Asatru Folk Assembly - 4⧸8⧸26 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 196 - Radbod and the Struggle for Frisia

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

00:03:00.000 Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of Victory Never Sleeps.

00:03:11.280 We have a special episode for you.

00:03:14.980 Folk builder Chris Savage has quickly become one of, if not the favorite guest on Victory Never Sleeps.

00:03:23.820 He is backed by popular demand and critical acclaim,

00:03:27.860 And he is here to talk to you about King Radbaud, one of our heroes, and the struggle for the soul of the Frisians.

00:03:40.420 It's going to be an exciting episode tonight. Chris always delivers.

00:03:45.400 Top of the show stuff before we get cracking.

00:03:53.540 Progress on Frasov.

00:03:55.940 We are doing awesome. People are very, very generous. I appreciate the generosity. I'm sure

00:04:02.280 we all do. You guys are amazing. We are now 37.6% paid off. Donation of $106 per member. Today we

00:04:13.500 get it paid off for perspective. You guys are amazing. If anybody's interested in donating to

00:04:19.360 that or any of our other projects, please feel free to do so. You can do that at runestone.org

00:04:27.420 slash donate. So thank you guys who have donated to that and all the other stuff.

00:04:38.200 Oh, thank everybody so much for those of you that donated to the lawnmower at Sigurhane.

00:04:45.800 we have successfully purchased the lawn lower and we're going to go ahead and shut down that

00:04:52.200 fundraiser for that making progress out there which is which is awesome um it's neat being

00:04:59.640 able to live so close now i've been out there the past two days doing brush removal and

00:05:07.160 beautification stuff at the lovely old cemetery that we have there and that's always special time

00:05:14.280 it's neat to just need to be in that place it is a very special place if you haven't been there i

00:05:20.760 would encourage you all to come out this year kind of an announcement our feature

00:05:27.480 of it at Sigurheim has up to this point been Sigurblow and it will be again when we get some ac

00:05:35.240 but it's very very hot and very very humid in july in tennessee so we're going to focus for

00:05:42.120 our big signature national get everybody there event to be feast of the einherjahr this year 0.99

00:05:47.960 that's in november now you want to come out for sigger bloat we will absolutely do that and 0.99

00:05:53.720 all of our other celebrations at siggerhang um but the feature one this year that we're 1.00

00:06:00.360 going to try to get everybody out for is going to be feast of the iron we are in november

00:06:04.520 we got some other plans on that that i will talk to you guys about hopefully next week

00:06:12.140 that should be awesome but yeah it's a it's real special place i hope everybody has a chance to

00:06:17.140 come out and visit and take part uh gw farnsworth ten dollars to phrasehoff and five dollars towards

00:06:24.160 the heating situation at thorsoff thank you you are such a generous donor to us each and every

00:06:30.120 week we appreciate your life thank you um okay disregard that uh we're having some technical

00:06:39.820 background things it was in fact steven in japan who donated the ten dollars phrase off and five

00:06:45.320 dollars thoris off thank you steven also a frequent donor to the program and gw farnsworth

00:06:50.720 uh i'm trying to sort it out sorry guys donated 25 towards the heat at thoris off

00:06:59.520 and 25 to uh sigerheim thank you for that we appreciate it and gilbert another one of our

00:07:07.200 super super duper donors 150 towards the heat and thorsoff thank you gilbert um we appreciate

00:07:15.280 you guys so much thank you to everybody who donates and specifically you guys that are always

00:07:20.800 such exemplos and generosity um trying to get any other top of the show stuff to hit you guys with

00:07:32.080 this week before we let chris cook as the kids would say um

00:07:37.360 Oh, just kind of a random exhortation here at the beginning, because it was something

00:07:51.460 I talked about in my RuneStone article for this month.

00:07:54.880 It was just something I've been thinking about.

00:07:57.800 With, and this has kind of always been the case, we got lots of people focused on a lot

00:08:05.280 of a lot of stress a lot of doom spiraling a lot of um doom scrolling and frustration about

00:08:16.040 i don't know national and international events about society at large about all the things that

00:08:23.960 give us frustration and one of the things that is a big part of that is a feeling of helplessness

00:08:32.900 when you see things radically askew from how you'd like them to be this spring it is a really

00:08:42.340 good time for us to focus on what can we do to make things better what can we do to shape the

00:08:49.460 world the way that we would like to see it and the austral focus and we have an amazing opportunity

00:08:54.900 to do that and you know just looking at my own life and things around you know my family and

00:09:03.300 the world i live in i am tremendously blessed that i have the ability to

00:09:08.180 directly affect you know hundreds of people indirectly thousands or more people by the

00:09:15.300 good work with the afa each and every one of our members has the ability to affect

00:09:20.340 all of those people it's not the billions of geopolitics that you would like to affect

00:09:28.500 but it's a lot more than those that you affect in grandma's basement you have the ability to make

00:09:33.780 life actually better for tons of our people by being actively involved with the austral folk

00:09:40.660 assembly and you have the opportunity to help shape something really beautiful and really special

00:09:45.940 for our folk and for your children for your children's children this is a really special

00:09:51.940 time to be also true it's a special time to be involved in the afa and if you're hearing this

00:09:57.780 we would love to have you involved with us helping to make these dreams become reality

00:10:02.420 so you know if you're thinking about it now is the time if you've got questions or you've got

00:10:08.660 reasons that are holding you back let's talk about those let's fix those let's get to the

00:10:13.620 other side of it so we can you know capitalize on this beautiful time of year in this auspicious

00:10:21.780 moment in history to build this together so i invite you guys all to get on the team um also

00:10:31.460 as with anything like share subscribe tell your friends tell your family uh

00:10:37.060 Uh, tell people in whatever social spaces you find yourself in, your word of mouth helps

00:10:44.740 us tremendously.

00:10:46.000 We appreciate it.

00:10:47.240 And there's tons of people that should be coming home to their natural gods.

00:10:53.500 And what holds them back is they don't know we exist.

00:10:58.180 So help us, help them to find out about us and help us all do this together.

00:11:05.500 All right.

00:11:05.940 I think that's what I got for the top of the program.

00:11:11.340 How are you doing, Chris?

00:11:12.760 How's things in Chris land?

00:11:15.260 Things are going well here.

00:11:17.380 And if you are in Michigan or close to the border in Ohio or Indiana and want to do something fun this spring and get outdoors and hang out with your folk for a bit,

00:11:29.420 I am hosting a moot this Sunday at noon.

00:11:32.840 if you are interested email me at csavage at runestone.org nick can throw that up so

00:11:41.240 yeah things are going good here spring has sprung although the thermometer hasn't figured

00:11:48.720 that out quite yet but yeah i don't think i have anything to preface or start with before going

00:11:57.280 right into brad bot do you want to set the floor with anything sir before i just

00:12:04.000 go sure all right guys let me tell you a story so

00:12:10.080 when i first when i first came home at alsatru i

00:12:19.840 i was very inspired by the afa but i wasn't an afa member just yet and i was because again i

00:12:26.320 was in alaska and i had this oh i'm so far away i can't be involved with them and that was silly

00:12:33.360 thinking but i didn't know how silly it was at the time so i was trying to figure out what to do and

00:12:41.920 you know when i finally got the i don't got the inspiration or the courage up or the whatever 0.69

00:12:49.920 motivation to get off my butt and start trying to do something like all right what can i do

00:12:55.040 nobody else is doing something all right well i can invite people over to my house 0.94

00:12:59.760 we can do something together and so you know i found the ragtag random assortment of folks

00:13:07.280 off of meetup.com and i forget whatever other sources there were at the time the first thing

00:13:15.200 that i celebrated because it really stood out to me at the time was the day of remembrance for

00:13:24.080 ratbot and in my own experience i didn't leave christianity for something um so

00:13:37.280 uh i was and you guys have heard the story before i'll keep this part brief but

00:13:44.240 i was you know nominally christian but with no real religious education in my family or

00:13:50.320 religious practice in my family coming up and when i was a teenager and i was spending time with my

00:13:55.680 cousins and my aunt she was very about jehovah's witness and so not realizing my options i wanted

00:14:02.480 to do religion i wanted to do it right so i started i read my bible through several times and

00:14:08.080 started being very active with the jehovah's witnesses and really gave it my best

00:14:13.920 but it relatively quickly became very apparent that it wasn't the right thing to do

00:14:24.260 and it was scary because at that point i didn't know i had options

00:14:28.680 and i thought this is god this is the god of the universe and he's a terrible person 0.73

00:14:37.880 and this religion is terrible and everything that i love about history about life about

00:14:47.220 i don't know that time in my life is you know i'm probably just mapping in my head 1920 0.82

00:14:54.920 ish at the time you know everything in my mind and my body at that at that age and that time

00:15:03.240 told me that this weak you know flaccid pacifistic christianity was not the way to go and that the

00:15:12.680 god of their bible was a terrible person and it was really scary because i made the decision like

00:15:20.600 if this is what there is and this is the god then i still i can't be on the team this is wrong and

00:15:27.640 i can't stand with that and so i was really scared because i didn't know i didn't know there was

00:15:32.520 something else and what else was there but i knew if this was the option was jehovah or not

00:15:40.760 i'm choosing not and that's what made radbod's story really stand out to me and be meaningful

00:15:49.000 to me and that's why it was the first i think that's why i was motivated for that to be the

00:15:53.400 first thing i wanted to celebrate in house and true and uh you know doing that and in a way the

00:16:00.520 inspiration of king radbot is why i'm here talking to you guys tonight so

00:16:07.640 with that chris take it away

00:16:13.080 yes let me just get my notes to the top here all right so

00:16:18.280 to begin a lot of the story of radbod is

00:16:23.480 peripheral to a lot of the stuff going on in what is today France referred to as Gaul just as a kind

00:16:35.180 of recap here because the term Gaul is going to come up in Latin the province is called Gallia

00:16:41.360 but in English we call it Gaul g-a-u-l which is actually the francified form of an older

00:16:51.380 Germanic word Walhas, which means Celt, Italic, people to the southwest. Gaul and

00:17:01.220 Wales are actually cognate. There's a W to G shift that happens in French,

00:17:10.000 and then there's also a W to B shift that happens in Spain. Anyways, or in

00:17:16.280 Spanish. Anyways, so a lot of this story involves talking about the Franks because a lot of what

00:17:25.240 happens is reactions to the catastrophe happening in Gaul. So around 250 AD, the Franks lived along

00:17:35.220 the east bank of the River Rhine. This was the border between Germania Superior, which meant

00:17:41.860 roman germany and germania inferior which meant free germany the romans would divide places into

00:17:50.020 superior and inferior based on if they conquered it or not the franks lived in the northwest so

00:17:56.260 they lived in the free part of germany the earliest references to the franks lump them in with the

00:18:03.300 saxons both of these are just kind of peripheral peoples living around the edge of the roman world

00:18:11.860 there's not much of a good distinction between them. So around 260 AD, the

00:18:17.440 Germanic peoples start moving into Gaul in large numbers. You want to throw up 1.00

00:18:22.520 the first map, Nick, in Frankish, the first one, the Frankish territory one?

00:18:29.160 i'll keep going so in 308 constantine the apostate kills the there we go uh okay so you

00:18:46.260 can see here this big map when we talk about frankia and gaul we mean the big purple part

00:18:52.120 in the west it's basically spain sorry basically france notice that spain is to the south the

00:18:59.640 pyrenees mountains separates france and spain but then to the east there's this kind of area

00:19:06.680 referred to as burgundy which today is not in it not a place separate from france germany is this

00:19:12.360 big mess and then way up in the north there's this kind of pink border region along the sea

00:19:20.280 That is Phrygia, and Saxony is in the northeast south of Denmark.

00:19:27.180 That's where Saxony was at the time.

00:19:29.780 Today, Saxony is wherever you feel like being at any given place in Germany.

00:19:35.380 And there's Italy to the southeast.

00:19:37.740 Just a brief rundown of where things are for this tale.

00:19:43.040 So, in 308, Constantine the Apostate kills the chieftains Ascaric and Merogeisus.

00:19:52.040 In 486, the Franks win the Franco-Roman War of 486, conquering Gaul, just as a kind of demonstration of just about two centuries go by,

00:20:06.000 And the Franks go from these peripheral bandit tribesmen on the edge of the Roman world to taking one of the major provinces of the Roman Empire.

00:20:15.140 We're just going to kind of gloss over how that happens, but in short, the Roman Empire bled gall dry of men, food, metal, money, just everything. 0.87

00:20:25.400 so the germanics could come in and got a lot of on the ground support for doing so because 0.58

00:20:31.900 the romans had like a 98 tax rate basically so like these barbarian chieftains are like you know

00:20:40.780 pay us 10 percent of your income we'll call it good and this was just amazing by the standards 0.74

00:20:45.220 of the gaulish peasantry so in 486 the franks win this war with the romans and conquer gaul

00:20:51.480 And it's during this time that the famous vase of soissons shows up, or vase of soissons.

00:21:00.360 So the king of the Franks at this time is a man by the name of Ludwig, better known as Clovis I.

00:21:07.720 So the Franks loot a settlement and take this vase, which may have come out of a church, but this is before 1000 AD.

00:21:17.980 So a lot of what we hear and think about when we hear Christian religious structural terms is just not what it actually is, which kind of shows up later in this tale.

00:21:29.520 And the Franks loot this settlement, and they take this vase, and they put all of the booty, the war plunder, in this big pile.

00:21:37.600 And Clovis walks up to the pile and says, I'm the king. I'm going to take this. 0.91

00:21:43.100 He picks the vase out and one of his warriors is incensed and smashes it while it's in Clovis's

00:21:48.700 hands and says, the king must be fair to his men and follow the law. You're not allowed to take

00:21:54.140 things just because you're the king. A year later, a year later to the day, Clovis howls out, remember

00:22:01.500 the vase of Soissons and hacks the man to death with a battle axe. This basically sums up the

00:22:10.140 Carolingian and Merovingian dynasties from this period until the mid-700s.

00:22:17.220 This story is a bit anachronistically embellished by its teller, Gregory of Tours, in the late

00:22:24.180 500s. Clovis Hedwig was the founder of the Merovingian dynasty, but the real power in Gaul

00:22:33.020 amongst the Franks, was the so-called mayor of the palace, mayor from Latin mayoris, literally

00:22:39.920 meaning big, the big of the palace, which comes to be occupied by the dynasty that is anachronistically

00:22:47.820 referred to as the Carolingians, a.k.a. the Carlings. This is Charlemagne's dynasty.

