into thorstein but we're kind of going through the after effects of thorstein that proceed after his

01:30:06.000 death now again he died in 2000 his congress was in 2000 or 1998. so that was in yermander and

01:30:13.440 hansen's term but it's clearly one of these like thorsteinian projects that he wanted to get going

01:30:20.720 he wouldn't have been doing an english language asatru journal and writing devortru if he didn't

01:30:27.680 Um, your Mundur's term was when the Asaturara Felagith began to solidify as an organization

01:30:36.140 in a lot of ways. Like, remember, starting out with, like, four dudes, and they haven't

01:30:40.300 even written down which one of them is the leader. Um, I have some numbers of their membership

01:30:46.320 right here. These are, this is not an exhaustive list or anything. 1985, 74 members, 1992, 119,

01:30:55.320 1994. 172. 2002. 628. 2022. 5,770. Now, again, this is people who have, you know, gone to the

01:31:07.700 Icelandic equivalent of the Secretary of State and said, take me off the Lutheran list and put

01:31:12.780 me on the ostrich list. I don't know if you get a choice at birth to put your children in one or 0.97

01:31:20.980 other um i do know that a lot of people in iceland just do not care and i do know that's

01:31:26.660 partially why the state lutheran church continues to exist because they just get money from people

01:31:31.780 who are like yeah i was born don't care enough to change right so i want to add this note on that um

01:31:40.020 you may ask yourself why the exponential jump from 2002 or what does that what are the

01:31:47.940 implications of the exponential jump from 2002 to 2024 i wish that it was because all of these

01:31:56.580 people's hearts were turned to the isera and they wanted to come home to their native faith

01:32:00.820 and i think there may be some of that again i think that it's very easy to have a

01:32:07.700 anti-traditional mindset on some demographic and political issues when those issues are very very

01:32:19.940 far from you and not really relevant to your day-to-day um but once it caught wind to the

01:32:29.700 populace that you had an option to not send your money to the lutheran church

01:32:34.260 what my understanding is a bunch of people said cool I'll click other and with other we can get

01:32:46.620 things done that are not traditional that the Lutherans wouldn't approve of 0.56

01:32:51.900 so if you wanted to have gay marriages well now you can go to the house and true or failure gift 0.72

01:32:59.520 and they'll do your gay marriage for you they will do you know fun viking themed 0.98

01:33:08.080 celebrations of whatever lunacy you're into 0.67

01:33:13.520 and it's fun and you cannot send your money to christian churches so there's a there's a big

01:33:22.980 appeal for clicking the not Christian box. And we saw that here in kind of an inverse. We saw a very

01:33:31.940 big, in the early development of Ausatru, we saw a lot of people define their Ausatru practice as

01:33:39.140 how not Christian they are. And over time, we've come to a place where no, we're defining Ausatru

01:33:46.660 as also true its relationship to christianity or not isn't part of that identity it may factor into

01:33:56.740 what led you here but that's not what we're doing we are doing also true irregardless of

01:34:03.940 other things that are unrelated iceland's not at that stage so part of what we see that's a big

01:34:10.900 transition from the alter your god lord of swain bjorn and uh jorman ringy uh is uh hilmar is you know

01:34:27.060 and again i'm trusting translations because he didn't as far as i know he did not say this in

01:34:32.900 english um in the king's english but he said uh basically that they're atheist and that he's an

01:34:41.220 atheist the gods are like concepts or archetypes or insert other word than gods and so it's this loose

01:34:55.540 icelandic identity with fun viking themes and rotten shark as opposed to what started out as

01:35:05.860 a very spiritual rebirth of the faith amongst our folk and so it's really important to

01:35:14.260 recognize the difference because when you see that massive influx

01:35:28.260 that changes when you have what was it 600 people and then you have 5 000 people

01:35:39.140 you got 600 religious people

01:35:44.260 and 4 000 plus and this looks fun let's do some viking stuff and I think that really 0.99

01:35:54.760 is a is an unfortunate reality in the development of things to bring us

01:36:01.180 to where we see it at this point um but I this is a just a note when you're looking back at our

01:36:09.520 history things change over time in a really dramatic way so you can't judge the positions

01:36:21.520 of a for example something that anybody who's following this no matter if you're a part of our

01:36:27.040 American audience or our international audience Catholicism if you've got friends and family

01:36:35.200 that have been catholics since you know 1940s 50s 60s all catholicism pre the current commie pope

01:36:47.520 are is real real different but now you have a pontiff in office that basically says ah just

01:36:56.360 kidding on all that other stuff we're really 180 degrees different than everything the roman

01:37:03.940 catholic church has believed for the last 2 000 years you can't it would be silly for you to judge

01:37:12.260 medieval catholicism by um pope francis's standard because they're very different animals

01:37:22.100 it would be very misleading to judge swain bjorn's aussitur feligeth by hilmar's standards

01:37:33.140 and so i think that's an important thing that needs to be considered in fact

01:37:42.260 so um just to put this into kind of perspective real quick um 1985 74 1992 119 um 1994 172

01:37:55.940 2002, 628. So almost immediately upon taking, upon installment, Jormundr came into conflict

01:38:09.600 with the board, the board of trustees that was supposed to like run the institution as

01:38:15.620 a corporate body, but they don't technically have theological authority. So for the first

01:38:22.380 uh period of its existence from for uh the was incredibly centralized like everything was done

01:38:33.420 by spainbjorn he was the cashier he was the the marriage guy he was the funeral guy speaking of

01:38:40.860 marriages there's a fun story so um spainbjorn tells the story of shirley in thor sannhet's

01:38:46.140 So apparently this happened during Sveinbjorn's tenure. He was, like, jumped by this drunk couple who had heard that Asatru was, like, a thing now. You can do this.

01:39:03.120 and they're like oh that sounds fun let's get married we're drunk we're in love so they they

01:39:09.380 got married under i presume it had to have been under spain bjorn's hand if he was like the only

01:39:16.240 one that could do this and they sobered up the next day and are like what do you mean we're married

01:39:21.420 this is a legal religion um which is a funny story because it's like uh that happens in las

01:39:30.700 vegas all the time but it is kind of tragic about how even then how icelanders and no offense to

01:39:38.940 icelanders who are pious but like the idea of like oh there's a new religion let's get married

01:39:45.020 for a lark it's like what that seems so all right so we have now ventured past uh thorstein's life

01:39:55.980 and times i want to get to some of our questions in uh that have developed but i'd also like to

01:40:06.540 first mary mitchell's in the audience we see over there mary hi mary um it's good to see

01:40:13.900 i'm glad that you're watching tonight um but i'd also like to kind of again for perspective

01:40:22.700 Um, and I know that we've got, this show is Amero-centric because, I mean, I could try

01:40:38.160 to run the math, but 90% or more of our members are in the United States.

01:40:44.920 But I understand, and I'm very, I don't know, honored and thankful that we've got a lot

01:40:50.560 international uh folks watching so when some of this has a really heavy american context just

01:40:58.000 please factor that in some folks a lot of people who listen this may not be familiar with

01:41:04.400 the relative religiosity in europe compared to the united states

01:41:08.960 um it sneaks up on me but uh the gray in my beard tells me i'm getting a little bit older than i

01:41:16.320 feel like i am um but i was born in 1981 so for my generation of people in the united states

01:41:27.200 most people quote unquote believe in god i think we're still majority of people claim

01:41:34.960 to be religious in some way for whatever it's worth but in my day

01:41:40.640 you knew people like either you went to church or lots of people you knew regularly went to church

01:41:49.580 and you had a direct connection with religiosity now over here a lot of that was Protestantism

01:41:58.960 different parts of the country had you know stronger maybe Mormon um element or Catholic

01:42:05.960 element or, you know, generic American Protestantism, you know, with the Baptists or the Methodists

01:42:14.200 or things of that nature. But you had, it wasn't an odd thing for people, for your friends,

01:42:22.320 families to be avid churchgoers. You know, if you're spending the night Saturday night,

01:42:27.000 you're going with them on Sunday morning because they're going to church. That's what's up.

01:42:31.420 But that was very common. In my parents' generation, that was normal. And you were off if your family didn't do that. In my grandparents' generation, no, that was standard. You did that. And if you didn't, you were making the conscious choice because you had some personal issue with the Lord.