00:22:53.700 They end up taking de jure power within a generation or two of Clovis.

00:22:58.300 Now, in the 1800s, during the Third French Republic,

00:23:04.620 this, it's honestly just an anecdote, really.

00:23:09.100 This anecdote gets completely recontextualized to instead be about the birth of the French

00:23:14.300 Republic as a distinct republican entity. It's about the importance of the rule of law and the

00:23:20.780 eventual prevailing of justice and the necessity of subordinating oneself to the republican

00:23:25.500 institutions of government and it becomes a cultural touchstone of french public school

00:23:36.620 to this day kind of like how everyone in america knows about washington and the cherry tree

00:23:40.560 so in 493 clovis marries his sister aldo fleda to theodoric the great theodoric is a king a

00:23:50.520 little east of Gaul. Throughout 498 to 508, somewhere in here, it's not entirely clear,

00:23:58.840 Clovis apostasizes to Nicene Christianity. In 493, Clovis married his sister of Ophleda to

00:24:07.620 Theodoric, who was an Arian Christian. That is another important thing in Frankish history.

00:24:15.020 The Franks are one of the rare few peoples that take up Trinitarian Christianity.

00:24:21.520 It's not immediately clear when Clovis actually formally apostatizes, like when does he get dunked in the water.

00:24:30.280 It's not really well recorded, which is sort of interesting because of how important this event is.

00:24:37.420 However, he immediately begins a centralization campaign, murdering his relatives and stealing their stuff.

00:24:43.600 Murder your family to steal their stuff is a really common theme when it comes to the first generation of apostates to Christianity.

00:24:49.980 This is also, for what it's worth, exactly what Constantine was doing. 0.96

00:24:54.280 Murdering his family, stealing their stuff, centralizing his government.

00:24:58.380 So one of Clovis' sons, well we're just talking about anecdotes about Clovis,

00:25:03.080 one of his sons died shortly after his wife Clotilde secretly baptized said son.

00:25:09.340 And then she tried it again, baptizing a son secretly, and he became deathly ill afterwards.

00:25:18.460 So she almost, she, anyways, so in 507, Clovis begins the Franco-Gothic War. 0.82

00:25:28.780 In short, Spain at this time is ruled by a Gothic-Germanic-religiously Aryan minority who dominate the Iberian Peninsula. 0.85

00:25:43.520 Clovis begins a war with them in 507. 0.97

00:25:46.500 Again, they were nominally Aryans. Religion, other than Islam, before the Reconquista is complete, is extremely murky in Spain.

00:25:58.500 A lot of it gets anachronistically backfilled after the Reconquista due to an attempt at creating a glorious Christian lineage of rebellion against Islamic incursion.

00:26:12.500 But nominally, Spain is a Christian region at this point. Right. And Clovis is waging war on them and on the Basques who inhabit the area in between France and Spain. 0.62

00:26:27.660 and at this time there's a lot more of them than there are basques today so um uh the trinitarians

00:26:36.780 in southern gaul end up backing um end up backing clovis due to uh who at this time is still are

00:26:45.340 uh still sorry when clovis begins his invasion of spain he's actually still nominally asatru at least

00:26:54.620 We aren't told that he is converted yet.

00:26:57.660 He's not referred to as a Christian king when he does this,

00:27:00.080 but he receives the backing of Trinitarian power in southern France for doing this.

00:27:07.420 Again, I apologize, we're not talking about Radbaud,

00:27:10.040 but it's necessary to set up this a little bit more than in prior episodes.

00:27:15.000 So Clovis's army was still majority Asitru in this war, as we're told by letters.

00:27:21.180 There's a lot of effort, both at the time and later, to emphasize the lack of raping and pillaging. 1.00

00:27:26.220 It's a very clean invasion. 0.77

00:27:28.960 Alongside attempts to craft what is obviously a clearly political act, the apostasy, into some kind of personal piety. 0.77

00:27:37.920 So there probably was a lot of raping and pillaging when Clovis was invading Spain.

00:27:42.420 This starts another trend that goes on for a few centuries. 0.96

00:27:46.620 This ends up setting the stage for the Islamic invasion of Iberia about 200 years later. 0.98

00:27:52.460 In short, Clovis' bad behavior drives a wedge between Iberia and Gaul, 0.89

00:27:57.020 and the Iberians can never really unify to fight against the Islamic invasion,

00:28:02.860 because any time they try, the French invade.

00:28:07.260 This actually culminates in Charlemagne allying and helping Muslims fight against the Visigoths and the Basques.

00:28:12.220 Another thing is this starts the Merovingians enacting large-scale military conflict against their neighbors, using Trinitarianism as a pretense for attacking said neighbors and taking their stuff. 0.90

00:28:28.260 The Franks would constantly do this. 0.67

00:28:30.200 So there's about a 200-year summation of French history that you can just get by describing Clovis. 0.88

00:28:39.500 508, Gregory of Tours tells us that Clovis apostatizes here to seal the deal after the Franco-Gothic War.

00:28:47.500 Again, whether he actually got dunked here, if he did at all, is unknown and really irrelevant,

00:28:53.500 because by 508 he is now a Trinitarian tyrant.

00:28:57.500 5.11, Clovis calls the First Council of Orleans, creating a miniature version of what Constantine had wanted to do with the Catholic Church, which is use it as his bureaucracy.

00:29:09.160 Because it's important to remember, when Clovis and the Franks show up, Gaul is a Roman province, so this is kind of like a Mexican drug cartel just taking Texas, and the DMV just keeps going, right?

00:29:26.440 Okay, so his realm ends up getting split between his four sons, who, in a shocking bit of here, they immediately begin in brutal civil war that lasts until 751, about 200 years later, when the Merovingian dynasty is extinguished and Charlemagne takes power. 0.79

00:29:49.140 Charlemagne ends up dying, and then his sons immediately start killing each other.

00:29:52.440 now our episode on the anglo-saxons takes place if you haven't watched that

00:29:58.840 you should probably finish this one and then go watch that one but you know so jumping ahead about

00:30:05.560 150 years do you want to say something before we jump ahead 150 years all right 677 i was asking my

00:30:14.400 wife to give me a beverage 677 wilfred there's a lot of men who are christian clerics with names

00:30:23.800 that start with w's in this tale i'm sorry wilfred the powerful bishop of york in england

00:30:29.600 gets expelled from his seat of power by edgfrith king of northumbria

00:30:37.700 so wilfrid journeys to the pope to get him involved so i will use the catholic church

00:30:47.620 to abuse the populace and steal their wealth is a common thing you see christian kings do realize

00:30:54.520 doing realizing they can do at this time but what happens is shortly after the christian

00:31:00.340 kings realize they can do that the christian clerics say well wait a minute why do we need

00:31:05.020 this king guy i could just abuse the populace and steal their wealth so again remember the catholic

00:31:14.240 church at this time is not like a separate a separate of society it is a parallel government

00:31:21.700 that still nominally runs europe at least in its own mind and then there's just these germanic gang

00:31:28.620 leaders that show up and start taxing peasants so theoretically there's two parallel governments

00:31:34.760 And in any given place that isn't inhabited by Celts in Europe right now, where there's the Catholic Church and then there's the Germanic warlord.

00:31:44.540 And they are not necessarily the same thing, even though they do interface. 0.91

00:31:48.780 So this leads to the so-called turbulent priests.

00:31:54.120 In Francia, Gaul, France, the Frankish king is the top dog.

00:31:59.820 So the clerics have to do what he says.

00:32:02.940 In England, the Frankish king is the top dog, so the clerics don't have to do what the Anglo-Saxon

00:32:09.340 king says. Again, remember, the Christian church is a government agency slash department 0.65

00:32:16.300 and is the only one left from this government, the Roman government.

00:32:20.540 It's just playing ball with the Roman kings or with the Germanic kings.

00:32:23.980 Edgfrith journeys to the Pope and is opposed by the Franks, despite them both being Trinitarian Christians, as Edgfrith's entire effort was essentially about trying to centralize power in his own hands at the behest of both, as opposed to royal power. 0.63

00:32:44.380 When he goes to Rome, he plans on making his case that power had to be ceded to him because the other people involved were heretics,

00:32:53.020 due to a complex controversy surrounding the dating of Passover that no one really cares about.

00:32:57.600 So what Edgeforth really wants is he wants to be independent of Northumbria, and thus, by proxy, independent of Frankish rule,

00:33:07.640 because the Northumbrians are nominally the subjects of the Franks.

00:33:12.080 And Edgeforth wants to just go around that.

00:33:16.060 And thus, he seeks out an opponent of the Franks.

00:33:19.560 Could you throw up image two, Nick? 0.64

00:33:26.100 We're getting to Frisia.

00:33:28.100 All right, this is Frisia.

00:33:30.700 In 678, a man by the name of Aldgissel rules in Frisia.

00:33:36.660 Ebrouin, mayor of the palace of the Franks,

00:33:39.380 who, again, is basically the prime minister of the Merovingian kingdom.

00:33:44.380 So Ebroman is mayor of the palace of the Franks.

00:33:48.380 He's under the Merovingian king Dagobert II, sends a letter and payment to Aldgissel in Frisia

00:33:54.380 to send Wilfred to Francia for punishment.

00:33:57.380 Aldgissel does not play ball.

00:34:00.380 So Aldgissel is going to back the Popish independence party against the Frankish royal party

00:34:06.380 because his enemies are the Franks, and he wants to undermine their client states in England to prevent them from looking at Frigia for too long.

00:34:15.380 Frigia is a very thin strip of land with very poor agricultural capacity up against the sea, while having basically no...

00:34:28.380 The Dutch end up having to invent complex waterworks to pump water out of the land because it's just so low to the ground that whenever the tide goes up, like a mile of land, it just goes away. 0.79

00:34:41.820 So, Aldgissel desperately wants to keep the Franks busy because the Franks are looking to Frisia and thinking, wow, there's a lot of stuff to steal and a lot of people to enslave up there.

00:34:53.620 Frankish sources call the Frisian kings duki, or dux, which means military leader in Latin.

00:35:03.040 That is because the Frankish crown had declared itself to be the owner of Frisia, and all the things in it, and all the people in it.

00:35:10.180 Independent of what the Frisians, or their kings, or their tribal political institutions, had to say about the matter.

00:35:18.340 The city of Utrecht had been originally a Germanic settlement, and then a Roman fort city was made there, but then abandoned, so the Germanics just came back and kept living in it.

00:35:30.840 A church was built there at one point, supposedly during Old Gissel's reign, but ends up getting destroyed.

00:35:37.060 Academics have largely focused on Ald Gissel as a possible Christian convert due to the later St. Widukin phenomena, which we'll cover much later in this episode.

00:35:49.560 Ald Gissel ends up dying at some point. He only shows up in history due to this part in the tale of Willifred.

00:35:57.700 He ends up getting replaced by a man by the name of Radbot, our hero of the day.

00:36:03.140 Okay, so Frisia today is the Netherlands. It's the far-flung edge of the continental Germanic world.

00:36:09.260 It was pincered between the extremely hostile Franks to the south and the sea to the north.

00:36:13.340 The people weren't very wealthy, but there were trade cities that had cropped up that engaged with Scandinavia,

00:36:18.800 with interior Germany, with the Anglo-Saxons, because it's very close to the sea.

00:36:23.840 It's a very thin strip of land, but there's also a lot of big and deep rivers going through it,

00:36:29.000 so it's easy to get to anywhere by boat.

00:36:33.140 So this is before the hydroengineering that characterizes the Netherlands today has occurred.

00:36:38.120 So the area was very swampy, very wet, there's lots of rivers, lots of lowlands.

00:36:42.680 In the literature of the time, even foreigners are commenting about the tide and the sea as if these were like, you know, people living there almost.

00:36:55.520 These are problems to be dealt with, and the modern Netherlands is the result of the Dutch eventually figuring out how to deal with those problems.

00:37:03.140 So the Frankish kings coveted the area due to their wanton greed, but also because while the area was agriculturally quite poor, it had several surprisingly wealthy urban centers that acted as hubs of mercantile activity.

00:37:18.520 These hubs weren't under Frankish control, and they're also populated by Asatruz.

00:37:24.580 They are Asatruz cities at this point.

00:37:26.720 As said, the city of Utrecht was one of these. It was originally a Germanic village, it became a Roman fort, then it became a German city.

00:37:33.720 There's an attempt at retroactively reading Christianity into Frisia because the early attempts at introducing Christianity actually failed.

00:37:44.720 And supposedly all of the Frisians, in one single day, converted willingly, but then returned to Asaturu the next day.

00:37:55.720 Um, this is probably an attempt at baptizing some kind of initial friendliness between the Frisians and Rome, um, against the Franks, due to stuff that ends up happening later. 0.76

00:38:07.720 Alright, 689, about two decades after Ald Gissel, Radbod shows up in history.

00:38:17.720 You want to throw up the third image, Nick? The first Radbod portrait?