01:42:51.440 um europe is probably two or three if not more generations different in that regard i went over

01:43:01.760 on an afa trip to sweden i want to say recently but this is part of the gray in my beard recently

01:43:07.440 means in 2018 um and talking to folks it was really odd because

01:43:18.080 religion isn't a thing there a lot they're surrounded by beautiful expressions of religion

01:43:27.520 but like people will get married in a church because you're supposed to or have a funeral that

01:43:33.360 way but very it is a very pronounced minority that are you know go to mass

01:43:46.000 every week that's not the norm so a lot of this when you see you know ah but swain bjorn had a

01:43:53.600 funeral in a church yeah but most church funerals over there aren't particularly religious because

01:44:00.640 religion is europe became very secular much sooner than the united states has

01:44:10.400 so i think some of that factors in when we find things that seem odd we still have a lot of

01:44:16.240 cultural points of reference and relevance to religiosity whereas in europe i think your

01:44:23.440 default position is atheism that you come to house the truth from as opposed to here in the united

01:44:31.120 states where you still have a very you know a very healthy percentage come to house the truth from

01:44:37.520 a different faith and we see that change over time but i just think that's kind of an interesting

01:44:43.520 note when you wonder like this strange overlap between the church and you know why is the church

01:44:50.480 allowing these funerals for pagan clergy like on their grounds it's because religiosity has really

01:45:01.040 receded into the background in europe to a much more substantial degree than i think a lot of us

01:45:06.480 are readily familiar with we've got some stuff stacking up but i'm enjoying our chat room tonight

01:45:16.080 quite a bit um i just want to throw in real quick um i was born in 94 and turning 30 this year

01:45:24.560 for reference my parents did not want my brother and i to grow up not my parents my parents were

01:45:32.080 not religious in any meaningful sense but like socially we we had to go to church we had to

01:45:37.360 know what this was about we would be ostracized if we if we didn't you know just for perspective

01:45:42.720 like how much the shift has occurred

01:45:47.760 yeah i think you'd get bullied you'd be the strange like oddball kid if you did that in europe

01:45:54.640 um and i say that i don't in western europe i think eastern europe's a very different animal

01:46:01.360 in a lot of ways um all right so we've got we got some questions stacking up

01:46:08.240 gofi trent east says chris is there a particular house or austenia that you consider your

01:46:18.000 yourself especially devoted to so uh my wife and i hail the day we don't do the whole sig

01:46:27.280 drew from all prayer every morning but we do that but um the first when i was starting out making

01:46:33.920 this like real for me like like this isn't just intellectual this is personal devotion and piety

01:46:41.840 um the first deity that i opened myself up to was ostara i and i every day i say a little prayer to

01:46:50.960 her before i go out into the world as it were um not as devoted as i should be but uh we're just

01:46:59.600 mortals so i hope that answers the question no it does and that's kind of a that's a cool insight

01:47:07.280 also uh patrick martin in the chat room um i'm glad you appreciate the notes i'm glad they are

01:47:14.640 i don't know glad you find it useful and i appreciate you being in the audience and listening

01:47:18.560 next up we've got another gofie bode mayo chris what is your favorite time period in aryan history

01:47:28.960 and why the present the present um i am a sucker for the anglo-saxon aesthetic though

01:47:37.440 but the present definitely okay so break that off for some folks when you say the anglo-saxon

01:47:44.480 aesthetic the the sutton who helm is pretty cool that that period of the the height of migration

01:47:56.080 era germanic artwork i i find charming not that i don't like other aesthetics of course but that's

01:48:02.160 that's one that's and i think to a certain degree it's also the one where we can see it on its own

01:48:08.000 terms like uh i was i did research on the gothic kings of thaneric wingeric atherid aoric and

01:48:17.680 ariaric he's been really liked the rick in their name stay tuned gentlemen or ladies and gentlemen

01:48:26.320 um and it's like how did they dress you know what what did the world of the goths look like

01:48:33.680 and we don't really have that much we cannot say as much about like you know 200 bc what did the

01:48:41.940 germanic world look like as we can like 480 in england and i think that's that's very novel to

01:48:48.240 be able to see these people's material culture like on its own terms these people's our ancestors

01:48:53.060 you know what i mean like the material culture at the time like what did these people think was

01:48:58.000 fashionable through their own eyes as opposed to like what did some dude in milan think about how

01:49:05.200 gothar dressed circa 380 you know i mean if that dude was like theodoric it'd be really interesting

01:49:14.720 um but that said i'm gonna take a moment to plug a author and expert that i think is really

01:49:23.440 informative to anglo-saxon stuff and austral things in general from that perspective with

01:49:30.080 stephen hollington um his work's really cool his book elder gods is particularly interesting

01:49:40.560 and has fascinating little tidbits in it i actually got to meet him and give him a ride when

01:49:47.040 he came to mid-summer 2011 mid-summer 2011 i'm gonna say i could be off on the year got to give

01:49:56.800 him a ride fascinating guy but he is like the preeminent expert on the sutton who find um

01:50:07.040 really cool guy it was great to get to you know spend a few hours drive talking to him driving

01:50:11.200 him to the airport stop by the gas station he does not like root beer finds it interesting

01:50:16.800 thinks it tastes like toothpaste um next up i don't know if he's speaking for himself

01:50:27.440 or from like the island of england as a whole

01:50:34.720 as far as his dislike of toothpaste or about you know maybe he likes toothpaste but he doesn't like

01:50:40.880 the root beer so i've got a question it's like all gothic questions tonight so witness fawn would

01:50:49.200 like to know uh i'll tell you go through matt can you elaborate on our arching mission of the church

01:50:55.920 in their honoring these new heroes as far as the overall mission of the austral folk assembly i

01:51:01.840 think that's a bit broad and i think he's just referring to as it relates to these new heroes

01:51:09.200 some of you who've been paying attention may notice that we have elevated a number of

01:51:15.040 folks from our history to heroic status honoring them with days of remembrance

01:51:22.000 i spoke a little bit about this at the beginning of the program but it's worth reiterating and

01:51:26.400 and maybe elaborating on. There's a lot of concepts here, and I don't know the direction

01:51:42.600 to go I guess first so first thing to keep in mind we say Thorstein was this was that

01:51:57.240 fundamentally Thorstein is this and is that because he exists and he exists beyond the veil

01:52:07.480 with the ancestors and in his capacity as a gothi with the gods

01:52:16.040 that said your fame is your currency and means a great deal we owe fame and celebration and

01:52:27.000 worship in the archaic sense of the word to heroes that have earned that in the past

01:52:32.840 and that's one of the only or i say that that's probably the most common have them all line that

01:52:38.520 people are familiar with is that cattle die and kinsmen die but one thing that does not

01:52:43.640 die is the fame of one who's earned it we need to celebrate those who have earned it

01:52:51.800 now our gods and you know firstly i guess our ancestors and in a higher sense our gods

01:52:58.760 judge and celebrate and figure out what to do with us as we pass beyond the veil

01:53:07.820 and I don't pretend to know the depth and breadth of all of that but I do know this

01:53:14.600 I know that there's the opportunity for ascendancy if you have overcome if you are

01:53:20.060 worthy to become more than you were more than you are to something else to something closer

01:53:26.120 to that connection with the gods.

01:53:29.920 I also believe that if the currency is fame in general,

01:53:36.820 then we can continue to elevate the fame of our honored dead

01:53:42.380 by speaking their name, by celebrating them,

01:53:45.980 by giving them worship and celebration after they pass.

01:53:49.880 We can help in the process of their ascending to something more.

01:53:54.740 And I want to do that to those who have earned that.

01:53:58.200 We owe them that.

01:53:59.100 They've brought us here.

01:54:01.840 I also know that these heroes, folks that have passed,

01:54:07.220 can interact with those of us on this side of the veil.

01:54:10.320 They can give us their blessings.

01:54:11.660 They can assist us in our interactions with our loved ones who've passed,

01:54:19.880 in interactions with the Aesir, in interactions with a myriad of spirits beyond the veil,

01:54:28.420 as well as helping us with things here in our lives and our families.

01:54:33.540 It's right to call on the heroes of our faith to assist us in this.

01:54:39.960 We've got a couple of ways for that.

01:54:41.600 One way is our Gothar Beyond the Veil, literally within the Asshu Folk Assembly,

01:54:46.480 we now have two of our gothar who serve the afa and the the icer from the other side of the veil

01:54:54.480 and that's a tremendous asset and we're very lucky to have them

01:54:59.600 by connecting with these celebrated heroes of our folk we can enlist their service in that as well

01:55:08.960 but the cult of the hero is fundamental to alsatru it is the root of the christian saint

01:55:17.120 cult which is literally idolatry like it's as anti-biblical as you can get

01:55:24.960 but it's as pagan european as you can get as well the veneration and celebration of heroes of our

01:55:32.880 folk is a religious imperative going back through our history and honoring the men and women who

01:55:39.840 have earned that especially those who have gone uncelebrated for a time is a

01:55:50.000 it's an honor and a joy of mine and of some of ours to do but beyond that it is an obligation

01:55:59.040 to do if we are noble people and worthy of the legacy these people have left us so we

01:56:07.920 seek to acknowledge those who we believe who have ascended or which we wish to

01:56:14.400 guarantee that ascension and celebrate and we're doing that by the uh

01:56:23.520 elevation of these men and women that you see us do from time to time

01:56:27.120 i hope that answers the question i know it may sound kind of nebulous i think

01:56:32.580 it fleshes out a little more when you ask specifics

01:56:36.340 um ryan orion wotenson question could someone look up the history of yost turner

01:56:45.120 and his writings and meditations uh he used house true gods but sanita uh sanatana sanatana dharma

01:56:53.960 chance. There's an article that says his chance

01:56:57.820 freed a German.

01:57:03.160 So yeah, a lot of that work has been done. 0.88

01:57:08.540 He's

01:57:09.340 certainly worthy of celebration

01:57:13.940 and I don't, I think that Nick

01:57:18.040 could probably pull up a recent RuneStone article

01:57:22.720 that uh steve mcnallan did about yost and celebrating yost anybody who does not know

01:57:31.440 uh joseph known as yost turner was a very very close friend of the founder of the astro folk

01:57:40.720 assembly stephen mcnallan um he mails him ensemble to this day very regularly i've accompanied steve

01:57:50.960 to yos grave once had the honor of doing that and he does that regularly

01:58:02.960 to track down all of his writings is a little bit different difficult i've read

01:58:09.760 and we have access to what we found available and a lot of it's very interesting

01:58:20.960 Yes, he was definitely, he was a big part of the early foundation of the Austro Folk Assembly, and, you know, things directly preceding that, and was very, very influential on our founder, Stephen Allen, they're very, very close, and he left a really lasting mark on that.

01:58:41.520 the story goes as I have it

01:58:46.920 and I hope that I don't mess it up

01:58:48.360 is that he is

01:58:49.320 the creator

01:58:52.500 of our Heria Father

01:58:54.620 chant that we do when we do

01:58:56.640 Odenbloat

01:58:57.540 and he

01:58:59.760 came up with the words

01:59:02.520 and I think

01:59:03.380 Michael Moynihan came up with

01:59:06.580 the cadence or the musical element

01:59:08.720 to it

01:59:09.440 um but i i could be slightly off on that but both those men are involved in that

01:59:15.200 um but yeah we have access to quite a bit of that and if you would email again at vns

01:59:21.040 at runestone.org i can see about you know maybe connecting you with with some of that material

01:59:27.500 and um yeah filling you in on some some more of that um but a lot of it's a lot of it's fascinating

01:59:36.220 um he you know he's absolutely also true and a follower of of odin um he found a lot of peace and

01:59:47.200 meaning in his life through

01:59:51.460 i guess vedic or sanatana dharma type of um chanting through kriya yoga

02:00:02.800 and some other things he had interesting dietary ideas but

02:00:10.960 yeah um that's that's a subject that i can help you a lot more on if you if you send me that email

02:00:19.320 and i can kind of get you some resources on that if you'd like

02:00:21.920 i kind of mentioned this earlier but owl of omens asks what is the equivalent of saint in

02:00:31.940 also true are these heroes considered that um okay there's kind of a follow-up that sounds

02:00:39.380 very similar how would someone who is also true honor the uh high lore saints of the

02:00:49.380 as true folk assembly church okay so um yes linguistically trying to figure that out a

02:01:01.140 high lower is the plural so it doesn't need the r at the end them individually the closest

02:01:10.020 translation as i understand it is heiliger as the individual one that's masculine trying to

02:01:20.660 find the feminine is and i'm working on my linguistics you guys know this is a continuous

02:01:25.540 thing for me so i'm going to get better at these i promise this is the closest we can get and it's um

02:01:30.740 um very important to note that in figuring out these terms the appeal of them is that they are

02:01:41.960 noted in a pre-christian sense as far as holiness so it's not like the reinvention of a Latin word

02:01:51.560 it's a native word to celebrate their holy people that pre-exists one of the things on this concept

02:01:59.180 i find very interesting is uh stephen pollington who i mentioned you know a few questions ago

02:02:07.340 talks about that word in anglo-saxon which very similar which predates

02:02:13.180 the advent of christianity it talks about a special class of you know ascended holy men amongst

02:02:23.100 the the also true practitioners which that that is the equivalency so yes that's the equivalency

02:02:32.000 the appropriate way to honor them is as you would honor you know as you would honor

02:02:38.100 ancestors of your own line that you would honor talk about them speak of their deeds

02:02:45.460 pray to them at your altar make offerings to them celebrate them and as we develop special

02:02:54.240 places of worship for them each of our Hoffs has one of these celebrated there at Odin's Hoff

02:03:01.480 it's Meister Guido von List at Thor's Hoff it's Alexander Rudd Mills at Baldur's Hoff it's

02:03:10.220 It's Folkmother Elsie Christensen at New York's Hoff.

02:03:14.100 It's Rob the Strong.

02:03:19.120 As we get more Hoffs, we will have more places

02:03:22.400 to give special reverence to these heroes of our folk.

02:03:28.540 But yes, that's exactly, you know, that is the equivalency.

02:03:36.020 I've got a bunch going on in the chat room.

02:03:37.880 I've got to check it out, but I'm still going at these questions.

02:03:40.220 question from the wolf throne i feel that in this wolf age there's a growing pessimism and a feeling

02:03:48.460 of hopelessness amongst our folk do you think also true's life-affirming optimism will remedy that

02:03:54.860 as also true spreads across the west chris what do you think on that

02:04:02.540 i think it absolutely will um i think we don't have a choice but to try to a certain degree

02:04:10.220 Um, I know that my time in Ossetru has been nothing but good. It's been nothing but a growth, but growth and improvement for me. And I want to give that to other people. It's been, it's been great.

02:04:29.220 um so all i can go off is off of this my own my own sort of uh experience with it there but uh

02:04:39.600 i don't think there's many people who haven't experienced something similar

02:04:43.620 that have like actually actually tried so to say

02:04:47.280 yeah i uh

02:04:51.780 um it's hard to project what I think will or won't sway the masses of our folk that's

02:05:06.480 that's hard um yes I think Alcitru is the answer to that I think that the life embracing and

02:05:16.560 taking pride in yourself and your accomplishment of alsatru is so very very needed amongst our

02:05:24.840 folk it is absolutely the antidote to the it's the remedy for the soul sickness that our people

02:05:31.880 go through those who find alsatru and have an open mind and an open heart to embrace it

02:05:40.680 and engage with it fully it changes lives for the better the more of our folk we can bring home to

02:05:49.260 house a true the more we can begin to heal of that folks of that soul sickness that our folk

02:05:56.100 are afflicted with um yes it will remedy that with those it touches unfortunately there are those who

02:06:06.120 will succumb to that disease before they come home to Alistair truth and that's unfortunate

02:06:13.800 so the more that we can bring our folk home the more people who can benefit from it and the faster

02:06:22.000 we will cure the soul sickness that has afflicted our people for so long so that's

02:06:29.500 go ahead please uh just to say real quick like you know worship literally comes from like worth

02:06:36.620 ship to to place worth on something and you know we have how many heroes total

02:06:44.620 like 20 or so 20-ish i should know this i apologize um he's counting

02:06:53.340 19 19 19 okay all right we have 19 people that we believe are worth e have value have worth

02:07:07.800 enough to remember to continue existing we started this episode out talking about how

02:07:15.380 there are things that we don't remember that just got lost not necessarily because they deserved to

02:07:22.940 But in a certain blunt sense, people in a time and place didn't think it was worth preserving them.

02:07:32.480 Another day, a few days ago, I was talking, I was doing AFA history stuff.

02:07:39.740 And there was some dude in a picture, in a few pictures.

02:07:43.400 And I didn't know who this guy was.

02:07:45.480 And the ulterior growth, he had to tell me who he was and, like, where this guy came from.

02:07:50.140 because other than Matt's memory,

02:07:55.280 there's no, like, written about this guy.

02:07:59.060 And this isn't someone we need to talk about.

02:08:00.960 It's not really important.

02:08:01.820 It's just a demonstration of, like, you know,

02:08:06.420 you say, like, pessimism and hopelessness.

02:08:09.440 I mean, you want to talk about pessimism.

02:08:11.280 Imagine not feeling that there are other human beings worth remembering.

02:08:16.720 You know, we are actively combating that.

02:08:20.140 Like this very episode of VNS is an offensive maneuver against hopelessness and pessimism in a certain sense.

02:08:28.560 It's a small one, but it's something.

02:08:31.260 And everyone here is helping do that.

02:08:36.180 Absolutely.

02:08:38.740 So we got a couple of other questions that haven't made it over to the question queue, but I think are important.

02:08:45.360 We have one about the, it's kind of a comment, but it had a question mark after it, and I think it's worth addressing, is the fact that some people complain that they allege that Snorri Sturluson's work is to Christianize.

02:09:03.540 And the thought is like, well, you know, what source are we going to have that doesn't, that we can say is 100% pure of Christian impurities?

02:09:15.360 And, I mean, first, to literally answer the question, going back and finding Greek and Roman sources that predate the conversion of those areas, you can find some stuff. 0.80

02:09:37.920 What's up, Barry?

02:09:39.420 It's a here.

02:09:40.620 Okay.

02:09:41.320 So, you can find that there a little bit.

02:09:45.360 But I think I don't I don't know that all those arguments are legitimate.

02:09:54.040 I think it's very convenient to find an excuse to not have any authority on anything.

02:10:03.160 One of the things and this is part of the soul sickness that people embrace about Alcetru sometimes is like this. 0.94

02:10:12.180 Ah, we don't have to listen to Christians tell us what to do. 0.67

02:10:15.080 we got no rules we're anarchists and then when they find out that there is some structure there 0.79

02:10:22.920 is some authority on things they want to find any way to intellectually poke some kind of hole to

02:10:29.400 where they can just do their own thing and as i mentioned earlier what is not ausitru is checking

02:10:38.520 the other box we are our own thing we're not a lack of christian authority spiritually

02:10:48.200 we are our own faith on our own terms and those terms come from the wisdom of countless generations

02:10:58.200 of our elders and their interaction with the iser as well as the relationships that we build

02:11:05.160 within our lifetime as a folk as a church and as individuals with the icer through the gift cycle

02:11:17.400 if you asked if snorri's work has z if i can guarantee you it has zero percent

02:11:24.040 of christian influence of course not do i think it has enough christian influence that it's

02:11:30.280 It's not good or not useful or not important or we shouldn't, you know, give great heed to.