00:38:21.720 portrait. So this is a portrait of Radbod in the castle that belonged to his

00:38:28.140 descendants. He actually became an important feudal and an important

00:38:32.920 ancestor in the feudal period much, much later. He probably did not wear a crown

00:38:39.720 that ostentatious. Aldgissel had taken in Willibord in 678, so somewhere in the

00:38:46.920 decade or so between, Radbod assumes power. Radbod leads an army against the

00:38:54.060 Frankish leader Pepin of Herstal. Pepin was the Frankish mayor of the palace, so

00:38:59.680 he's the PM, not the king. Pepin ends up winning the battle and actually takes the

00:39:06.760 city of Utrecht. Radbod then retreats to either the island of Heligoland or to

00:39:13.520 friesland either way he moves north away from frisia for a time to gather his uh his vril

00:39:21.360 heligoland is the island that is supposed to be holy to for seti by the way there's a bit

00:39:27.840 there's a number of for seti related things in frisia that we're told about do you have anything

00:39:34.320 to say while i take a sip from my tea sir um other than just fun fun factoid like cool stuff

00:39:42.560 about forsetti and the freesians um in this island i believe it's this island um there's

00:39:56.080 there's a couple of different stories but basically forsetti is like the law giver

00:40:01.440 of the freesians he provides them an accurate you know code of of their laws and governance

00:40:09.040 and he has a um

00:40:13.040 he has a golden axe that he casts upon i believe this island and a spring sprouts forth from it

00:40:20.480 that's you know vents forth holy to the phrygians it's so holy that you have to be you can't speak

00:40:27.680 when you're going near it you have to be silent

00:40:32.080 do you want to keep telling the story sir no that's i was just making the point while you were

00:40:36.240 there's also a uh a tale about um some lawgivers get like lost on a boat heading from heligoland

00:40:46.680 to the mainland and forseti comes down and he like steers the boat with like if it's an oar or

00:40:54.480 rudder with the axe right an odd little bit of uh religiosity in this region because we genuinely

00:41:04.300 do not know much about Frisia, other than that it was poor and very wet, right? So

00:41:10.780 another Christian cleric whose name starts with a W, this is the second one, there's more,

00:41:19.140 by the name of Willebroard enters the picture. So Willebroard was an Anglo-Saxon cleric who had

00:41:26.200 studied under Wilfred, the guy that Aldegissel had hosted. He was sent with 11 other men by

00:41:32.340 pepin of herstel as an attack on radbod who is essentially selling willow sending will abroad

00:41:38.580 and 11 others to sow dissent and build a fifth column so pause for a second i feel like we did

00:41:43.760 that a disservice sorry go on no so with the uh with that story um there was a and it's you know

00:41:57.640 near this time there was an idea that part of this conquest effort the franks had gathered up

00:42:04.920 12 of the leading you know wise men of the frisians and put them in a boat or okay and

00:42:14.100 demanded of them like hey recite the laws of your people because i want to figure out your guys's

00:42:18.100 laws one of um charlemagne's things was that he was kind of noted for was where administratively

00:42:26.740 where he was able to was governing people by their traditional laws as opposed to by

00:42:31.780 like a unified frankish law code so he's like all right guys what get it together what are

00:42:38.740 you guys laws and you know them not being able to do it it's like okay well you've got a choice

00:42:46.420 i will kill you here i will set you adrift in the sea they're like all right set us in this boat

00:42:51.380 adrift at sea and a rudderless boat like okay cool so they go out to sea and you know mysteriously a 0.99

00:42:59.460 13th man appears with his golden axe he you know steers the boat with the idea that he chucks his

00:43:07.460 axe when he gets ashore to um create this sacred spring and that was for setting appearing among

00:43:15.700 and giving them laws in that holy spring charlemagne does not get born for another

00:43:22.180 50 years in this tale but he does show up eventually in this episode um and the the

00:43:28.740 legend comes to us from later medieval sources so when you start the his the chronological accuracy

00:43:38.180 of medieval legends is there's a lot of there's a lot of strange ahistorical overlap sometimes

00:43:44.580 which does show up in this story right um so the the goal the forseti and the golden axe with the

00:43:51.220 lawgiver's story actually shows up in the life of saint will abroad by alcuin alcuin um the life

00:43:59.220 of saint will abroad is the the life of the guy we're going to talk about here will abroad he he

00:44:04.660 does matter in this story so will abroad was an anglo-saxon cleric a lot of the people that are

00:44:12.420 recruited to antifa around in continental germany and spread christianity are anglo-saxons

00:44:19.300 because they can be pulled from england to this foreign area where they have no connections and

00:44:25.620 can enact their ideology freely but they also just speak in everyone that isn't like a goth

00:44:32.580 speaks a completely mutually intelligible language at this point right it isn't until around 1000 ad

00:44:40.580 that old english and old norse start really being meaningfully different like at all so

00:44:51.060 will abroad was an anglo-saxon cleric he studied under wilfred the guy that ald gissel had hosted

00:44:56.340 he was sent with 11 other men by pepin of herstall as an attack on radbot who uh pepin was

00:45:03.540 essentially sending will abroad and the other 11 men to sow dissent and build a fifth column in

00:45:08.740 Frisia. This doesn't really end up working well. They are also trying this in Saxony at the same

00:45:13.940 time, and it's not really working well in Saxony. Spoiler warning, it's because the Franks will not 0.69

00:45:19.880 stop attacking everyone around them, right? Sometime later, the Pope ends up throwing his 0.62

00:45:28.180 weight behind this project, and that's when it starts getting a little more backing, a little

00:45:32.220 more success but will abroad journeyed to frisia sometime after 695's november as that was when he

00:45:40.780 met with the pope to get people backing for the mission so do you want to throw up the fourth

00:45:45.060 image matt nick i'm sorry i'm stumbling over my words today i don't know what's with me

00:45:52.180 so in 698 will abroad was given land to establish a monastery at echtenach in what is today

00:46:00.980 luxembourg for reference luxembourg is actually separated from the netherlands by belgium so

00:46:07.700 will abroad was still operating deep within frankish territory in 698 before moving up to

00:46:15.940 frisia with radbod falling back to friesland or to heligoland will abroad had free reign

00:46:22.660 to antifa about in utrecht and ends up building a cathedral i mentioned how there was a church

00:46:28.500 in Aldegissel's reign, it's not clear from the chronology if when does this one church in Frisia,

00:46:36.260 when does this first church get built, we'll end up seeing there's a lot of ideological construction

00:46:42.420 going along or going around at this time. Okay, so we're told that Forseti had established a sacred

00:46:51.700 well on the island of Heligoland. We're also told that Willebroard journeyed to Heligoland

00:46:59.380 to defile the sacred well, actually stopping it from making water or something like that.

00:47:05.700 So in 711, Bradbod's daughter Theodsvind, aka Theudesinda, was set to marry Grimoald the Younger,

00:47:16.420 who was the second son of Pepin of Hirstall.

00:47:20.360 The marriage was supposedly officiated by Willowbrook.

00:47:24.220 This marriage produced two sons, both of whom were later claimed to be illegitimate,

00:47:28.940 Theudewald and Arnold.

00:47:32.180 Theudewald was actually initially a legitimate son, who was later declared illegitimate.

00:47:37.420 This was probably because his maternal grandfather was Radbod, who does stuff.

00:47:43.860 You'll see.

00:47:44.580 it's worth noting at this time however notice it's theudesinda who gives birth to theudewald

00:47:51.780 at this time germanic onomastics typically involved either in every other generation

00:47:57.760 name recycling so you know if your name is bob and your dad's son is jeff you will name your son

00:48:05.880 jeff and he will name his son bob and these names just keep bob jeff bob jeff bob jeff bob jeff

00:48:13.360 right the other thing they do is they share a so germanic names much like indo-european names in

00:48:22.900 general have this thing where they're made of two compounds so you get people named like grimkel

00:48:27.780 which means like you know scary helmet or mask helmet or you'll know you know they'll be named

00:48:34.920 like rafengar which means a raven spear right so children will often take the first part of a

00:48:43.220 parent's name, so like a man named Grimkell would name his son Grimcroffin, right?

00:48:52.900 So he takes the few of his mother's name rather than the Grim of his father's name,

00:48:57.700 which indicates that he was considered to be closer to his mother because she probably named him to some degree.

00:49:03.940 This means that this whole venture of intermarriage was probably understood as dangerous to the Frankish court.

00:49:10.340 You can take down the image of Luxembourg, Nick.

00:49:13.980 Grimoald the Younger was the second son of Pepin, but he was actually of pretty high rank, being the mayor of the palace from a young age.

00:49:22.720 He was, however, not the eldest son.

00:49:25.460 Of course he wasn't, he was the second son.

00:49:27.120 That was a guy by the name of Drogo, but nonetheless, in 708, Grimoald was actually given the Duchy of Burgundy as his personal property.

00:49:36.260 Burgundy ends up becoming this sort of little France that could, that gets completely demolished much later in French history.

00:49:45.480 If you've ever played Europa Universalis, you know what I'm talking about.

00:49:49.780 So Grimewald is important, and he's married to the daughter of a pretty important Frankish enemy

00:49:57.160 who appears to be positioning this child to be a key player in Frankish politics.

00:50:06.260 So some people look at this as a denigration of Radbod, that he's marrying his daughter to a Christian's.

00:50:18.260 I will posit, and we can talk about this later because this story keeps going,

00:50:25.260 I will posit that this marriage is actually a pretty offensive action,

00:50:29.260 because he's positioning his lineage to have a pretty big say in the Frankish 0.56

00:50:35.800 court, and the Franks and the Pope are trying to put a fifth column in his

00:50:41.380 country. He's trying to put a fifth column in the Frankish palace, right? So in 714, 0.88

00:50:49.080 three years later, Pepin of Herstel dies, and Radbod immediately takes to the

00:50:55.480 offensive. First, we're told he has Grimmewald, his son-in-law, assassinated by a man named Ragnar.

00:51:05.280 Ragnar supposedly slew Grimmewald while Grimmewald was returning from a pilgrimage to worship the

00:51:11.800 bones of Saint Lambert in Maastricht. Lambert had actually been murdered in 708 or 709, about five

00:51:19.060 or six years earlier, in a feud that erupted when Lambert publicly denounced Pepin of Herstal

00:51:26.100 for cheating on his wife with a woman named Alpida. Alpida would give birth to a son named

00:51:31.780 Carl, who would become Charles Martell. So Grimewald was actually making maneuvers by aligning himself

00:51:40.500 with his father's enemies by going to worship at the bones of one of his father's enemies,

00:51:45.780 which is a little interesting tidbit towards that um marriage is an offensive act that i

00:51:53.360 mentioned earlier because grimwald gets assassinated right but grimwald was also

00:51:59.680 ostensibly palling around with a faction that didn't like pepin of herstal right um also

00:52:08.340 cheating on your wife and if not just outright being a polygamist is a

00:52:13.320 Pretty common thing for the Merovingians and Carlings to have done. 0.96

00:52:17.320 So, the second thing that Radbaud did is he had Willebrod and his monks expelled from Frisia.

00:52:24.320 Christian texts tell us that the populace, just like overnight, returned to the worship of the Aesir, building many temples as they did so.

00:52:34.320 Third, he immediately acted to retake his lost lands.

00:52:38.320 While the Franks were embroiled in a large succession crisis due to Pepin's death, he struck, took back Utrecht, and tore down the cathedral in it, which may have been the second time that this first Christian church gets torn down, we're not entirely sure. 0.51

00:52:53.200 He cast Willebrod and his antifas out, causing them to scatter to the winds.

00:52:58.080 Fourth, he rallied allies against the Franks and a massive army. 0.85

00:53:02.060 he actually managed to take cologne from its frankish holders like he besieged a fortified

00:53:08.040 frankish city fifth and importantly he allied himself with the neustrians long story short

00:53:16.240 there were marital relationships between the merovingians and the neustrians so this is both

00:53:22.200 an alliance against an enemy of his enemy and a dangerous second barb of securing power with

00:53:26.340 Francia, because, so you can see here, there's two kind of marital pincers going on. There's the

00:53:32.520 Radbod dynasty entrance into the Frankish court, and then there's the Neustrian 0.90

00:53:37.140 pincer, right? So these other factions are moving into the Frankish court to do exactly what the

00:53:44.800 Christian clerics are doing, but in a different manner. A lot of this stuff is a single line

00:53:53.400 in someone else's story radbot is very much unfortunately a character we really have to do

00:53:59.760 a lot of reconstruction about because uh the people who are writing these anecdotes about him

00:54:05.440 really don't want people thinking about this guy because as we'll talk about a little later

00:54:10.380 this isn't supposed to be happening right this level of political deftness this level of intrigue

00:54:18.660 this level full of military competency, this isn't supposed to happen from a pagan.

00:54:25.080 Pagans aren't supposed to do that.

00:54:27.820 And it's a bit of an ideological faux pas, if not refutation,

00:54:33.300 that Rodbot is just allowed to do this stuff, right?

00:54:36.340 Do you want to say anything about this going back on the offensive after his initial defeat, sir?

00:54:46.860 No.

00:54:48.660 all right unfortunately all of these victories in the historical record or at least really cool

00:54:59.180 maneuvers sort of come to a blunt end because the franks just pull back and start fortifying their

00:55:08.440 positions radbod then dies in 17 719 from illness we're not given much specifics what happens next

00:55:18.640 is uncertain a successor named bubo shows up in 734 and is described as a rebel but again the

00:55:26.320 frisian propaganda machine had just outright claimed that frisia was property of the frankish

00:55:32.880 king so it's not clear what it's obviously clear what rebel in this instance means it means he's

00:55:39.920 an independent king right um the franks had actually referred to both the frisians and

00:55:47.840 and Saxons as rebellious slaves squatting on land rightfully, there for the stealing by the

00:55:53.260 Frankish king. However, Radbod's presence apparently frightened the Frankish court,

00:55:58.180 who chose to simply wait him out. So the Franks were mostly, were more concerned with the Saxons,

00:56:05.320 and although literature acts as if the Frankish clergy just had access to Frigia, we don't really

00:56:09.340 see them doing anything with it until the 730s. So again, notice that like Radbod shows up

00:56:16.140 680 or so or yeah 689 it's not until about 40 years later that we really start hearing about

00:56:25.580 christians doing things after you know like like making accomplishments converting the populace

00:56:33.720 building churches etc except in these tacit kind of like no no really guys there was a church here

00:56:39.640 there used to be a church here, kind of maneuvers.

00:56:44.640 Furthermore, we are told that the Franks were actually quite scared of Frisia and its military power,

00:56:49.640 and probably more so the alliances that he had cultivated.

00:56:53.640 I don't know how good the Frisian military honestly would have been at this time.

00:56:58.640 Frisia is quite small compared to Francia.

00:57:01.640 So, apparently, Radbod was planning on going on a military campaign in 719 deeper into Frankish territory, what would be referred to as Austrasia, that ends up falling apart because he dies of illness.

00:57:21.640 There's a gap in the history of what happens here.

00:57:26.640 719, there's an aborted military campaign.

00:57:30.640 733, the province of Westergo, which is part of Friesland, rebels against Frankish rule.

00:57:37.640 Charles Martel, the bastard son of Pepin, reacts harshly.

00:57:44.640 Apparently some apostatized when they were defeated by Martel, when he sends an army to go deal with this rebellion, 0.81

00:57:50.640 rebellion which is probably more like a large-scale bandit raid but when the franks left the apostates

00:57:56.560 were actually punished by their neighbors i'm gonna throw it in here because i can't find a

00:58:02.640 fun transition they also really mentioned about a frisian law code we actually do have one it's

00:58:08.000 called the lex frisionum it's a very interesting little text that talks about the frisian laws to

00:58:15.840 It's a, you know, Frisian law code, right?

00:58:19.720 And, you know, these people are punished by their neighbors for apostasy.

00:58:23.520 This isn't, like, barbarism. This is a legal procedure.

00:58:27.760 Like, no, it's illegal to betray the Aesir, right?