02:11:39.980 Of course not. 0.94

02:11:40.880 That's silly.

02:11:42.740 If we make our standard, it's very, I've seen this a lot amongst our folk.

02:11:48.640 And this is, I know that I beat this horse long after it has died, but it's really important that everybody hears it.

02:12:00.280 there is a tendency, you don't have to admit this to anybody else, but I want you to at least admit

02:12:06.760 it within yourselves when you see it, if you're brave enough to face it. And I think that we all

02:12:11.920 have a tendency sometimes. If something is hard, it's much easier to ridicule it and come up with

02:12:25.760 a flimsy excuse why it's no good than to go through the effort of doing something difficult

02:12:33.380 that requires self-reflection or you changing a way of behaving or a way of thinking that you've

02:12:40.740 grown comfortable with. Stepping outside your comfort zone is very difficult. Saying, yeah,

02:12:47.320 but what does Chris know? His tie is gold. We only listen to people with black ties.

02:12:52.580 you know and i realize that sounds stupid but so does everything you don't like let's just 0.99

02:13:01.640 to christianize well this guy's you know whatever you you will if you're if you're standard for what 0.94

02:13:10.940 is worthy of making you change the way that you think or behave is 100 perfection you'll never

02:13:19.320 have to change. You'll never have to do anything different. You can sit on the couch and eat

02:13:24.960 popcorn and throw it at the screen and find any number of ways that Snorri Sturluson or me or

02:13:35.820 anyone is not perfect. But if you wait for perfect, you will never find perfect. It's like

02:13:46.020 have a lot of people talk about loyalty or whatever and they want to talk about you know how hard they

02:13:50.420 are and they're gonna they will join you in battle if the shield wall needs to stand against a dragon

02:13:57.220 but when you're like hey can you can you help us with this you know small afa thing hey can you

02:14:04.420 become a contributing like member to the house true folk assembly and show up at stuff and

02:14:09.140 drive 30 minutes from your house whoa hey now gas is gas is expensive these days i got stuff to do

02:14:16.340 but you give me a call if the dragons come because then i'm there

02:14:22.180 again saying it out loud sounds silly but that's really where some folks are at so

02:14:30.020 cool if you find other bits of lore outside of snorri that you like and that you think

02:14:34.820 are really cool please share those with us that's awesome but snorri's lore is the best lore of aryan

02:14:42.340 religiosity that we have access to and it is tremendously valuable and it's made it down

02:14:50.580 through the ages to us where other things haven't and it's a tremendous blessing that i am profoundly

02:14:58.340 thankful for that we have access to it and i think that fair-minded people realize that

02:15:05.060 um i have another question that i saw that i'm gonna go try to find it's one of the consequences

02:15:14.180 of a very active chat room is you got to kind of sort through some of these things but that's cool

02:15:21.140 i'm really glad to see the engagement and the interaction over there it's it's really nice to

02:15:26.580 see so many guys get involved in the conversation. Okay, so question is, the Astro Folk Assembly is

02:15:38.180 the bastion of Germanic people's souls, for Germanic people's souls. It's the only way that

02:15:44.100 we are going to heal and return to our nobility. How can we get others to come home? Chris,

02:15:50.500 thoughts and ideas how do we get other scum home tell everyone they can um yeah part of the thing

02:15:59.460 is i think it's just a matter of people not knowing that this is a thing um and i don't

02:16:03.940 mean that i mean that kind of like at like a metal level like i've seen people have the like

02:16:09.940 see like the picture of it's like odin's hof midsummer 2002 the one where they're all in front

02:16:15.860 you know what i mean the big one and i've seen people look at it and be like why are they allowed

02:16:21.860 to do that you know like like not just there's this this church we are doing these things

02:16:30.820 in a specific context but like people who just don't get that you can even you know the what is

02:16:36.180 it the pessimism and feeling of hopelessness like what do you mean you can combat that

02:16:40.980 like what do you mean you can organize people together to live the way they want to live

02:16:46.980 in a way that's not like an insane cult living you know you know what i mean like like clearly

02:16:53.460 extreme like we're all normal people right like i think you know if you wanted to help

02:17:03.300 frankly just advertising telling people you know in real life who would be interested in

02:17:07.300 this sort of thing and sadly not everyone would be the theostral folk assembly how do i apply

02:17:14.260 immediately but there's a there are a lot of people like there's let's just say there's 200

02:17:20.580 million white people in the u.s for the sake of these like even one percent of that is two million

02:17:26.100 people like there's a lot of people who just knowing about us and what we're doing what all

02:17:32.580 all of us are doing is probably going to do something it's just a matter of getting to them

02:17:38.080 and telling them um you know this is just pure idol spitballing but like i mean we could even

02:17:46.100 have like a like if there was just a folk builder whose job was just to find places and say hey you

02:17:52.740 should you talking about this you should check out the astro folk assembly just responding to

02:17:56.460 YouTube comments. I mean, there's a lot of people out there, and we need to reach them all, you know.

02:18:06.640 Hamill Wiz has donated $10 to Muldershoff Staple Project. We're having to reconstruct

02:18:15.320 the staple at Muldershoff. The previous owners had left it untended for a very long time,

02:18:24.020 so uh we're having to do some work on that putting it in but we got a long way to go thank you so

02:18:29.420 much and also ten dollars to this stream thank you so much um yeah as far as stuff to do it's

02:18:36.560 this is I guess it piggybacks on my previous um answer to the question

02:18:43.400 people envision some kind of super fun video game scenario that you do that makes this be successful

02:18:57.560 like you go out and fight in the streets in some kind of super awesome cinematic way that

02:19:04.340 wins the soul of our people we all think that would be really cool

02:19:09.080 but practically what it really means is a the slow drudgery of doing things that you may not

02:19:20.940 like to do but putting in the hard work to make this happen and you don't get to thump your chest

02:19:29.060 and feel like an awesome viking warrior for going on twitter and liking and sharing and commenting

02:19:35.960 on our stuff but when you do it increases our algorithm and it gets us out there to people

02:19:43.340 that don't know we exist and that's how people come home um literally stuff you can do is follow

02:19:51.180 any of us individually that are sharing afa stuff or the and the afa like share subscribe

02:20:00.000 on all of our stuff do that do that regularly and that amplifies our reach to a lot of people

02:20:10.320 that should be coming home to what we're doing um tell people about it if you are an afa member

02:20:19.680 and your spouse is not get them to join if you are an afa member and you have parents or siblings

02:20:28.720 or cousins or children that are grown that are not afa members why aren't they

02:20:37.280 see about getting them to join be proud of who you are and what you do and what you believe

02:20:44.560 and share that speak out about that wear your hammer and when people ask you about your hammer

02:20:51.120 tell them engage them in that conversation get the word out word of mouth is so very important

02:20:58.720 but that is right now the barrier that's preventing people from coming home

02:21:03.920 they don't know we exist it blows me away in this age of the internet how

02:21:09.520 there's so many people out there that have no clue that we exist

02:21:13.280 this as baffling and in a way frustrating as that end it's also very hopeful it means there are

02:21:21.380 millions of people that would join today if they knew we existed just run the numbers on it like

02:21:27.860 seriously and we're just talking about the United States not to mention you know we have members in

02:21:34.220 14 different nations but um in the United States if we're going to say we have 350 million people

02:21:42.500 let's assume half of those are our folk so cool we got 175 million people let's assume

02:21:52.300 I don't know let's assume half of those are adults that aren't gay so we've got

02:22:01.820 I mean shoot I don't know I don't want to math quite that much 85 million

02:22:09.000 of 85 million how many of those are

02:22:14.160 should be here might want to be here agree with us on stuff maybe even broadly speaking let's say

02:22:25.260 40 million realistically how many of those people are willing to make the effort to go and click

02:22:32.220 join and you know contribute by hoftoller or you know by their membership donation and actively be

02:22:41.440 part of what we're doing if we're dealing with 40 million and just one percent of that 40 million

02:22:49.440 wanted to join it's a massive number a massive number that would exponentially grow the ask

02:22:59.900 true folk assembly just think about that it relatively when you're dealing with numbers

02:23:08.700 like we are dealing with a little bit goes a long way with everyone who listened to this

02:23:15.260 bro so it's hard to track on here we have so we have our youtube audience which i can kind of see

02:23:24.380 how many views um this show gets we've got our twitter audience where i can see how much it goes

02:23:33.020 there we're also on a bunch of different stuff and on spotify and iheart and itunes and apple

02:23:42.140 podcasts and rumble and and and and and all these different places and odyssey and a million

02:23:52.060 many different places tracking how far the reach goes is very hard to do but on this show

02:24:03.160 within the next day or two we're going to have

02:24:07.900 I don't know let's be very conservative 400 views here on YouTube this is just the next couple of

02:24:17.440 probably 350 views on Twitter if all of those people liked shared subscribe talked about this

02:24:29.440 went out and told somebody we would see a massive boost in membership just from people knowing we

02:24:36.460 exist so getting the word out that is the biggest thing living this proudly telling the people that

02:24:43.600 you and like hey what's this thing you do tell me more and then having the courage to tell them more

02:24:50.480 that's what we need that's what's going to bring people home honestly that is that is the answer

02:24:55.760 it's not sexy and it's not what everybody wants the answer to be but it is the answer

02:25:00.880 looking at stuff on the side again we got a lot going on over here um

02:25:16.960 do you want me to finish up with the asset stuff in a bit here if you have more please go ahead by

02:25:23.440 all means do you do you mind if i just start going now yeah go all right so um you're wondering he

02:25:29.680 He took over in 1994, and almost immediately he came into conflict with the board of directors who,

02:25:41.680 from piecing together from secondary sources, they didn't like how centralized his administration was.