00:58:33.540 So in 734, Bubo, or perhaps Popo, of Frisia patronizes a rebellion in Westergo.

00:58:42.260 Bubo slash Popo then dies, killed in one of Charles Martel's wars of aggression, killed on the field of battle.

00:58:50.200 Martel's armies moved much quicker, as this time around they weren't concerned with attacking civilians,

00:58:56.320 which is a pretty constant thread throughout Carolingian and Nerovingian warfare,

00:59:01.740 is that when these armies are going around putting down rebels, what they're basically doing is raping and pillaging civilians, right?

00:59:10.620 because again they're authorized to do so because christianity so later writers try to downplay the

00:59:19.500 violence against civilians that are done in these raids um they that's part of why they're trying

00:59:27.260 to portray the franks or the frisians it's not helpful that there's so many people and groups

00:59:35.020 that have the same starting Franks, Frisians, Willebroer, Winfrith, Wigneth, yeah.

00:59:46.220 So let's get to the baptism story, because that's the fun one.

00:59:51.180 You want to throw in the the fifth image, Nick?

00:59:54.060 all right this is a tapestry actually showing radbod you know getting into the baptismal font

01:00:05.380 so we're told that radbod actually was ready to apostatize and accept baptism who the officiant

01:00:14.640 was is debated some sources say it was will abroad others say it was wolfram and others

01:00:20.580 still say it was Bonifacius, whose birth name was Winfrith, thankfully referred to him by his

01:00:26.580 not by his dead name. Radbod placed his foot into the font. Presumably he was naked or in some sort

01:00:34.200 of simple garb, like a white garb, as at this time baptisms were done via full-body immersion.

01:00:42.320 He was prepared to be immersed when he turns to Wolfram and asks of his ancestor's fate.

01:00:47.540 Whoever the officiant was tells us the canonical answer.

01:00:53.080 They were suffering eternally in hell. 0.99

01:00:55.400 And so Radbaud declares that he would rather be in hell with his kin than in heaven with a pack of beggars. 0.99

01:01:02.320 And so he climbs out of the baptismal font. 0.99

01:01:05.320 We are told that during the time of the second journey of Boniface to Rome, this event had occurred.

01:01:12.040 The problem with that is that Boniface went to Rome the second time in 722.

01:01:17.540 three years after radbot had died uh boniface as i said was actually born wunfareth he was given the

01:01:24.740 name bonifacius in 717 by the pope named so after the fictional character bonifacius of tarsus uh

01:01:32.820 bonifacius of tarsus is one of these saints that's just outright made up this is this was never a

01:01:37.860 person right um bonifacius was named bonifacius on his first journey to rome bonifacius is the guy

01:01:46.420 the the airbending carpenter who gets stabbed to death um this tale about radbod getting baptized

01:01:55.060 is late written somewhere around 800 to 900 remember radbod dies 719 so late like a century

01:02:03.220 after at most two centuries after at most right it's part of a general ideological slant in

01:02:12.740 Christianity against loyalty to one's ancestors. This is something that comes up a few other times

01:02:19.060 with the Germanic peoples. They're very concerned about, but what happens, what about my ancestors?

01:02:25.540 And there's some Scandinavian, his name starts with Grimkel, I think, who he only actually

01:02:34.260 apostatizes if they dig up his ancestors, baptize them too, and put them back in the mound.

01:02:42.740 So, this is being told to us as part of a moral narrative. What Radbaud does is bad. You are not supposed to mimic him. You are supposed to spurn your ancestors for Christianity. I have to stress this. In the narrative, you, the reader, are supposed to be shocked and appalled that Radbaud chooses his ancestors over baptism.

01:03:03.160 do you want to say anything about the the tale here sir before i do because the

01:03:11.240 the themes are really important and

01:03:16.040 so

01:03:18.920 it's tempting when we hear things that we don't like to question authenticity you know ah it's a

01:03:27.720 later you know apocryphal recounting of events or whatever but it would be i don't know something

01:03:36.520 to note that absolutely happens and it's worth pondering when it's when it serves the person

01:03:45.480 who made the tale well it stands out and is interesting to me in places where it doesn't

01:03:51.800 um you know they could they could have gone back and said that he wholeheartedly embraced

01:04:00.360 the faith in christ and whatever if they wanted to and who's to stop them um i believe that

01:04:07.440 you know the chroniclers of the age a lot of the time were legitimate scholars trying to do their

01:04:14.360 best to recount things or to compile old tales or to accurately portray things and not just as

01:04:22.280 you know venal propagandists and it's interesting because looking for the motives is interesting

01:04:28.840 this story makes a really important point and whether it's you know exactly what was said or

01:04:35.400 exactly how it went down or not you know we would never know unless we were there but what's really

01:04:47.000 i don't know unique to this and

01:04:51.480 i guess unique to this in it being portrayed in such clear contrast and interesting

01:04:58.680 throughout and you may notice this throughout a number of chris's episodes where we talk about

01:05:02.600 the conversion of our folk a lot of the time um the casual viewer or people in modern western

01:05:11.960 society look at religion as like a choice of things we live in religiously mixed and diverse

01:05:23.400 places or we live in places that are almost you know that are largely secular with kind of an

01:05:30.040 afterthought nod culturally to some religious ideas and that wasn't the case one of the things

01:05:35.560 that's really interesting it's not just like oh so what if they want to worship jesus whatever

01:05:40.040 It's the severing of ties of kinship and the very intentional mission within Christianity to destroy the relationship between kin and between family.

01:05:55.980 to destabilize those bonds that were the religious and cultural basis of European institution

01:06:07.440 was tribe, clan, family, those loyalties. Christianity explicitly was meant to turn

01:06:17.280 children against parents, to turn brother against sister, to turn, you know, brother 0.97

01:06:24.540 against brother to turn you know people against their in-laws to basically sever all those social

01:06:31.100 bonds that were the key to our ancestor society in favor of there are no other bonds the only bond

01:06:39.500 is you submitting to jesus who redeemed you of your sins so you guys can

01:06:45.820 get crowns and sing at the feet of jehovah about how awesome he is for eternity um

01:06:54.540 it was an intentional assault on not only the gods but on the ancestors of our folk

01:07:03.420 and on a complete severing of the ties of kinship and it is interesting that even when he's

01:07:13.180 you know in awe of the power of this christ he isn't you know the legend that comes down to us

01:07:21.100 isn't that it was a big theological thing it was kind of an acceptance of i mean i guess this is

01:07:27.660 how it is if this is how it is then you know well where are my ancestors and for him to be making

01:07:38.700 that choice choice i have to assume in his mind there was you know at least the possibility you

01:07:45.980 you know, what if these guys are right? And this is how it is.

01:07:49.120 They've got their Jewish God and he gets to choose where people go when they die. 0.96

01:07:55.700 And if hell's real and that's where my ancestors are burning. 0.89

01:08:01.000 If my choice is to be severed from my kinship and go to heaven with heavenly glory,

01:08:06.400 or if it's to go to torment, but be with my father and his father and my grandparents

01:08:14.380 in the line of my people, I'll choose that.

01:08:19.200 And that is a very sober choice that is in.

01:08:27.500 It's not like, it's not even at that point

01:08:30.200 an ideological defiance.

01:08:32.040 It's a, okay, well, if these are the terms,

01:08:34.540 and even if you're right,

01:08:36.660 I would still rather suffer eternal punishment

01:08:40.060 and damnation and maintain my trough to my kin then go to your heaven and that's a powerful

01:08:50.140 powerful statement and that's why it stands out and it is kind of unique i think it is unique in

01:08:59.420 our current you know current list of heroes and i think it's a situation that a lot of people

01:09:08.440 listening this broadcast may find themselves in there's i know and it's not exactly the same

01:09:13.720 the principles are there there's the first thing to i guess connect to oftentimes for people who

01:09:23.400 come to house of truth come home to house true is connection with their ancestors i don't know

01:09:28.680 about these gods i don't know about this different mythos that i'm not used to but i know that my

01:09:34.680 grandparents existed and i knew them and i can connect to that and i know that my ancestors were

01:09:41.960 real if they weren't real i wouldn't be here okay i can start there oftentimes when we get asked

01:09:47.720 when spawner i get asked you know what should we do what's the first thing we should do the entry

01:09:53.880 level thing for somebody who is not a religious person by nature is to build that bond with your

01:10:01.240 ancestors beyond the veil and then from there to build that relationship with the gods it's one of

01:10:07.720 those kind of first steps that i think people relate to i think a lot of times when people

01:10:12.880 get you know they realize they should come home to the gods and they want to believe in the gods

01:10:18.640 and they're trying to be also true there is a lingering fear from christianity about what if

01:10:26.960 get this wrong and maybe jesus was the way to go the whole time you know what if they're right what

01:10:32.480 if i mess up this is a person who you know his his ideology on it was wavering but his commitment

01:10:43.440 and his loyalty to his ancestors wasn't and that pulled him through and maintained his trough for

01:10:49.680 the ic here and that's i think that's something that certainly knew people to come over people

01:10:55.760 perhaps who come to Ausitru from Christianity can really take heart from or, you know, be

01:11:02.180 strengthened and encouraged by. And it's a really strong example to all of us. So that's one of the

01:11:08.860 reasons that he is such a standout favorite of mine. It's worth repeat, actually, before I say

01:11:20.020 that it's also worth remembering here that again i'm not gonna say that like asatru kings didn't 0.98

01:11:27.120 rape and pillage when they went on the warpath but the franks were particularly vicious to

01:11:34.260 civilian populations right so when radbod is putting his foot into the baptismal font

01:11:44.420 it's not just a matter of the person like him it's also involving his ancestors but also his

01:11:53.520 people right so there is an element here of do this and your people will be spared because

01:12:01.720 ostensibly the the lack of christianity in frisia is the motivating the casus the literal casus

01:12:10.220 belly for this conflict and if he apostatizes it spares his people right

01:12:16.320 it's worth repeating what the alter ego they said there about radbod not having a glorious

01:12:23.520 a glorious conversion story because that actually does happen with someone that we see later in this

01:12:29.740 tale and i do believe that this later one was indeed a conscious ideological narrative written

01:12:36.420 to serve a purpose, a narrative that was constructed, if you will. And academics

01:12:42.640 are very good at deconstructing things, but can we deconstruct the

01:12:46.660 deconstruction? Yes. The problem that academics have with this story is that

01:12:55.260 the Vita Wolframni tells us that the event took place shortly

01:13:00.540 before 718 AD, but Wolfram was dead by 704. I already told you about the

01:13:06.260 problem with the second journey of Boniface to Rome. We know that Wolfram was

01:13:14.000 dead by 7-0-4 because that's when another text tells us that his body was

01:13:18.200 moved to a different site to be worshipped at. The Vita Wolframni tells

01:13:22.400 us that Wolfram died in 7-20 but it has to be wrong. There's a lot of

01:13:28.040 chronological problems in all of the texts regarding this region at this time.

01:13:34.940 So some academics are skeptical of this entire tale. It just has to be made up.

01:13:40.700 Personally, in my scholarly opinion, I don't think it's right to do so because we do actually see

01:13:46.700 the crux of the matter here. Radbod almost kneels to the Merovingians. He even marries

01:13:53.580 his daughter to the Carling Prince. To the prince. And then he turns around and spurns it.

01:14:00.940 he could have just left grimoald and not killed him he could have just married into

01:14:10.540 the frankish nobility and just let things come what may presumably his grandchildren would be

01:14:17.320 christians right he could have but he doesn't that he could have but he doesn't is important here

01:14:28.400 So, if the story is fake or is not literal, why is it there?

01:14:32.480 In short, the followers of Wolfram and Wilbrord were actually enemies.

01:14:38.960 The Vita Wolframni emphasizes the divine favor given to Wolfram and his followers,

01:14:46.640 and their great sorcerous power that they used to vex the people of Frisia.

01:14:51.200 Meanwhile, the Vita Willebroordi emphasizes the preaching power of Willebroord

01:14:57.040 and the political successes of Willebroord. Critics of the story thus argue that the Vita

01:15:03.480 Willebroordi was written first and that the Vita Wolframni was written second. Thus, the story

01:15:09.440 references a genuine concern of the time but downplays the political successes of the missions

01:15:14.380 in Frisia so as to downplay the legitimacy of the Willebroordian faction and emphasize the necessity

01:15:20.780 of violence and direct state action by a foreign power in the face of stubborn opposition, 0.53

01:15:28.460 which the sorcery of the Christian monks is a stand-in for, and thus giving legitimacy

01:15:33.560 to the Wolframonite anti-political faction.

01:15:38.200 So basically there's two factions of Christian antifas at this point.

01:15:42.940 One of them wants to go in, make friends with Radbod and people like him, work with them,

01:15:50.620 And get them to come to Christianity on their own terms.

01:15:55.380 And the other faction just says, no, we have the Franks. 1.00

01:15:57.840 Let's just smash these people and force them to do what we want and kill them if they don't. 0.99

01:16:03.200 So these two factions are fighting and they're doing so in these Vitas. 0.99

01:16:09.960 A Vita, V-I-T-A, Vita, sometimes it's called.

01:16:14.000 A Wita is a life of a saint, but every single one of them is a consciously constructed ideological propaganda narrative meant to convey some faction or position or whatever.

01:16:30.360 So, they are essentially dueling through these stories of their glorious founder gurus, right?

01:16:40.240 The Vita-Wulframni itself is pretty obviously a hodgepodge of various narratives stitched together, explaining many of the wild inaccuracies and chronological errors in it.

01:16:52.240 There's obvious layers in the story, right? 0.97

01:16:56.240 the alternative is that it was composed by an idiotic madman and you can generally that's a 0.98

01:17:05.100 general kind of occam's razor you can do with a lot of these criticisms of texts it's where it's 1.00

01:17:11.780 like are you essentially proposing that the story was composed by an idiotic madman because if you 0.95

01:17:17.860 are that involves problems right the texts attempt to stitch or the text the text singular sorry 0.98

01:17:25.660 attempts to stitch legitimate Frisian matters together with Judeo-Christian tropes,

01:17:30.880 such as equating the drowning and hanging of criminals with human sacrifice of children.

01:17:36.160 Interestingly, the Lex Frisionum actually tells us that

01:17:39.440 the punishment for defacing temples to the Iser was drowning.

01:17:46.040 I'll keep going about the drowning in a minute.

01:17:48.860 One such victim of this, we are told, was Ovo,

01:17:52.560 who was actually a monk in the monastery that produced the Uita Wolframmi.