02:25:52.680 like they wanted to do what happened with the troth after uh prudent's priest left or got

02:25:59.580 kicked out of camera which was it doesn't matter where it kind of turns into like a sort of uh

02:26:05.580 feudal oligarchy almost where like you have like you know a bunch of little a little bunch of

02:26:10.400 little fiefdoms within the organization and your munders hyper centralization got in the way of

02:26:17.680 Another problem with that, however, was that the organization had increased in size like 3.6 times.

02:26:27.680 In 1994, they had 172 members. In 2002, they had 628, and that's a pretty big jump.

02:26:36.680 Jormundr was, however, a pious man, and I hope my comment about the Icelanders getting drunkenly married did not seem to imply I was benighting or insulting Icelanders, I was not.

02:26:54.680 There are Icelanders who are very pious, and our also has talked about one of the signs of pious Asatrar is worshiping Balder.

02:27:03.680 And in 2000, the Icelandic state was going to celebrate the 1000th year anniversary of the Christianization of Iceland,

02:27:16.680 which is kind of an odd thing to do if you're a Lutheran, given that that's a Catholic accomplishment, I guess, but whatever.

02:27:23.680 And they were going to hold it at Thingvellir. Thingvellir is the site of the old Icelandic althing, the big field where they'd gather.

02:27:32.380 And Thorstein wrote a book about this place. He seemed to have been a bit of an aficionado of it.

02:27:38.260 I found a used copy at some Icelandic internet bookseller and I was thinking about buying it.

02:27:47.620 And anyways, so the Icelandic state was going to have this celebration, and Jörmunder Ingi, presumably with Thorstein's backing, is like, well, we're going to do our own thing.

02:28:06.640 Tragically, Thorstein did not live to see this come to fruition, but Jörmunder did go through with it.

02:28:13.700 um and so they were going to set up a bunch of bonfires along the coast of the island and then

02:28:21.540 set a big one up in the center at thingville as like a uh a ritual to sort of as if balder were

02:28:32.020 coming back through this empire he left in and as i understand it the ritual did go off they did do

02:28:38.260 this um the icelandic state was not the biggest proponent of this uh technically they did allow

02:28:46.660 it in a legal sense in practice they pretty clearly didn't want this to happen so they

02:28:53.620 had a bunch of public taxpayer funded uh services like food and bathrooms and stuff

02:29:00.260 at thingvalir and they didn't let the uh asatrar use them um which is a really zany thing to say

02:29:08.420 out loud like the icelandic government not letting pagans use the bathroom in 2002 it's like

02:29:14.740 what a strange kind of persecution but um and so there was a bit of a stink over that uh

02:29:21.300 And Hilmar Oren Hilmarsson, the third ulterior gothe of the Asatora Felagith, he was a musician.

02:29:31.200 His stuff's on YouTube, it's not bad, very European atmospheric, not really headbanging metal or anything.

02:29:40.340 Not headbanging metal, not etic chants or anything like that.

02:29:44.560 But he was going to do some concert at this gathering, and he wasn't able to because the state didn't set up the music apparatus that it was supposed to.

02:29:56.840 And there's some quote for him where he's like, phew, maybe I've spent too much time on the continent.

02:30:03.360 But last I knew, it doesn't take six weeks to set up a soundstage, which I guess is kind of pretentious.

02:30:10.220 but at the same time he does have a point of like how hard is it to plug in the amps you know

02:30:15.960 um so there was a minor stink about this and it turned out that the state wasn't letting anyone

02:30:22.560 in to that wasn't a lutheran use these facilities despite them being taxpayer funded

02:30:27.620 and uh six they were there were 600 members in the country when this event occurred but there

02:30:37.820 There were over 1,000 attendees, and there were actually a painfully less than expected number of Lutheran attendees at the Lutheran one, which I guess was a dent in the pocketbook, probably.

02:31:01.120 So that's an interesting point, that there were only about 600 members, but there were about 1,000 attendees.

02:31:09.840 There were people who were interested in this in Iceland that weren't members.

02:31:15.320 We don't really have a good term for these people.

02:31:17.060 I guess you could call them like casuals, like kind of peripheral, around-the-edges people.

02:31:22.520 So this wouldn't necessarily be viewed as a win for Jormundr, even though I personally view it as a great thing for the Icelandic people.

02:31:37.400 It's a great victory for Icelandic Asatrar, but as said, Jormundur Ingi was more of a centralizer than the board would like.

02:31:54.240 One thing that he did was he, they wanted to have a burial ground.

02:31:58.560 They wanted to have a burial ground for the members of their church because they didn't have one.

02:32:04.400 they didn't have a place to put their dead.

02:32:09.480 I mean, you know, Spam Dorm was buried in a Lutheran cemetery, right?

02:32:14.540 Like, so getting a burial ground was a big goal for the early Asatruphelagith.

02:32:25.540 And remember, in 2000, this organization was only 28 years old.

02:32:30.600 um 28 years old with like 600 members your wonder did pull it off he did manage to get the

02:32:38.960 a burial ground um there was some kind of problem with the uh with the financing of it what there's

02:32:51.260 and you know what there's not a problem with is getting a burial at a hall for sigerheim if you

02:32:56.200 a member um i don't know the full details but i do know that um there are burial services that are

02:33:03.860 free for um burial services at hoffs and sigerheim they are free correct sir if you're a member yes

02:33:12.460 yes internment yes um and i yeah and do your will i i mean so everybody do your will

02:33:21.300 So what's wrong with you people? And I say this to literally everybody. We find ourselves putting that off. But here's something that I've seen as far as AFA members who've passed.

02:33:38.820 um we've got young people who didn't think that you know they were going to need it anytime soon

02:33:49.760 and didn't get one done that's understandable but tragic and easily avoidable

02:33:55.720 but i've seen it with elderly people with terminal diseases that still didn't get it done

02:34:03.320 and i don't know why so you know one of the reasons is maybe your will's expensive

02:34:10.680 or maybe you don't want to get a lawyer and find this whole process

02:34:15.880 i too am cheap and i too don't like to do a bunch of leg work on stuff like that

02:34:24.300 So I found doyourownwill.com. It is really that simple. Now, international members, this may not apply, but in the United States, and I believe in parts of Canada, this is completely legal and binding.

02:34:40.700 I've talked to our law speaker who is a, you know, a practicing Florida attorney and says completely legit.

02:34:48.920 It takes 10 minutes. It's very easy to do.

02:34:52.560 If you want to do a better one down the road, when you get to it, fine.

02:34:57.220 Do your will. Get a original copy, which means with the signatures on each on each of the copies and notarized if you need to in your state.

02:35:08.840 keep one whatever you want to do but send one to our law speaker address is on the screen

02:35:17.160 do that doesn't matter what you know there's no doesn't matter what's there what matters is we

02:35:29.100 want to make sure that you that you get what you want in terms of your final affairs and the

02:35:37.320 distribution of your property um if you send it to our law speaker then when we find out you have

02:35:45.840 passed we can advocate legally for what you want done with your remains with your funeral and with

02:35:55.800 your things if we don't have that we can't help and i don't want anyone to not get what they want

02:36:06.060 in their passing so please remember that it's very important i don't know the original question

02:36:14.040 but um what does worth putting out there we have places to enter ashes at odenshof at thor's hall

02:36:26.060 we have um we have three uh we have three people interred at odenshof we have one person interred

02:36:40.940 at thor's off we have plans in place we just do not have a need for it yet at baldershof but you

02:36:47.100 can absolutely get your ashes interred there we have two people interred at njordshof and we have

02:37:01.020 wish we knew exactly how many we have at sigerheim we when we got sigerheim we it came with a

02:37:09.820 very old and unfortunately not well taken care of graveyard we've done what we can we continue to

02:37:16.860 restore the gravestones that we have access to to try to do the best we can to learn about the

02:37:22.140 people who are interred there my mom's ashes are interred there there's place for you and your

02:37:29.260 loved ones when you pass um and it's not i mean as far as cost we'll make something happen if we

02:37:42.300 got to we would like you and your family to provide you know whatever kind of marker you want

02:37:48.860 and that can be as simple as you'd like or as elaborate if you want one of those big mausoleums

02:37:54.940 cool let's do that but i mean those are a lot and if you can afford that or your family can by all

02:38:00.060 means but yeah we we don't want cost to be something that prevents you being celebrated

02:38:09.260 with a with a place with a grave with a marker when you pass and we don't want that for those

02:38:15.020 that you care about either i appreciate you covering while i took a tuck my daughter in

02:38:22.860 slash bathroom break um and i'll cut in and say there was no question he was just talking and it

02:38:30.380 felt like a really good plug cool it's just a rhythm that's good slide that in i appreciate

02:38:37.500 wait till the guest is talking and then i just clear um unless you wanted to say something more

02:38:44.940 i was gonna go to the burial and then yeah okay so um they wanted to get a burial ground before

02:38:51.820 they're dead in iceland and that was something that your mother worked hard to get um and i have

02:38:57.820 to imagine it was something that morstein also won so this turned into a bit of a boondoggle

02:39:04.700 apparently um it was costlier than they would like that turns out to be um a herald in a certain

02:39:12.300 sense there was some kind of venture involving the sale of icelandic horses outside of the country

02:39:20.060 that was seen as a faux pas somehow and i remember i read about this months before i was actually

02:39:27.980 looking into this guy so i i apologize for not having more information on this but it was

02:39:32.780 It was something like, how, these are Icelandic horses, how dare you sell them to Americans, or something kind of silly like that.

02:39:40.780 The burial ground was more expensive than a plot of dirt to bury dead bodies in.

02:39:48.780 That's a very crude way of putting it, but it was perceived as more expensive than it should have been.

02:39:53.780 Now, there is a conscious effort in secondary literature on the Oster of Elgith to paint Thorstein as this crazed lunatic ideologue and Yermunder Ingi as this, like, mad monarch.

02:40:11.780 That seems to have been a result of the attempt at getting rid of Yermunder by the Borg.

02:40:19.780 So just for clarity here, there's the actual religious structure of clergy in Iceland, and then there's the board of directors, which is elected by members of the church.

02:40:32.060 so you can see a conflict of interest there between the ulcerer goethe who has long-term

02:40:38.080 interests we can take out a loan for a graveyard and pay it off in 10 years and then there's the

02:40:44.600 board who are interested in making decisions for getting elected and getting re-elected

02:40:50.380 and there was an effort the first time he came around uh yormunder the first time this came up

02:40:59.060 Jormundr was just chosen because he was Svenjorn's buddy.

02:41:02.580 He was Thornstein's buddy.

02:41:03.560 He was literally in the building when Thor took out the power, right?

02:41:08.280 He was a founder.

02:41:10.280 In 2002, the board managed to get enough votes to give him the boot.

02:41:17.800 They've been trying to do that for about eight years by that point.

02:41:22.220 Citing the two, the three big things that I see as having been their reasons were,

02:41:27.400 One, his refusal to decentralize. Two, this thing with the Icelandic horses and the expensive graveyard. And three, perceived right-wing influence from the international ventures, like the international inter-ethnic pagan kind of unification ideas.

02:41:49.240 unification is not the right word, but you know what I mean, of Thorstein, they didn't like that

02:41:54.360 that was perceived as right wing, which is kind of odd when you think about it, but whatever.

02:42:00.060 And they put in Hilmar Orn Hilmarson, who, as the Ulster Eugothi said, from what I can see,

02:42:06.700 is basically an atheist. I mean, I reserve the right to be wrong, but I haven't seen much to

02:42:16.000 say otherwise um he was a musician uh i i said this while you were gone sir i've listened to

02:42:22.880 his stuff on youtube i mean it's ambient euro it's not bad but it's not it's not like head

02:42:30.640 banging metal or uh icelandic sagas you know um he was uh focused on an end to international

02:42:41.040 cooperation uh decentralization which basically means giving positions to toadies and uh an

02:42:48.720 emphasis on ensuring that ossature was seen as counterculture in iceland so again you know making

02:42:56.640 your parents mad by worshiping up uh which is really sad um yormundr decided not to fraction

02:43:04.240 the organization and left gracefully because he believed that what they were doing was important

02:43:08.880 And in 2004, he and a small group of people formed the Reykjavik Vikur Govordh.

02:43:19.240 I believe they're allowed to marry, if I recall.

02:43:23.400 So to kind of cap this discussion off, let's talk about the Hof.

02:43:29.640 The Asatürk Arfellegid has wanted a Hof, because everyone wants a Hof.

02:43:33.400 We wanted a Hof when we were the Asatürk Free Assembly.

02:43:36.060 We want a Hof now.

02:43:36.940 I say we, I wasn't born yet at the time.

02:43:38.880 um we wanted to hoff when we were the astro folk assembly before we had one and we have them and we 0.97

02:43:46.560 want more of them um so the ostrichur wanted a hoff and they started a project to build one in

02:43:54.960 2005 when they had um somewhere around uh like i'm gonna say 700 to a thousand members

02:44:03.120 So it's worth noting that Hilmar took over in 2002, and in 2004 he came out with the

02:44:12.020 organization's open acceptance of homosexual marriage.

02:44:17.320 So 2002 when he takes over, 628, 2022, 5,770, excuse me. 0.67

02:44:31.380 So they went off in 2005, they're getting this increase in membership, which of course

02:44:36.260 means more money, so they go about doing it.

02:44:42.440 We Americans are often perplexed by the difficulties that non-Americans have with getting land, 0.97

02:44:50.660 because in America you can theoretically just go buy land.

02:44:54.120 Like there's a website, Zillow, you can look for vacant land, you can look for houses.

02:44:59.280 if you google churches for sale in state you'll get a website at least one that lists churches

02:45:05.080 for sale in state um so they started looking they started this project in 2005 they ended

02:45:13.080 up getting a land for it near Reykjavik in 2008 um construction was supposed to start

02:45:20.340 in 2015 you know seven years later then in 2016 then in 2017 apparently they got something done

02:45:30.660 in 2018 through 2019 maybe i guess um in 2019 they wanted to spend 270 million cronus on a dome

02:45:43.380 In today's Cronus, that's $371 million. That is $2,703,101.79 USD. That is 10.8 Njordshofs, if we assume Njordshofs was just an even $250,000.

02:46:03.380 Work has apparently been done since, but the dome is still unbuilt and thus the building is unusable. 0.68

02:46:13.380 And I've seen plans for like a building that's shaped like a Mjolnir, right?

02:46:19.380 Like it's a Mjolnir from the sky, right? And there's like an office in the, I'm not sure, in like the hammer part.

02:46:26.380 And then this is like the hall that people come in with the pews.

02:46:30.380 know if it's that because i look at that and i'm like but where does the where does the expensive

02:46:34.780 dome go right like this is a two million dollar dome where are you putting it is this like a like

02:46:41.020 a geodesic dome that encapsulates the entire temple um over covid they wanted to into in 2020

02:46:49.820 they wanted to buy a bunch of chinese steel but covid put an end to that which is a kind of

02:46:55.260 humorous turn because apparently this building was supposed to be made entirely of local wood and

02:46:59.420 concrete um i don't know if they've had any advances with it since uh everything i've seen

02:47:09.020 regarding what they do is outside and that makes sense iceland's a beautiful country right but i

02:47:15.580 think it's telling that i mean 2005 to now that's uh what eight 16 years ish whatever i mean we've

02:47:27.580 gotten four hoffs and land that we could theoretically build a fifth on if we were

02:47:31.660 financially irresponsible or had access to 2.7 million dollars just on whim you know um

02:47:40.300 i don't want to editorialize too much but i think it displays a bit of an unseriousness frankly like

02:47:48.060 there are and let's be clear here there are buildings that are said to be temples to the

02:47:52.220 the Aesir in Iceland. There's at least two of them. Because some guy is like, all right, I'm

02:47:57.760 going to take my barn and make it as a place worthy of praying to the Aesir if just without

02:48:04.720 central air or central heating. I don't see why they couldn't have done that with 2.7 million

02:48:12.640 2022 or 2024 USD on hand. Do you have something you want to say here, sir?

02:48:22.220 Yeah. I mean, they got a lot of media attention for it. And we still, you know, get people that, trying to think of where the, where the idea is, but perception in a lot of ways is reality for people until they know better.

02:48:47.420 and one of the unfortunate things is the media extolling like ah the icelanders have this

02:48:53.980 this off it's the first half ever and all this time and they did that when they first got the

02:49:01.880 uh got the idea or got the funding or got it planned or whatever and they didn't do a whole

02:49:08.200 a lot else and I know they got a lot of attention for it it's interesting to note the lack of

02:49:18.280 progress on it but as I've said before um I I want to be careful because again I don't

02:49:30.760 not being an Icelander and not being there I don't know what

02:49:34.600 like it's hard if we were to judge all Catholics by the current

02:49:42.720 very not Catholic Pope it'd be really you'd get really askew answers because there's a lot of

02:49:53.080 variety of what that means so in Iceland I don't know if there's a substantial

02:49:58.780 portion of the Ausatruir phalegith that may be, you know, serious Ausatruir, and maybe it's just

02:50:06.360 their leadership that's not, or their organization that's not, it's hard to tell, and I don't want to

02:50:12.480 unfairly categorize people as being unfaithful who are, if that's your option, I mean, maybe

02:50:21.680 that's what it is, but as a church, and under their leadership, they're illegitimate at this point,

02:50:28.380 And they're openly atheist.