01:17:58.100 The truth of this is ultimately irrelevant because what matters is that Ovo died sometime in the mid-700s,

01:18:04.060 which puts a cap on the people who would have been alive for Radbod's reign.

01:18:09.660 So Ovo was a child during the reign of Radbod and dies 50-ish years later, right?

01:18:15.940 so the story is not a later fabrication as is sometimes alleged it can only be at most 200

01:18:24.660 years old and again remember later fabrication this guy lived this guy died 719 that's 1300

01:18:33.060 years ago there's a lot of room for later fabrications right the wolf the we thought

01:18:39.020 Oulframni is thought to have been written, you know, within the lifetime of people who could have known Radbaud, right?

01:18:49.620 Or more so, this narrative is, if the actual physical text wasn't right.

01:18:57.820 One possibility is that this story is a peasant's view of what was happening at the time in the Frisian court.

01:19:05.200 Because, like, if you are a Christian peasant in Frisia, what are you actually supposed to think about seeing this conflict between Francia and Frisia and the Frisian king kind of backing off, but also trying to do these, like, diplomatic barbs and marrying his daughter in, and how do you perceive that, right?

01:19:25.960 Attached to this period, there's a lot of literature surrounding Wolfram and Willobroard, the Frankish clerics who had been some of the men sent to Frigia to build the Fifth Column there.

01:19:36.520 Much of this is stock Christian fiction.

01:19:39.740 Supposedly, Wolfram converted Radbod's son, a fact that shows up once and we're never told about again, even in places where honestly it would make a lot of sense to talk about something like that.

01:19:50.860 At one point, Wolfram saves a man from hanging by casting greater strength in neck plus three.

01:19:57.000 He saves children that are set to be sacrificed to Baal by drowning and so on. 0.70

01:20:02.600 These same texts talk about how evil Radbot is and also talk about him permitting Wolfram and Willowbrod to preach peacefully. 0.84

01:20:10.760 so this guy is like drowning kids to ball but he's letting these Christian 0.78

01:20:15.580 priests just bump around his country spread spreading the good word like huh

01:20:22.000 this is a careful active narrative construction on the one hand on the one

01:20:30.300 hand um Radbot is a bad guy doing a bad religion but he's also being victimized

01:20:35.560 by both christian church and the franks but they can't be perceived as aggressors

01:20:43.200 and they can't be perceived as personally opposed to the king because remember we're talking about

01:20:49.740 germanics here if these people are enemies of the king they are your enemy you don't get a say in

01:20:56.560 oh but that wolfram guy he was so nice he can't he he cast you know greater heal disease on my kid

01:21:02.960 It doesn't matter. He's the king's enemy. He's your enemy, right?

01:21:05.980 So in these stories being written in Frisia and Saxony, actually, in the generation after Wolframs, in the generation after Radbaths, 0.83

01:21:19.840 they are consciously trying to craft a narrative of the fight of Christianity against paganism,

01:21:26.600 But they also don't want to explicitly affirm a conflict between Christianity and an Asatru king, because these people still have hangups about their kings.

01:21:39.780 We'll see where that goes in a little bit here.

01:21:43.960 So, interestingly, however, in one of the human sacrifice narratives, the children that Wolfram saves are scheduled to be drowned by the tide.

01:21:53.220 um apparently radbot has them chained up chained up at low tide and uh wolfram wades out into the

01:21:59.860 waters of high tide to save them that's what happens in the story and uh ovo is supposed

01:22:04.360 to be one of these children right drowning is a particularly osatru method of execution

01:22:12.100 and it only shows up in christian hagiographies from the germanic world that are very chronologically

01:22:19.260 early and it shows up oddly widespread we talked about abbas the goth in our episode on the gothic

01:22:27.680 heroes how did abbas die or sorry abbas sabbas there's so many people in some of these tales

01:22:36.140 um sabbas the goth was killed by drowning how do people who deface temples of the eisir

01:22:45.700 get put to death in the Lex Frisionum. They get drowned. How does Tacitus tell

01:22:56.440 us that the Germanic peoples get rid of something that they don't want, or

01:23:03.160 someone? They drown them in a bog. We are given a very interesting Old Norse word, 0.99

01:23:11.340 I believe it is for which refers there's there's this thing that shows up in Norse literature a few times about people or things that are unwanted getting cast into the sea or left out at low tide.

01:23:28.740 so high tide takes them um in our episode on uh anyways anyways um this this motif actually shows

01:23:40.060 up interestingly in uh one story about a wizard who gets chained up to uh chained to a rock to

01:23:47.140 drown to drown um this motif of drowning is uniquely germanic and it only shows up in christian

01:24:01.500 hagiographic literature with the germanics we don't get stories about like and then the emperor

01:24:08.020 nero cruelly drowned saint yabba dabbadoopolis that doesn't happen burning odd they shot him

01:24:17.220 with arrows and he didn't die so they cut his head off kind of stuff but we don't see drowning right

01:24:23.940 um sorry i'm looking at something there

01:24:30.660 uh but i'm trying to find where my notes i'm at because i just freestyle it there

01:24:35.700 um we thus see an obvious uneasiness that christians who are at this time literally

01:24:44.420 trying to destroy us at your temples would have with this and hence why they would associate 0.55

01:24:50.080 with the murder of children to defame it because they kill babies is a really common christian

01:24:56.120 slander that they actually christians throw this at each other in this day right

01:25:01.680 um what's interesting about this punishment about drowning people though is that it's actually a

01:25:09.520 sort of give them unto the gods type thing because if you change someone like if if

01:25:17.760 what happens if they get out well they can just go right this type of punishment or just method

01:25:26.640 of execution shows up as a type of ordeal in indo-european religions a few times as like uh

01:25:34.720 we're going to do something to you and if you die it's because you were guilty if you survive it's

01:25:41.240 because the gods are telling us you weren't guilty right um the uh also interesting fun fact about

01:25:50.180 the wita wolframni completely not really related but it actually tells us the description of one

01:25:55.240 of these Hoffs, one of these Asatruh Hoffs that Radbod had constructed as a house of shining gold

01:26:02.620 and unbelievable beauty. So it's worth remembering here, I said that a lot of these terms don't

01:26:10.580 really... monk, monastery, nun. These terms don't really start meaning what we think they mean until

01:26:20.180 around 1000 AD, and monk at this time basically means soldier for the pope, like a religious

01:26:28.420 ideological activist. They don't do a whole lot of, like, asceticism. Today in the West,

01:26:39.600 we very often read a sort of Buddhism into Christian monasticism, emphasizing the great

01:26:47.200 deprivation that christian monks subjected themselves to but that's not really the case

01:26:54.140 what actually happens is that this actually goes back to rome the origins of christian monasticism

01:27:00.620 are these ideological soldiers basically ideological gang fighters that are stashed

01:27:08.860 in church-owned communal bunk houses so we hear monastery what you're what we're really hearing

01:27:13.920 is basically a mead hall for christian warriors right and they then go out and spread the jesus

01:27:22.880 and all that and then they return retreat to these monasteries which are these semi-fortified

01:27:28.080 dwellings right so when we talk about this we need to keep in mind that this is all in a germanic

01:27:38.320 context, right? Which is why the drowning portion is important here, right? It is a genuine

01:27:45.160 Germanic-ness peeking through Christian ideological narratives, right? We don't see like the murder

01:27:53.940 of children show up in any Germanic literature, but we do see an interesting splicing together

01:28:00.120 of this uniquely Germanic form of execution with the stock Judeo-Christian trope of the

01:28:05.740 mass murder of children right the frisians are bad not because they're chucking babies into a 0.89

01:28:11.960 big statue of ball they're bad because they're doing this germanic thing that is being interwoven 0.51

01:28:18.700 into a judeo-christian narrative you look like you were thinking about something sir you want

01:28:24.040 to say something here no it's just contemplating okay um so bonifacius was ultimately executed for

01:28:35.360 violent crimes possibly for the desecration of temples again that's actually punishable

01:28:40.400 by death in the lex frisionum um and it is something he's said to have done like

01:28:49.040 spoiler boniface gets stabbed to death and he actually tries to protect himself with his bible

01:28:54.080 and one of his ex his assassins law bringers stabs him through the bible and impales him right

01:29:00.560 So, the Christian hagiographies are getting at an actual Germanic history of some kind, possibly something like Wolfram having saved criminals from execution, or Christians from execution, or something like that. 0.63

01:29:15.560 And it's important to remember at this time that Christians openly believe that they are allowed to make things up in order to advance the cause of Christianity. 0.71

01:29:23.560 This includes entire people. St. George is a fictional character. St. Boniface of Tarsus is a fictional character.

01:29:32.560 So in any of these narratives, we do actually have cause to be skeptical, and we do have to sort of deconstruct them because they are being constructed sometimes out of the ether.

01:29:44.560 But Wolfram's attachment to Radbod seems to be a later invention. Wolfram as opposed to Willaproard, right?

01:29:52.560 It was actually Willebroard that would have known Radbaud, at least from how close the texts from his faction seemed to put him.

01:29:59.920 Because again, Willebroard is the guy who's going to go to Radbaud's court and be like,

01:30:04.020 hey, let me make this Christianity thing worth your while. 0.98

01:30:07.600 Wolfram is the guy saying, I'm going to cast magic missile on you, and if you don't die, 0.99

01:30:12.060 I'm going to go get my friends to invade your country with an army.

01:30:14.740 So, the Willebroardian faction is trying to emphasize political successes, so there is a degree of haziness about the accuracy there.

01:30:28.740 Wolfram does seem to have hung out at the periphery of Frisia, meanwhile, as opposed to Willebroard, who seems to have gone right for the heart of the matter.

01:30:38.740 And as an aside, remember, at this time, there's a big emphasis on both sides with loyalty, because we're talking about Germanics here.

01:30:46.260 Ossetru is about loyalty to the Aesir. Christianity is about loyalty to the Pope at this time.

01:30:51.940 A lot of concerns with heresy, which especially crop up here as there's a three-way fight between Ossetru, Trinitarian, and Arianism.

01:31:00.200 These are really about loyalty to the Pope.

01:31:03.440 We haven't really been talking about Arianism.

01:31:05.240 There's Aryan Christians in this story.

01:31:07.820 They just don't get written about all that much.

01:31:10.820 There's also a massive dispute with intranetarian Christianity about heresy.

01:31:15.800 I brought up that dating of Passover.

01:31:17.620 There's also stuff about the soul in this.

01:31:23.920 You often hear on the internet these days, when people bring up this story,

01:31:30.020 some christian will be like oh well jesus went down to hell and forgave everyone that is actually

01:31:37.740 a blasphemous and unforgivable heresy against blasphemy against the holy spirit and uttering 0.51

01:31:46.020 that condemns you to burn in hell for eternity at this time bonifacus the tree guy is actually one

01:31:53.020 of the firm advocates that no jesus did not go down to hell and forgive all of the dead people

01:31:57.940 right that is a heresy attached that specific doctrinal error is attached to pelagianism at

01:32:05.660 this time which genuinely not worth getting into the point is if you're actually one of these

01:32:14.220 people's like hmm yes let me hear about the theology i want to consume the issues and have

01:32:19.040 nuanced opinion, you are going to be subjected to a massive rat's nest of

01:32:26.760 religious disputation between Asatru, Trinitarianism, Arianism, and lesser

01:32:34.100 Christian heresies that we don't really talk about these days because no one

01:32:38.640 likes to admit how popular a lot of them were at this period. So it's not so much

01:32:45.600 about whether a particular view is bad or good or correct as much as it is about enforcing

01:32:53.280 loyalty to the hierarchies within the catholic church or to the germanic kings that practice

01:33:00.080 asatru or the practice arianism or both because remember the sutton who king radwald had an

01:33:09.440 an altar to Jesus and an altar to the Aesir. In fact, he actually had a church and a hof on his

01:33:18.880 property. So to a degree, the narratives about Willow Broard somehow preaching successfully in

01:33:25.420 Radboud's Frisia and Aldgissel's Frisia aren't necessarily a historical. There's a letter from

01:33:31.440 Pope Gregorius III to Bonifacius that talks about priests who sacrifice to Jupiter and perform

01:33:41.160 baptisms, implying that they're Gothar who do baptisms, and priests who need to be re-baptized

01:33:47.680 because they just keep going to sacrificial feasts, implying that they're Christian clerics 0.58

01:33:54.040 who go to bloat. That doesn't touch on the odd looming specter of Aryan Christians worshiping 0.73

01:34:01.600 their ancestors alongside Jesus, however that was supposed to work. All of this is to say, 0.85

01:34:09.760 in the episode on the Goths, we talked briefly on the fact that Athanric wasn't punishing

01:34:17.460 syncretism with Christianity. He was punishing disloyalty to the Aesir, which manifests as this

01:34:26.840 like, I don't have to follow the laws, I can screw over my neighbors, I'm no longer a goth,

01:34:31.320 I'm a free atomized individual who can just hurt people as I see fit. And we talked about how

01:34:38.000 we can't be certain that a Thanaric would have punished someone for worshiping Thor and Jesus.

01:34:44.700 this. We don't have any evidence that that was happening in Gothia at the time. We can't say it

01:34:51.020 didn't. We do know that stuff like that was happening in Gaul, in Frisia, in Austrasia,

01:34:57.420 in Burgundy. We do know that the actual on-the-ground landscape of religion at this time

01:35:02.520 was really, really complicated and a lot more complicated than a lot of these Christian

01:35:10.320 monks writing these things really want to admit for example we have texts from anglo-saxon england

01:35:16.840 i'm about to stop talking for a second sir we have texts from anglo-saxon england that talk

01:35:21.480 about christian bloat and christian sumble performing sumble to angels and saints performing

01:35:27.660 bloat like animal sacrifice to yahweh before mass like killing a cow and eating it and giving yahweh

01:35:35.520 a portion of it that doesn't happen the on the ground religious landscape of this time is a lot

01:35:42.240 more complicated than some of these christianity versus paganism narratives make it seem

01:35:47.680 go on sir well i was going to say that's an important thing that i don't think a lot of people

01:35:52.800 bring up or focus on

01:35:54.560 on the positive nature of asitru versus the negative nature of the framing of christianity

01:36:06.960 at the time the crime punished by athanarib wasn't that some people worship some desert

01:36:19.120 god that he didn't know about or whatever it was they refused to do the expected and appropriate

01:36:26.320 required worship of their gods that refusal to honor your own gods and to be loyal to your gods

01:36:34.720 was the the big straw that broke the camel's back it wasn't um

01:36:40.880 it wasn't a jealousy like christian motivation tended to be it was a i guess

01:36:53.360 it's a subtle distinction and i'm not sure if we convey it to the same degree that people get but

01:37:00.740 it's it was about what they weren't doing that they were expected to do and that bonded them

01:37:08.760 together with the line of their people back to the beginning through the worship of their gods

01:37:15.320 and the veneration of their ancestors and that was a fundamental thing it was christianity that

01:37:21.480 came in and said our god is the only god and all of your gods are bad and you will immediately

01:37:29.240 abandon everything about your faith and culture like christianity declared war on paganism not

01:37:37.800 the other way around christianity came in aggressively and fired the first shots in this

01:37:45.320 you know centuries-long struggle for the soul of europe i think you're the also you go this so you

01:37:53.160 can uh determine if my verbiage here is correct but i think the best way to describe it is that

01:37:57.800 we as you know white men and women have a duty to worship the icr and our ancestors

01:38:02.840 absolutely that's a fundamental that that's that's fundamental um

01:38:10.400 so so like just to say real quick then for us today in america just as much as in frisia or

01:38:18.880 sweden or whatever you know it's not a jealousy in the like the the way it is in the the torah

01:38:28.620 for example with yahweh as much as it is we have a duty to fulfill certain obligations to the iser

01:38:36.380 and our ancestors and the king's job is to make sure those obligations and duties are fulfilled

01:38:43.420 and yes and well and i want to point out here because it it may seem like a distinction

01:38:48.540 without a difference but the directionality matters

01:38:51.660 yes that means exclusively to worship our gods and to be loyal to the iser but it's

01:39:03.360 loyalty through inclusion of the iser not loyalty based on exclusion of the other

01:39:11.160 um there's a there's a thing when people talk about coming home to usitry they ask about you

01:39:17.220 how does one convert to ostrich? You don't convert to ostrich. You revert to ostrich. That's

01:39:22.900 factory settings in your blood, your bone, and your soul. You have been led astray by a foreign 1.00

01:39:29.460 faith, as many of our ancestors, mine included, have been. But when you come home to ostrich,

01:39:35.700 you're reverting to the appropriate settings of you worshiping your ancestors and your gods.

01:39:43.140 deviating from that is disloyalty to the ice here by by default but the idea of reverting to what

01:39:52.020 is natural versus converting to something foreign is a is a fundamental distinction

01:39:57.540 even if it ends up looking very very similar how it's displayed

01:40:03.620 so there's a a fun story about a norseman who i'm going somewhere with this i promise

01:40:10.740 he gets uh he converts to christianity like seven times like he goes to the church and says i profess

01:40:18.120 he is my lord and savior and then they baptize him and they give him a shirt and send him on his way

01:40:23.580 like a week later he comes back and he's like i profess he is my lord and savior give him a shirt

01:40:30.900 and send him on his way and he does this until like the same official catches him like wait a

01:40:36.720 second i already baptized you because he was doing this to get a new shirt because they would give

01:40:40.980 him a new shirt every time right the worldview of a frisian asachuar asachuar in general would be

01:40:51.940 pretty radically different from the christian one because we see there's this concern amongst the

01:40:59.380 people doing the conversion about how do you actually both get the people to start to do

01:41:05.880 christianity but not do asatru because on its face like there seems to have been this idea that

01:41:13.820 christianity was almost this sort of medicinal discipline like oh this baptism stuff this this

01:41:21.220 rabbi from the south he can he'll come back and turn your body back on if you get dunked in water

01:41:26.460 cool i'm game like like this was just a medical treatment that you would get and then you go back

01:41:33.100 to worshiping for because like well yeah i want to get my body back turned back on but like bro

01:41:38.220 i'm frisian i have a duty to to worship the icer and my ancestors i have an obligation to do this

01:41:44.520 stuff why does that how does that interfere with me getting the medical treatment right and there's

01:41:51.500 a lot of effort by the christian clerics to break down and deconstruct and do away with we're talking

01:41:58.280 about particularly germanic society but this also applies for the celts the sloths the vaults the

01:42:02.000 italics the Greeks do away with these religious and cultural attitudes and not

01:42:09.080 necessarily put something in their place so as an example there's a letter

01:42:13.700 from the Pope to some Frankish King or whoever it's a Frankish King I can't

01:42:19.280 just I just can't remember which one congratulating him on no on professing

01:42:23.960 that he does not come from a noble bloodline that has rights and duties

01:42:28.460 What the Pope is actually congratulating him on is saying,

01:42:33.460 I do not have a lineage. I am not part of something.

01:42:38.460 I do not have an inbuilt nature.

01:42:40.460 I do not have duties that arrive as a consequence of the accident of my birth.

01:42:48.460 What the Pope is congratulating this Frankish king on doing is saying,

01:42:53.460 I am not a Frank. I am a citizen of the world.

01:42:57.460 There is actually a term for this, it is globus homo, a man of the world. 0.97

01:43:06.580 That's the term, what is a Christian, a homo globo, a globo homo, right? 0.74

01:43:12.820 That's the term in these texts, in Latin. 0.67

01:43:16.040 And that goes up pretty heavily against the ethos of, I'm born a thing, I have to enact that nature, or I'm failing as that thing, right?

01:43:39.580 that is actually an idea that needs to be deconstructed because it doesn't go away

01:43:47.120 just because the jesus shows up right like literally i've already mentioned several

01:43:53.080 examples of over overlapping jesus and germanic attitudes because on its on its face like okay

01:44:01.340 you you spurn the eye seer right why can't you keep worshiping your ancestors

01:44:07.700 like that requires a pretty big metaphysical shift to explain why you can't just do that

01:44:15.200 or heck why can't your ancestors be baptized like people make fun of mormons for doing like

01:44:20.580 baptisms for the dead and to to be fair i'm pretty sure they baptized snorri sterleson which is

01:44:27.160 kind of hilarious but also like absurd on its face but why can't you right like why can't you

01:44:34.140 actually baptize a dead person like this requires a radical shift in an understanding of the

01:44:42.300 afterlife that is not just something that comes about by like oh yeah cool i'll take the rabbi's

01:44:50.120 medicine and he'll turn me back to life in a few years like it's not if you asked radbod what 0.85

01:45:00.040 personally aggrieved him about Christianity in his realm, other than all of the nonsense that the 0.96

01:45:05.420 Franks got up to. He might not have particularly cared about stuff like baptism and prayers to

01:45:10.820 Jesus. He might have, we don't know. But he would have been deeply offended at a lack of offerings

01:45:16.940 to the Iser and loyalty to the Pope and disloyalty to him. Spoiler warning for those who don't look

01:45:27.100 european history loyalty to the pope or loyalty to the king that goes on to define european history

01:45:36.060 into the present day okay my theory is that in 714 with pepin's death radbod was reinvigorated

01:45:46.700 without pepin he could rally the opponents of the franks and probably would have seen this

01:45:51.020 is a sign from the Aesir that his greatest enemy just dies, right? He would have then gone on to 0.94

01:45:57.280 fight back against the Franks in Christianity rather successfully, if that were told. He killed 0.93

01:46:02.720 his son-in-law, even, to return to a state of purity, casting off the errors that he had made.

01:46:10.020 Also, just to say, again, marrying his daughter into the Franks wasn't necessarily a bad idea

01:46:14.440 as, like, a hedging bet kind of a thing. That would have put people close to him in power

01:46:19.840 in Francia. Didn't end up being what happens, but Clovis converts ostensibly because his wife

01:46:27.420 Clotilde is a Christian. And that can work in reverse. Thus, in a certain sense, the baptism

01:46:34.520 story doesn't necessarily need to be 100% accurate to matter, because it does reflect a core fact.

01:46:41.760 Radbod was tempted to kneel to falsehood. He was given the option. He was tempted. He could have

01:46:48.540 knelt to immorality, to disloyalty, but he instead arose against them. It was his ancestors and his

01:46:55.200 people that motivated him to do so. He was not motivated by the existence or non-existence of

01:47:00.960 the Iser, which at the time wasn't really up for debate even. The Christians did believe that the

01:47:06.720 Iser existed, just that they were evil, they were bad, or maybe they were demons, something like 0.99

01:47:12.100 that. What motivated Radbod was the idea that his ancestors, through no fault of their own, 0.99

01:47:17.720 were evil and must be subjected to punishment simply for having existed as

01:47:21.840 Frisians. Their way of life, their histories, even their memories, had to be 1.00

01:47:26.280 destroyed. Radbod took a stand against that. Whether he did so literally by

01:47:31.460 nakedly stepping out of a baptismal font or not is irrelevant. Also, as an

01:47:38.580 aside, the Norse word for baptismal font is kethel, like kettle, because they

01:47:45.300 use like a cauldron for baptisms right do you want to do you want to go on sir

01:47:54.260 no i'm just watching the chat and i want to let you finish with your um

01:48:00.580 i don't want to lose answering something here so that is good because i am this is a stopping

01:48:09.780 point before i go on to the sermon portion of the dissertation about why do we care

01:48:14.980 all right let's pause for a moment then and i'd like to address kind of the ongoing

01:48:19.140 conversation there because i think it's a valuable one for um

01:48:25.700 defender sora and i also think it is a good one for other people that might be listening

01:48:34.820 uh there's a couple of this phrase a couple of different ways but basically the question comes to

01:48:39.220 us uh which so anyways which god is the god that would listen to prayers of a random american guy

01:48:47.780 like myself how does this work is divine intervention real are those gods seriously

01:48:52.900 real and it's followed up with a reiteration of like what gods should somebody like me with

01:48:58.020 my background which is all european worship um so i guess last questions first or whatever in that

01:49:07.540 sequence yes these gods are absolutely real does divine intervention work absolutely

01:49:16.660 does the god magically appear before you and solve all your problems

01:49:22.100 probably and i say that a little bit tongue-in-cheek but i don't think that is beyond

01:49:29.300 their power to do so but that's not the experience um they absolutely have helped in my life in life

01:49:38.660 of many people that i know and in the astro folk assembly they intervene and help in many ways all

01:49:48.740 the time overwhelmingly so but i don't expect people who haven't experienced that to just

01:49:55.060 you know you have to experience it for yourself or see it in order for you to develop that faith

01:50:01.540 and i think that's important i see that you know in the chat you want it to be real

01:50:06.660 it's just not quite there yet and that's fine everybody starts somewhere and unlike some other

01:50:13.300 faiths our proposition isn't from day one you need to have a deep and abiding faith in all of our

01:50:21.300 god's sight unseen before you start what one would have to do to be a member is want to believe and

01:50:30.020 be trying to build that relationship like any other relationship that's built over time through

01:50:36.180 the exchange of gifts it's how we do our worship is through making offerings to the gods to build

01:50:43.540 that it's called the gift cycle we share our gifts with them they strengthen us and share

01:50:49.620 their spiritual gifts with us uh ask what you know what gods would you know american white guy

01:50:57.700 worship your question is man there are so many gods in europe and you know all of my ancestry

01:51:03.140 that's like thousands of gods so what i've noticed in the chat and what i want to say

01:51:09.060 clearly on here because it is confusing and it doesn't need to be reiterated

01:51:12.820 our gods are real

01:51:16.840 and they are the gods that shaped

01:51:19.480 and created our folk

01:51:20.880 therefore they go back as long 0.95

01:51:23.500 as our race has gone back to 0.95

01:51:25.440 so our gods

01:51:27.440 go back

01:51:28.140 to the last ice age and beyond

01:51:31.260 that predates

01:51:34.520 all of the cultures

01:51:36.520 and names and stories

01:51:38.940 in our lore that have come down

01:51:41.180 to us these gods originally

01:51:42.760 there were the gods and us as our people moved and migrated and languages and culture developed

01:51:52.600 and people moved to this valley over that mountain across that body of water

01:51:57.720 new gods don't just randomly spring up when there's a new linguistic change when there's

01:52:06.720 a diphthong development or when you know there's a new form of material culture no these are gods

01:52:14.480 that are eternal and that are from our beginning shaped us now the gods that shaped our race

01:52:21.840 you know the aryan race caucasians white people as our people move to different places

01:52:30.480 developed different language their relationships with the gods changed to

01:52:36.760 become you know individualized to those places those times those cultures but

01:52:42.180 these are the same gods we worship these gods under the Norse conception

01:52:48.240 because that's what has come down to us that is the stories that have made it to

01:52:53.420 us in the most clear and digestible format that is the corpus of lore to where our things match

01:53:01.540 and there's a unified body of understanding of who these gods are and it is the

01:53:09.460 the terms and the form that the rebirth of our faith took place in when the all-father

01:53:17.600 odin spoke to our founder steven mcnalen and that spark that inspired the astrofulk assembly

01:53:26.720 so all of these different names for different gods in the various pantheons of europe they all

01:53:34.560 go back to the gods that created us those gods are eternal we know those gods and worship them

01:53:42.560 in the norse understanding by the norse language so we do it in a unified way but yes any of the

01:53:48.800 iser and we focus on 12 main iser 12 main male gods that we worship and then two

01:54:01.920 major female gods the al-senior and 12 additional

01:54:12.000 less main female gods.

01:54:15.060 And we're actually talking about those.

01:54:16.620 We alternate a lore program with this program every other week.

01:54:21.120 It doesn't work out exactly because we got five weeks this month,

01:54:25.060 but every first and third Wednesday.

01:54:28.620 And we're talking about the goddesses during that broadcast.

01:54:31.580 And I'll be talking about that next week with Speck and your spawn,

01:54:36.340 who will be here to talk with me about it.

01:54:38.100 But yes, which God should you worship? 0.99

01:54:40.520 You should worship the Iser. 0.99

01:54:42.000 And of those, it would depend on who you want to reach out to and what your purpose is. 0.99

01:54:48.040 We can certainly talk more about that if you'd like.

01:54:50.260 But I think that's an important message to everyone listening to the program and something, you know, a lot of people I know have questions about.

01:55:00.260 And while I've got the floor here, while back, Nicholas in North Carolina donated $25 of Thorshoff and $10 of Thorshoff.

01:55:09.800 Thank you so much. We appreciate you.

01:55:12.000 And Angela in New Hampshire donated $50 each towards the Baldershof steeple, towards the Thorshof heat, and towards Freyshof.

01:55:20.920 So thank you for that. We appreciate you, Angela.

01:55:25.960 All right, you can have the floor back.

01:55:29.640 So there was a question that was asked, can you go back to Wolfram and explain who they are?