02:50:34.300 They do not profess a genuine belief in the gods.

02:50:39.860 And it's a really gross mutation of what some very well-meaning and pious people put in motion.

02:50:54.820 And that's sad.

02:50:56.620 so we don't endorse them in any way we don't endorse that degeneracy we don't endorse any

02:51:03.660 of that we do endorse is two men swang bjorn and thorstein who were so very

02:51:14.540 important in the foundation of modern aussitrew and in the furtherance of

02:51:21.020 of what we are all doing and we celebrate them.

02:51:26.360 And it's sad that that organization has gone

02:51:29.820 in such a gross and illegitimate way.

02:51:35.640 It would be great if they could figure it out

02:51:37.800 and change course, I hope that they do.

02:51:43.980 But yeah, that's sad to see.

02:51:47.100 And I do think that the lack of progress does speak

02:51:50.440 lack of seriousness and i also think it speaks of you know lack of favor from the icer

02:51:57.640 and i don't put that on them uh it's just something that i noticed that i would find concerning um

02:52:09.160 yeah over on the side

02:52:10.280 uh are impressive hoffs a worthy goal the how halgrims kirkia church in iceland sends the

02:52:24.040 message i got from a girl on a dating app that they are large and in charge or is smaller smarter

02:52:33.960 yes

02:52:34.280 yes that's one of the things that I think it's true there are lots of right ways to do things in a

02:52:52.700 I mean actions are dictated by circumstance and by what you have available in an ideal

02:53:01.280 situation, if you have the ability to, yes, the most magnificent grand temple to our gods

02:53:08.040 is absolutely the way to go. But any temple to our gods is better than no temple to our gods.

02:53:19.320 And so you have to judge what you would ideally do if you had unlimited resources and unlimited

02:53:27.020 the ability with what you have at hand and what you're able to actually accomplish

02:53:33.180 but the thing is you can do all of those things

02:53:37.580 you can start with what's within your means to do that's within your budgetary abilities

02:53:46.220 within the scope of what you have power to do and you can improve upon it over time or you can build

02:53:51.740 more um you know it was really important for the astro folk assembly when we got hoffs to get 0.76

02:54:04.220 so one of the early ideas for hoffs was to build kind of an anachronistic

02:54:10.220 i don't know um interpretation of a viking turf hall or whatever and i think that that was an

02:54:23.240 interesting idea i think a lot of people wanted to build their own hoffs and realize that's a

02:54:28.880 really difficult thing to do one of the things that i think is very important for a hoff

02:54:35.320 first i'll take it back what's important is to worship the gods if you're doing that

02:54:42.780 cool to elevate that it's important to worship them in a nice space to where you and your

02:54:49.440 fellow worshipers can get together and worship the gods once you're able to do that what's

02:54:55.900 Better is to have a place that's large enough and looks and gives the feel to everyone who sees it, everyone who encounters it as this is a, you know, in the public eye.

02:55:11.860 This is a house of worship that is recognizable to anyone who passes it as, oh, okay, this is an Ausitruhof.

02:55:19.920 And that's what we've strove very hard to do with the Ausitru Folk Assembly.

02:55:24.440 is to when people pass by that they know it is a house of worship if they look at the sign it

02:55:33.820 looks odd it's not talking about Jesus we don't see crosses places like what is this hopefully

02:55:39.620 they look further within the nomenclature of the Hoffs or the names of our gods hopefully

02:55:46.320 that strikes a chord yeah if we could you know if somebody handed me you know whatever 2.5 million

02:55:54.380 we have existing obligations that we pay off first there's places that need Hoffs that it's

02:56:02.420 so you have to deal with could you put all your eggs in one basket and build a magnificent Hoff

02:56:08.140 or could you have less magnificent Hoffs but Hoffs more places and it depends on where the

02:56:16.280 need is and where your availability is but the answer to your question is both given the right

02:56:21.920 opportunity if you win the lotto and you got 10 million dollars to build the hoff build something

02:56:26.880 amazing if you don't and you come upon something like balder's hoff that we were able to find for

02:56:33.360 forty five thousand dollars cool we got it and then we've spent you know past four years

02:56:44.160 taking care of it and beautifying it and making it better all of the time and making it you know

02:56:49.920 grander all of the time you do what you're able to do um and again that that scales up depending

02:56:57.120 on how many members you have and how much those members are willing to donate and able to donate

02:57:02.800 in iceland if they're able to you know we have to do a tur a church tax no matter what so ah let's 0.96

02:57:10.480 give it to these icelanders so then we can have gay marriages and stuff there then all of a sudden 0.92

02:57:16.880 they find themselves with a lot of money they wouldn't otherwise have they can do something 1.00

02:57:22.000 really amazing with it or they could just kind of sit on it and do whatever they're doing um

02:57:30.560 again it's it it all depends on your on your circumstance but the idea of you know is it

02:57:36.400 better to build big and make an impression or to build small but usable and within your means and

02:57:43.040 maybe a few of them yes depending on your scenario all of those things re there's something very

02:57:50.880 important about tangibility and that goes to big and impressive yeah if something is grand

02:57:58.240 it literally is awesome it invokes awe towards the divine and that's fantastic we would love to have

02:58:06.400 that but you got to find the grandeur that you can afford because imaginary grandeur is worthless

02:58:16.000 it's less than worthless it's of counter worth because it prevents you from appreciating real

02:58:23.520 things that you could be doing because you're wasting your time on things that don't exist

02:58:30.560 instead of with the reality of what what you can accomplish so i don't know that that cleanly

02:58:37.520 answers your question but i think it's important just to clarify one of the two buildings in iceland

02:58:43.680 that the icr are worshipped in um i don't know if it's proper column hofs it doesn't really matter

02:58:49.040 at this point uh was uh acquired by a member of the astra fellagith because he wanted a place for

02:58:56.000 for him and his buddies to worship the gods in and quite frankly some goat herders far like barn

02:59:03.760 is for more close is closer to the piety of swain jordan van pinson and thorstein guthenson ben

02:59:11.860 whatever the people trying to get the big dome are trying to do or whatever they would call that

02:59:20.280 because it's something it's it's anything you know well and it's done out of piety that's the

02:59:28.840 thing a humble offering that's done out of piety is more valuable than a lavish offering that's

02:59:35.600 done as a joke or as a show that's not serious um you know reading again reading in the chat room

02:59:44.680 And, you know, everybody's going to have a different aesthetic to what they like.

02:59:49.500 And I don't, a lot of people have leveled criticism that the Icelandic Hoff plans are like super modern and ugly and don't capture the aesthetic they like.

03:00:01.880 And I don't want to do that because, again, I think everybody's got a different vision and plenty of people criticize what, you know, visions I have for Hoffs.

03:00:12.120 but the sincerity the piety is is really important and i don't

03:00:21.400 i so one of the comments and i've got to disagree is you know they say it's

03:00:25.960 odd looking it's something based on what we know of actual hoffs would be better

03:00:29.960 in what sense trying to in 2024 make a ninth century building is silly and anachronistic and

03:00:42.140 not worthy of our gods we should make something that's worthwhile with all of the advancements

03:00:49.580 that we've made in the last thousand years instead of you know making something that's

03:00:56.380 intentionally primitive there's no reason to do that and our ancestors always used the best

03:01:03.020 available technology to them um but that said we have certain aesthetics we have in our mind you

03:01:10.820 know there's a lot of things i think the closest aesthetic we have to what a

03:01:17.620 i don't know a a pre-conversion house of true hoff was was the evolution into stave churches

03:01:27.720 the stave church is very interesting because it's like uh it's like that missing link between

03:01:38.880 the cathedral of the catholic church of the time and the hoff that predated it

03:01:45.160 You still see a crossover of imagery. You see a crossover of design. And I think that the stave churches are probably the entry level Christian church and the highest evolution of Hoff. It's like right at that point where the two met.