01:55:35.320 So, to be clear, our hero is Radbod of Frigia, but just due to the nature of how this stuff comes down to us, we're mostly hearing about this hero through stories about the villains in the tale, right?

01:55:53.460 so there's three totally unconfusingly three christian monks in this story whose names all

01:56:03.500 start with w all knocking around frisia so they are in chronological order will abroad who entered

01:56:13.020 frisia around 700 a.d his evangelical strategy was to cozy up with political elites and try to

01:56:20.380 slide Christianity in from the top down, but also with minimal upset. He is the one that probably

01:56:26.240 knew Radbaud. He's also the one that would be able to do the baptism in the baptism story.

01:56:32.180 He was an Anglo-Saxon. Then there was Wolfram, who entered Frisia probably around 71680.

01:56:39.320 His evangelical strategy was to assault the populace with magic in order to convince them

01:56:44.340 of the power of Christianity. He probably died too early to really know Radbaud, and even then,

01:56:49.860 he only hung around the periphery of Frisian society anyways. He was a Frank. Then there was 0.82

01:56:55.960 Wundfraith aka Bonifacius who entered Frisia around 750 AD after Radbad died despite some

01:57:04.960 stories making them contemporaries. His evangelical strategy was to actually like physically assault

01:57:11.200 people, destroy temples, profane holy sites, and get in fights. He ended up getting stabbed to death

01:57:16.840 for it he was an anglo-saxon i hope that answers the uh that question sufficiently um do you want

01:57:25.000 me to get into the part about why we care sir chris tell us why we care why do we care the

01:57:33.160 stories of arminius and athanaric are those of two priest kings who sought to refine their people

01:57:39.800 into something greater and the tragedy that unfolded when they were ignored radbod is a

01:57:45.720 welcome reprieved from that, because Radbod seems to have been listened to. We care about Radbod

01:57:51.720 because of his personal struggle. Arminius and Athanric had spiritual struggles, but nothing to

01:57:57.240 the degree that Radbod did. In Asatru, we often speak about how Asatru doesn't mean belief in the

01:58:04.120 Aesir, it means loyalty to the Aesir. This is a particular form of a more general maxim,

01:58:10.520 Maxim, that any virtue that you wish to see more of in the world, you must embody.

01:58:16.760 If you wish for other men to be courageous, you must be courageous.

01:58:20.240 If you wish for other men to be truthful, you must be truthful.

01:58:22.740 If you wish for other men to be honorable, you must be honorable.

01:58:26.480 And so on, for all of the nine noble virtues.

01:58:29.700 If you want other people to persevere, you have to persevere.

01:58:33.960 If you want other people to be victorious, you have to be victorious.

01:58:38.020 And if you want other people to strive for victory, you have to strive for victory.

01:58:43.900 Radbod, as the king, was the man whose virtue mattered the most.

01:58:48.940 Sometimes in the AFA, we run into people who say something like,

01:58:52.540 I like what you guys are doing, but I'm not going to help.

01:58:55.040 I'm not going to join. I'm not going to tell other people about you.

01:58:58.740 I'm not going to do any time or money, but hey, I totally support you guys.

01:59:03.020 I don't mean to be mean, but if you are one of these people,

01:59:05.520 then you do not, in fact, like what you're doing.

01:59:08.020 In fact, you are, if just via stagnation, working against what we are doing.

01:59:12.100 If you say that you like loyalty, or courage, or honor, or any other virtue,

01:59:15.940 but then not only actively refuse to perform them, but work against those who do,

01:59:20.820 then you are saying that you do not, in fact, like loyalty, courage, honor, or any other virtue.

01:59:25.780 If you say that you want Asa Truba to be a thing, but then do nothing to make it a thing,

01:59:30.500 get in the way of making it a thing, or worse, actively work against people who are making it a thing,

01:59:35.620 then you are not, in fact, someone who wants Asatru to be a thing.

01:59:40.500 In Asatru, we are our deeds. In Asatru, words are wind, deeds are iron. In Asatru, we put our

01:59:48.260 money where our mouths are. In Asatru, we are loyal to the Aesir. We also believe that the Aesir 0.98

01:59:54.340 want men and women to put their money where their mouths are. That means being courageous enough to

01:59:59.780 to wear your hammer outside of your shirt so that others will do the same. That means coming home to

02:00:10.300 the Church of the Ice here in Midgard. It means participating. That means not throwing a temper 0.93

02:00:15.080 tantrum and quitting when something doesn't go your way or when you hear something that you don't

02:00:19.280 like. Whenever you are disloyal, whenever you are a coward, whenever you betray your principles,

02:00:25.700 you are spitting in the face of Radbod. Radbod stepped out of the baptismal font so that no man 0.62

02:00:32.220 ever has to again. Radbod chose virtue so that no man ever has to bow to vice again. But if you do

02:00:39.340 not join him, then your sin is twice as grievous. When Radbod stepped out of that font, his body

02:00:45.260 was naked, but so was his soul. Everyone saw exactly who and what he was. If you are stripped

02:00:52.040 of all pretenses all of the things that hide who you are do your folk find you worthy do your

02:00:58.540 ancestors do your gods and that's all i got masterfully done as always um

02:01:09.760 i think everyone loves these shows that you do i think that most people that find their way

02:01:19.800 I, to us, already have kind of a built-in love and excitement about history, and I think that you are shedding light on episodes and periods of history and places in history that are often ignored or that the average man on the street is not aware of.

02:01:40.980 I think these are really valuable shows, and I appreciate all the effort that you put into them.

02:01:45.420 No, I'm glad that I get to do this.

02:01:48.000 i i love doing this well good because we've got more for you to do um

02:01:55.760 but yeah i know people always look forward to you coming on myself included so first question

02:02:03.520 if you could uh give bloat at opsala sudden who the site of the ermine soul or thingveler

02:02:12.480 which would it be and and why i added the last part chris which of those choices and why

02:02:21.660 i think upsala um

02:02:28.520 upsala mean this is i guess this might be almost be selfish here but upsala means a little bit

02:02:38.980 more to me because it was the site of a temple of a priesthood. I have nothing against the

02:02:45.220 ermin sul. We'll talk about it later tonight. But Sutton, who was a burial ground for a

02:02:56.780 syncretic king, who I personally wish he would have been less syncretic. Thingvalir was where 0.98

02:03:05.140 the Icelandic all thing formally apostatized when I wish they hadn't now granted it's also

02:03:14.300 where the Asatuar Felagith before their current communist apostate leader took over did a did

02:03:21.020 some cool things so I guess that's not really fair to lump that space in with it but

02:03:25.700 Uppsala is where the so we're told grandest temple to the Aesir in Sweden was and I would

02:03:34.280 like to see it restored to that place of prominence it'd be awesome if an altar was

02:03:39.480 built where the urban school was but i think the uh i think the victory is a little would be a

02:03:46.840 little higher to rebuild a temple at upsala than it would be to rebuild the urban school

02:03:51.880 or for the icelandic state to go back to holding parliament at thingville right

02:03:58.360 excellent um i agree with you uh yeah i agree with you i think that would be

02:04:12.680 the place that's the one of those places that was for sure

02:04:18.280 a temple where bloats happened to the gods so like well i mean thing valer yeah but it's also the

02:04:24.360 place that you mentioned it's the place that they formally by vote of the of the people chose to

02:04:31.560 abandon trough trough to the ice here um it's part of the arm and soul though uh

02:04:39.640 there's dispute on exactly where that was but traditionally that's at the extraenstein and

02:04:45.720 When our founder and I actually were there and did a ritual at the site, there's a little

02:04:56.240 altar carved into the rocks there atop the stones with a little window that you can look

02:05:04.720 out and see through.

02:05:06.780 would like it's hard to describe but there's like a there's a spot there to make an offering and

02:05:15.180 do a ritual there and steve and i did that when we went there a number of years ago

02:05:21.020 and that was a really cool thing um

02:05:26.700 i have a question that i hope has not been asked 100 times does the afa have an opinion on ouija boards

02:05:33.580 Um, yes, so, okay, the AFA does not have a specific doctrine point on it, but because

02:05:51.040 I speak for the AFA, we do have a position on, you know, both its, you know, do we recommend

02:05:57.500 and is it effective?

02:06:03.500 it's hard to break the associations that people have with it so it's a toy that very often

02:06:23.820 the i don't know the story is that you know girls at a slumber party get the thing and

02:06:35.100 they open up doors to something they shouldn't open up the doors to and bad things happen

02:06:41.340 we don't ever think that reaching across the veil to the spirit world ought to be done

02:06:48.540 frivolously or disrespectfully and when you open up depending on what you're trying to do

02:07:01.580 when you open up and invite certain things in

02:07:07.020 that has consequences if you're not aware of what you're doing and you're not very intentional

02:07:12.220 with what you're doing so we are opposed to playing with ouija boards

02:07:19.660 that said if a person were so inclined to want to reach out and

02:07:27.660 there's a fancier word that i don't have in front of me and if chris went first i would look it up

02:07:33.100 and try to try to pretend i knew it but if you're doing a seance kind of stuff sure it's a tool

02:07:41.660 that can be used for that i think there are a lot of other tools that maybe have less of the

02:07:50.940 casualness that ouija boards have to them but sure if you are doing something that's mediumistic

02:07:59.740 and you

02:08:00.300 yeah that can work and that's not forbidden to do that but it is advised that that's never done

02:08:14.140 disrespectfully or casually and we do believe that there could be consequences if that's done

02:08:20.460 without the proper intent or the proper expertise

02:08:23.180 Chris do you have any thoughts about Ouija boards

02:08:28.340 I feel bad saying this because you just said don't do it disrespectfully or improperly but

02:08:36.540 if someone were to put runes on a Ouija board and do it I would not encourage doing that in

02:08:45.100 case something really bad happens but if someone did it and then wrote about it I would read about

02:08:50.520 it oh sure i don't have any real i've never done that kind of a cult

02:08:59.160 i've done it i've never done ouija board stuff though so the science

02:09:06.680 that sort of thing works like the science the the most of the tools involved with that

02:09:14.680 that are effective because they are ways to focus the practitioner's energy to do things.

02:09:24.960 They're ways for the person doing the act to connect with what they're doing,

02:09:34.340 to effectively channel their energy and their spiritual might

02:09:39.840 into the performance of the thing that they do.

02:09:43.480 they're a medium for those things and you know that does you know apply itself to runes

02:09:51.480 it applies itself to you know horus pexes and scrying and tarot cards all of those things

02:10:02.840 can be used to have those kind of effects the thing with in my understanding the thing with

02:10:12.780 the Ouija board is I don't know if it's quite mediumistic or not or if it's a little bit of

02:10:22.260 both the time that I've never played with the Ouija board so I don't really know I know that

02:10:29.700 there's some instances where it seems like the person is taking over and the thing's doing the

02:10:35.000 thing but oftentimes it's just whatever spirit directing the hand to spell stuff out so that

02:10:40.940 might be different anytime you're inviting a spirit to you know anytime you're letting jesus

02:10:48.980 take the wheel that's scary you're letting something else enter into you into what you

02:10:56.020 are doing without you being in control of it and that's a very particular thing that

02:11:02.460 should be done under particular circumstances so real quick i just want to throw in here um

02:11:09.000 um i i might have lost it the comments get kind of jumpy uh but one fellow in the chat uh says

02:11:18.600 ouija is not he says outside i think he might have meant our side but uh he mentioned saether

02:11:27.520 is it ergi for a man to to use a ouija board or does the so that's a that's an interesting

02:11:35.180 and I'm glad you picked up on that

02:11:37.460 because it's kind of what I'm saying about the

02:11:39.100 letting the spirits

02:11:41.260 control what you

02:11:43.260 do. There's other

02:11:45.200 it's a fine line

02:11:49.080 the thing where you are a complete

02:11:51.000 oracle and

02:11:52.760 a spirit takes over

02:11:55.320 you

02:11:57.360 and rides you

02:11:59.260 and does

02:12:00.060 takes control of the

02:12:03.300 keyboard

02:12:05.220 that that is typically what our ancestors would put in the safe craft area

02:12:18.260 i think that in that particular situation i don't know that that was a firm doctrine that 0.74

02:12:24.980 any guy that does save stuff is necessarily a homosexual but that is the thing that they're

02:12:33.300 referring to when they're making that insult because you are a man who is allowing yourself to 0.58

02:12:38.180 be and for any of the younger audience whatever else i'm not trying to be vulgar but you are

02:12:43.940 allowing yourself to be both penetrated and you are now the the receiver and not the giver of

02:12:58.020 the active portion of of that kind of very intimate interaction

02:13:03.300 i'm gonna step aside real quick if you want to answer another question but the

02:13:08.340 caucasian one i have some stuff to say on okay i will leave that one for a little bit later on

02:13:16.580 all right what you should drew what you should

02:13:21.460 what you should do is address what i just sit you in teams that'll be funny

02:13:33.300 no i appreciate that and i appreciate getting uh you know any people who come and join us in the

02:13:43.760 chat and uh are watching the show i'm glad to have new people here and i'm always glad to take

02:13:48.500 whatever the question is i think a lot of people are hesitant to ask questions because they think

02:13:54.100 maybe they've been asked before or they think you know something might sound silly or whatever

02:13:58.440 Now, questions fuel the show, and there's always new people that haven't listened to prior episodes or that, chances are, are thinking what you might be thinking.

02:14:07.480 And they're benefited by being able to hear the answer to the question they were thinking but didn't take the initiative to ask.

02:14:18.880 I'm going to shift around here. 1.00

02:14:23.040 when you leave Christianity 1.00

02:14:28.180 is it best to be unrelenting 0.96

02:14:31.000 in your beliefs like our warrior ancestors 0.95

02:14:33.680 when it comes to Christians in our lives

02:14:36.440 so

02:14:37.780 circumstance matters

02:14:41.200 and I think

02:14:42.320 I don't fault anybody

02:14:44.160 first

02:14:44.940 when you

02:14:46.960 when you discover

02:14:50.840 that maybe things you've been taught are wrong

02:14:54.460 and ways that you've been raised

02:14:57.020 or beliefs have been wrong

02:14:58.700 and that in a way your birthright has been taken from you.

02:15:01.600 When things hit you,

02:15:04.820 there's a natural sense of rebellion

02:15:07.940 and a sense of like a militant zeal

02:15:13.440 for the new truth that you've found.