03:02:07.940 and so i think that imagery is appealing to a lot of us myself included um but i think we all have

03:02:14.360 there's ways to do it differently and i don't want to penalize them from having a different

03:02:18.260 aesthetic to what they want if it's done with sincerity and it's done with the idea of elevating

03:02:24.180 and worshiping the isere then fantastic but when you take that on you have a mission to accomplish 0.98

03:02:30.140 to make sure these hofs happen and things happen all the time so i also don't want to be overly 0.53

03:02:36.960 critical i have no idea what obstacles they faced when accomplishing it but when you take on a half

03:02:43.200 and you make a commitment it's very important that you you do the best you can to fulfill that

03:02:49.120 and it does not appear from the outside like they've done that

03:02:58.960 i am just looking at any other stuff to kind of

03:03:02.080 can i just answer otherwise his comment on this real quick um yeah i didn't see what his comment

03:03:10.900 is but feel free uh yeah he just asked uh about my hammer so i got this from uh grim frost i did

03:03:17.960 some googling around to make sure they weren't uh openly uh against our values and i didn't find

03:03:24.920 anything and you know the all father says to be middling wise i actually was going to get a

03:03:29.280 different get myself and my wife two two like one for each of us and i get an email and they're like

03:03:35.220 hey we're sorry but we're out of the hammer you ordered and we're also out of all of the hammers

03:03:40.520 at that price point we can give you a credit and i'm like but i don't want like a credit at i don't

03:03:47.240 know if i'm gonna buy anything from these people again and i'm looking for the amount i got and

03:03:51.940 they were selling this which is they this is referred to as they're huge and i didn't necessarily

03:03:58.120 say how big it was when i was looking and i was like oh man it's gonna be like a flavor

03:04:01.000 flavor clock or something but no it turned out pretty nice uh the first picture that went up on

03:04:07.640 twitter of of me um i was like oh man i'm gonna see myself on there i'm gonna be so nervous i'm

03:04:14.680 gonna throw up and i looked at the picture and the first comment was some dude saying

03:04:19.080 that is a dope hammer and i felt really good i mean that is like three times bigger than most

03:04:26.040 people's hammer it my i asked githya katie hey where do you get a lady-sized mule there because 0.99

03:04:32.360 i've seen women complain about like they're all built for men right and she recommended this gal 1.00

03:04:39.000 guy i don't i don't know on uh pinterest barber barbarian spelled like barbarian with both two

03:04:46.200 ends at the end and there there's a really small one that i got for her that she likes a lot it's

03:04:53.240 like a 30th the size of this so there's a bajillion places to get him um

03:05:04.920 i see folks in the chat talked a little bit about whirling sun

03:05:10.840 i don't believe in the integrity of the people that run whirling sun 1.00

03:05:17.560 that's the outfit of the ermine folk that make hammers they make good stuff they make nice stuff

03:05:23.880 they're very quality craftsmen um but i think that the person involved and some of the people

03:05:29.800 directly involved in that are very bad people um but there's a lot of really good places to get

03:05:36.920 hammers get them from a lot of places um

03:05:39.880 so yeah i think there's there's a lot of really cool options i've seen a lot of little feminine 1.00

03:05:49.300 ones i don't want to go disrupt her now because i put her to bed but aubrey's got a cool like little 1.00

03:05:55.840 little tiny one um that's that's feminine i think ladies might like it but it's also

03:06:01.220 you know doesn't look ridiculous on a small child um no mandy's got some cool one i got a uh from

03:06:08.780 man i forget the name of this place it was in germany and the shipping was stupid but i got

03:06:14.220 a hammer from that was made out of mammoth ivory that was really cool um so there's a lot of really

03:06:21.100 good places to get hammers somebody mentioned etsy on etsy you can get a lot of really cool stuff

03:06:26.060 especially stuff from eastern europe on there that's just amazing so there's a lot of good

03:06:31.340 answers. We've got people out at Odenshof that make hammers that are really cool. I'm probably

03:06:38.740 going to get that guy to make my next one. So there's a lot of places and a lot of options.

03:06:47.940 Question we have, do the Hoffs attract members? I look for where the Hoffs are when I consider

03:06:55.120 moving and i'm not even a member um it would be good to know they were close first morris you

03:07:02.240 should join you should become a member you should become a member today um yeah they absolutely do

03:07:09.760 it's it's hard because when we look for a placement of a hof we want a place that has

03:07:15.040 thriving membership but having a hof in a location draws members every single one of them does

03:07:23.600 how much and how fast is always an x factor that there's no accurate way to calculate

03:07:30.800 but yes when we have a hof somewhere people drive like i said we don't getting the message

03:07:37.200 out is tricky but i am always surprised where we have hoffs how many people who are local

03:07:43.600 come out of the woodwork and you know have been asked true for years and there was nothing near

03:07:49.120 them and then they join up and they're all about it people just out of nowhere so yes every time

03:07:56.560 we get a hoff members develop you know close to it what does close mean it depends on where it's 0.95

03:08:05.600 at and what the population density is around it how fast there's no way to tell but every hoff

03:08:11.440 generates members because it's real they're on google maps you can find them you can see them

03:08:17.760 you drive by you see their signs you can reach out and touch them and that makes a huge difference 1.00

03:08:22.080 for folks so we definitely have members around all the hoffs if you're looking at places to

03:08:28.320 move around the hoffs california is unattractive for all of the reasons that california is

03:08:36.480 unattractive but odenshoff gets our biggest number of regular attendees and people that

03:08:43.120 live relatively close we odin's hof has always got you know a good number of folks that come

03:08:49.520 out there for any hof event which is fantastic and that's in brownsville california um but yeah

03:08:56.800 our hops all have members around them we grow membership around each of these hofs it's hard

03:09:04.560 to pick the times that the most people are going to show up where you got the most tight packed 0.87

03:09:09.360 membership around a hoff um i would say i'm referencing something here quickly

03:09:22.160 just from having looked at the map baldur's hoff has a pretty a lot of people like right near the

03:09:29.600 building relatively you know it's yeah they do if you look at the map thor's hoff has a bunch

03:09:37.520 of people really close to it um there's a bunch like again you can see the cluster of membership

03:09:45.040 around each of the hoffs and it's noticeable so that's absolutely a thing um but yeah think about

03:09:52.560 those things and hoffs absolutely draw members because they take something that to a lot of

03:09:58.160 people is still in the realm of thought and ideas and they make it very real and very tangible and

03:10:03.520 And not just me saying it's tangible, but them going out and walking through a door and standing in a temple to our gods.

03:10:14.460 And that is very visceral and very real.

03:10:19.040 So, I don't know if we still have Svon over in the chat room.

03:10:36.320 I don't think that we do, but the next question is, sorry, I've got to go back and forth between things.

03:10:46.200 Where does soul and mani fit into the hierarchy of gods and goddesses?

03:10:52.620 Are they worshipped often in the AFA?

03:10:55.760 I wouldn't say often.

03:10:57.800 I think that soul is worshipped around Midsommar a lot because it's such an obvious solar thing.

03:11:06.680 Heavenly wardens would be where they are in the hierarchy of things.

03:11:11.640 They're not really within the core body of Iser that we devote a lot of particular worship to,

03:11:23.260 but they're in the periphery of spiritual beings that we certainly acknowledge and are situational in the worship.

03:11:35.980 And they come in what Svan is kind of labeled as the heavenly wardens, gods and goddesses of celestial things, of timekeeping, of seasons, of things like that.

03:11:53.840 And you see that in a little bit different category than the Aesir, you know, of like the All Fathers Council of the Twelve that we talk about.

03:12:04.260 So it's a little bit different, but they're definitely acknowledged, and certainly soul is worshipped at Midsummer often, sometimes at Yule as well, for the same reason, but in a different context.

03:12:21.840 There we go.

03:12:23.520 Nick's quick with the Old Norse on it, Hemonvorther, which means Heavenly Wardens.

03:12:32.080 Svon's here.

03:12:33.680 Yay.

03:12:34.260 awesome um so we're coming to the end of our evening here chris do you have anything that

03:12:43.460 you want to you want to say or you want to put out there for folks

03:12:50.260 um i already plugged the the magazines um if you're in michigan you should get in contact with

03:12:58.660 me uh csavage at runestone.org my there's my email or you can see it on uh thorsoff.com um

03:13:08.900 yeah uh hail thorstein yeah chris thank you so much for being on the program tonight and so much

03:13:15.380 for all your research into this we will absolutely have you back on um to note uh gothy thorstein

03:13:26.500 guthiansen's uh day of remembrance will be observed on october the fourth um from you know

03:13:37.220 every year from henceforth uh so you know we got about a year to to think about it or plan up but

03:13:45.060 it's long past time that we acknowledged and celebrated this hero of aussitrew and

03:13:52.980 And we are honored to, in some way, carry on his legacy and to benefit from the endeavor that, you know, that he put forth at a time when others weren't.

03:14:10.540 And that made a huge difference.

03:14:14.260 The impact is tremendous.

03:14:17.560 So, yeah, hail Thorstein Gutunst.

03:14:21.420 um thank you guys so much for joining us tonight thank you for the awesome chat room and the

03:14:27.900 enthusiasm and everybody being being so fantastic if you're hearing this and you enjoy it and you

03:14:35.580 you know are a heterosexual white person that wants to honor our gods you should join the

03:14:40.700 astro focusing we're doing great things we can do them better and faster and more the more of

03:14:48.540 us who are engaged in the struggle so we invite you guys to join us um if you know folks that 0.98

03:14:54.940 should be with us that aren't invite them send them home it is the mission of the astro folk

03:15:00.620 assembly to bring all our folk home uh we'll see you next week when uh witness fawn and i will be

03:15:07.900 going over the waluspa in skama um yeah if you guys can we would love to see you at feast of

03:15:19.180 the iron her yard it's going to be awesome it's going to be in south dakota and it's going to be

03:15:24.300 this coming weekend so get your get your registration while the getting's good i'd love to see you guys

03:15:31.900 there uh but either way i'll see you next week until then hail the icer hill folk

03:15:38.940 Hail the AFA, and remember, victory never slew us.

03:16:08.940 We'll be right back.

03:16:38.940 Thank you.

03:17:08.940 Thank you.

03:17:38.940 We'll be right back.

03:18:08.940 We'll be right back.

03:18:38.940 Transcription by CastingWords

Asatru Folk Assembly - November 07, 2024

11⧸6⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 122 - Goði Þorsteinn Guðjónsson

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