02:15:16.100 that's a part of being excited about something you believe in i would not want to

02:15:26.660 stomp that out but the situation's real different our ancestors that you talk about

02:15:37.340 they're facing christians that are an external threat coming into their homelands and trying

02:15:43.500 to destroy their culture and their faith and their family. Or they're dealing with an internal 0.71

02:15:49.420 threat of traitors who have betrayed their faith, their family, and their people. They're dealing

02:15:57.080 with, you know, invasion or treason. The Christians that you know who are your family members 0.65

02:16:05.200 aren't that. Even when society, there's a mixed bag in, you know, our ancestors' time, we're dealing 0.98

02:16:12.920 with a generation either side of conversion to where the people they're taking issue with 0.99

02:16:18.760 are again foreign people inflicting their faith upon them and trying to take your faith away from 0.63

02:16:25.520 you or people who you know who they personally betrayed our gods they personally betrayed our 0.95

02:16:34.340 ancestors grandma who was raised christian because her mom was her grandma was and her grandma was

02:16:41.800 her grandma was her grandma was back you know 10 20 generations that person doesn't know any better

02:16:50.440 they don't know what you've just learned they know how they were raised and so being compassionate

02:16:57.640 towards that i think is completely appropriate they're still your ancestors and you don't have to

02:17:05.160 you know violently break with christianity to where you no longer are willing to associate or

02:17:10.360 be friends with your family and loved ones who are still still under that spell now you should

02:17:19.160 be staunch and strong in your faith you should not compromise with the things you know to be right

02:17:25.160 and you shouldn't you know say things that are okay that are not okay you should be solid and

02:17:32.920 honest in your new faith but it doesn't mean you have to be hostile um to people who haven't

02:17:39.160 figured it out yet and the hope would be that the people who haven't figured it out yet

02:17:44.520 through you not being a jerk and helping them figure it out maybe one day they can be here with

02:17:51.560 us back in trough with the ice here and that's what we would want certainly for our family and 0.97

02:17:56.200 the ones we love other stuff we got he he has returned all right so we'll get back to the ones

02:18:08.920 i didn't want to take ones that you needed an answer to and cliff had a question have you seen

02:18:13.720 the red bad movie if so how accurate is it this one's all you because i have not seen it i haven't

02:18:20.760 either it did that's how i feel bad it did come up when doing this research um i actually did

02:18:29.880 mean to watch it eventually i just didn't have time to make it happen in time to do this but

02:18:35.160 But from what I saw, it's, I guess, I don't mean this pejoratively, but I, from what I

02:18:44.640 saw, from how people described it, very barbarian core, very, everyone in the past wore black

02:18:53.380 leather, chain mail, and odd amounts of motorcycle grease, right? 0.98

02:18:58.140 So I do mean that pejorative.

02:19:00.360 That's exactly why I didn't give it a chance and didn't watch it.

02:19:04.300 Sure.

02:19:05.160 and as an aesthetic i just mean as an aesthetic to enact today yes but like it's a movie you know

02:19:15.960 um i heard there were a number of historical inaccuracies like uh one that i when i remember

02:19:23.560 i think it was uh radbod marrying his daughter to charles martell instead of uh the son of pepin

02:19:31.160 of her stall right um various other chronological errors now granted the actual primary sources on

02:19:42.420 the life of rad bod start introducing chronological errors pretty quickly once rad bod kicks the

02:19:48.180 bucket so i don't necessarily blame movie makers for being like well we have to do something and

02:19:54.500 maybe splice maybe sprucing up the narrative just a little bit to make it a little more

02:19:59.400 dramatic i saw one person claim uh complain about there being an oddly large amount about

02:20:06.040 rad bods like youth despite us knowing relatively little about it i mean he would have had to have

02:20:15.280 been he dies 719 he shows up about 690 that's like uh 30 years his daughter probably would

02:20:25.720 have had to have been old enough to reproduce so that's about so he could

02:20:30.220 have been like you know in his 50s when he died but only the first 30 years of

02:20:36.280 his life really come up in what's given to us in the sources I will end up

02:20:45.220 watching it and the Arminius TV show that they made in Germany what I think

02:20:50.380 is interesting about both the Radbaud movie and the Arminius TV show is that they are

02:20:57.480 ethnic founding father tales from a modern European nation state. That's not usually

02:21:03.600 something you see done after World War II, right? They are ostensibly a mythology about

02:21:10.940 the founding of the country. It's worth noting Radbaud and Redbad are both like just different

02:21:19.900 ways of saying the same name the part of the problem is that scribes don't necessarily know

02:21:24.620 how to pronounce some of the things that they write down um so i will watch these movies and

02:21:31.300 get back to you i might just write a review and put it on the sub stack there you go ideas ideas

02:21:38.220 for you um so

02:21:46.860 chris who would win in a fight your roman impression with the new jersey accent

02:21:53.580 or your roman impression with the victorian british accent the the jersey accent whenever i

02:22:00.460 do the the victorian british accent it's very stuffy old man the jersey guy is like ayo i'm

02:22:07.900 walking here gets in fights over hot dogs kind of a guy you know there you have it um

02:22:17.420 so when arian is used in these presentations is the word arian meant to be interchangeable with

02:22:24.300 caucasian so

02:22:27.580 So, yeah, I'm going to answer it straight up and then see where Chris goes at the risk

02:22:37.600 of him counter-signaling me.

02:22:39.000 We'll see.

02:22:40.480 So, yes, but with...

02:22:44.400 the reason that we use it isn't just because it's cool and edgy it has a meaning to it

02:23:00.640 that is a self descriptor it's not a sterile scientific word about a place

02:23:08.080 when any group of people you know describes themselves it's either we're the real people

02:23:19.840 or the people or it is something that is aspirational or something that they value

02:23:28.000 and see within themselves as a point of commonality worth celebrating um

02:23:33.040 um Aryan is what our ancestors used to describe themselves in various different linguistic forms

02:23:40.320 and it meant noble the noble people it has an implication of like radiance and shining

02:23:48.160 that goes with that nobility with that goes a whole host of aristocratic values virtues

02:23:57.160 and aspirations that we should aspire to,

02:24:03.860 that we should try to embody as a source of pride.

02:24:09.220 That's why we use it instead of, you know,

02:24:14.900 Indo-European or Caucasian.

02:24:17.740 But those other words have reference to place and to location.

02:24:23.000 this is to our ethnic makeup this is to our race our genes who we are at at our blood and bone and

02:24:33.720 soul and it's interesting that it becomes important i mentioned this on here there's

02:24:40.760 this concept called the zealotry of the fringe you see that naming of our people on the edges

02:24:47.400 of our expansion um in ireland and iran both mean land of the arians and that's

02:24:59.880 i think that's very meaningful and something that you know that's one of the things that

02:25:03.720 as our people expanded far and wide they held on to as as a value and an inherent

02:25:10.760 you know an inherent nobility of of their soul uh chris what were you going to say about it

02:25:18.200 so um some people get upset about the word arian because it you know it enters english from

02:25:28.800 sanskrit but it's been in the used in the english language since before the united states

02:25:37.940 like came about certainly it's like three times it's a it's time in english has been like three

02:25:46.700 times longer than the history of the modern country of india um i do think it is i'm not

02:25:54.800 i'm not trying to chastise anyone for it but i do think the word caucasian is uh it does uh ruffle

02:26:02.800 my feathers in a bit. So the word Caucasian as referring to white people actually comes from

02:26:09.840 the works of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who was a German naturalist, I think is the proper term, 0.54

02:26:20.780 in the early 1800s, who is hailed as the father of racial science, which is actually a really cool

02:26:27.000 epithet but he had this theory that the five races which he thought were the white race

02:26:34.020 the yellow race the brown race which he actually means uh southeast asians polynesians and

02:26:39.400 australian aborigines the black race and the red race all descended from like a foundational people

02:26:45.540 that they then came out from and he identified um i might be combining blumenbach with another

02:26:54.400 individual here but uh basic idea that the european white people came out of the caucasus

02:27:02.880 stems from the i i don't want to call it a myth because that's not necessarily correct the idea

02:27:10.240 of the circassian beauty the circassians uh they call themselves uh odokhar i think it is um are

02:27:19.200 this group of they're not actually all that closely related to white people uh this tribe

02:27:25.160 in the caucasus mountains which is the stretch of country between russia and turkey and they were

02:27:32.300 famed throughout the islamic world for being the most beautiful people on the planet and their 1.00

02:27:37.860 populace was brought almost to extinction because the turks just could not help themselves but 1.00

02:27:43.460 enslaving circassian men and women because they were just that pretty and i mean you 1.00

02:27:50.340 every picture i've seen of the circassian woman pretty good looking the men look like

02:27:57.300 you know men from the caucasus in eastern europe like you know you know you know what i mean um

02:28:03.860 but the ottoman caliph at one point put like a a nature preserve around them because it's like

02:28:10.340 whoa hey stop stealing my pretty people not going to have any left um and the idea being that this

02:28:16.900 is like the foundational stock that all white people emerge from it's not actually true genetically

02:28:24.100 we as europeans are not comparatively super close to people from the caucasus they are culturally

02:28:31.940 religiously etc different from us um we we use arian in like a kind of a technical sense

02:28:40.180 i i really do think we should move away from using caucasian i don't have any ancestry from

02:28:46.580 the caucasus the last time i had an ancestor in the caucasus was like 12 000 bc when the caucasian

02:28:54.340 hunter-gatherer peoples moved on to the indo-european step right like it's not

02:29:03.140 it's just not it's not accurate but there's there's a balance that goes on

02:29:09.380 in how we present and there is certain words that get used for clarity because it's just the common

02:29:21.620 common expressions common parlance um and there's others that we intentionally use so we

02:29:29.060 proudly and intentionally use arian to mean white people most people don't have the big ethnography

02:29:38.740 they oh caucasian that means white people i try to cut out the middleman most of the time and

02:29:45.220 either use aryan or white people um and white people to try to avoid the endless spiral of

02:29:58.260 trying to parse out things are chechens white yeah we have a understanding people white people 0.70

02:30:05.140 know who white people are we understand what that is and there's people on the fringes of some of 0.89

02:30:10.340 these places that you know again we we know what it is so trying to overly get skull calipers out

02:30:20.180 is not really what we're trying to do um and to be clear i know i'm nitpicking i just figured this

02:30:27.380 would be a fun knit to pick for the audience yeah it is because most people aren't very familiar

02:30:32.980 with that um i think probably most people who use the word caucasian could not find the caucus

02:30:38.580 mountains like that i highly doubt most people even know the caucuses is a place realistically

02:30:43.700 i am entertained by the the basic breakdown of the three races the caucusoid mongoloid and negroid

02:30:50.980 just because they're fun words to say and have entertained me since i was a small child 0.72

02:30:55.380 i know right and it's really funny because right now especially if you look at mixed martial arts

02:31:01.140 in the ufc folks from the caucuses are like bound are like going crazy in the last decade or so

02:31:09.060 and not one of them looks like you and me

02:31:14.740 so um

02:31:21.460 uh looking in the chat um we're actually looking at the question here where did you find this

02:31:28.180 information on this current historical knowledge i assume that is for you chris

02:31:35.700 where did you acquire your historical wisdom reading a lot of stuff um in part reading

02:31:46.180 transcriptions of some of the the latin stuff that was given to us uh we're coming up to a thing

02:31:52.180 that is that I'll comment on about something about like that in a bit um

02:31:59.100 but uh looking at the primary sources there I found a really interesting

02:32:05.060 paper um that I can get the actual name and author of this has been stuff that

02:32:15.040 I've been interested in for a very long time and I feel bad because I know I've

02:32:20.140 said things in this where it's like oh yeah i read this 10 years ago and i can't remember where and

02:32:26.220 i can go find it but it's not one specific thing when i do these i go through a somewhat manic

02:32:35.420 uh degree of finding books and academic articles and primary sources and the like

02:32:42.380 i was actually as an aside getting like the the actual codex regis manuscript pdfs downloaded so

02:32:53.520 we have have it on the afa back end for easy viewing um just i don't know academics go through

02:33:02.380 so much hard work to actually read some of this medieval like handwriting stuff it's terrible

02:33:06.380 it's absolutely terrible um with the goths i could give you some actual book more book books

02:33:15.160 on it like uh uh what is hevik wolfram's history of the goths i read that for the the goth studies

02:33:23.540 stuff i'm sorry this isn't a good answer because it's just a lot of things here or there and you

02:33:30.640 know reading the relevant portion from the wheat opal from me and stuff like

02:33:35.400 that part of the problem with a lot of things in this period though is that

02:33:40.060 they're just a line or two that belie a much larger and a much larger event that

02:33:52.200 we were only given a little bit about and I'm just gonna take that one

02:33:56.680 question that just popped in the chat there yes they do uh radbod is looked on very favorably

02:34:05.340 today in the netherlands um there's like buildings named after him streets named after him

02:34:10.720 there one of his descendants is actually a saint a christian saint um do you want to move into

02:34:19.460 a big event that is only given to us in a relatively small number of lines sir

02:34:25.620 sorry for the awkward transition everyone

02:34:29.140 i have no idea what you're talking about go ahead with whatever you'd like to do

02:34:35.340 the the new thing

02:34:38.100 um you had wanted to reserve that for a different episode that you never mind then um

02:34:50.960 and now i see the text in the private chat yeah you had wanted to talk about that

02:35:00.960 as its own thing you know stuff about a generation after this oh okay um we can hold off

02:35:08.880 i really should i'm sorry i should have confirmed with you you're fine instead of having this

02:35:13.840 conversation live never mind um it's all good this is a casual kind of broadcast all right uh

02:35:21.920 okay i don't need the next six pages of this word document right now um we had this discussion on

02:35:28.160 the back end i just want to harken back to that conversation it was in fact your idea to do it on

02:35:32.560 a separate no no i'm remembering now i'm remembering now it is all good though we have um a couple of

02:35:38.880 things hey nick because it'll be helpful to um to the next deal here and i think it's important

02:35:45.920 and it's a good question that people want to know about um can you link the true log model

02:35:52.960 so yes i already have once and i will definitely do that again okay then i must have missed it my

02:36:00.000 fault so for folks uh this is for defender sora's question but also anybody who's interested who's

02:36:11.280 listening to this or whatever. If you are finding this for the first time and you have questions

02:36:17.240 like, what is this? What do you guys believe? What is this all about? I, with some help,

02:36:27.020 crafted the Ausitru Trulugmal, which basically is the AFA's statement of our faith. It's the

02:36:34.200 statement of our core beliefs that in the simplest, like the most fundamentals, this

02:36:41.020 is what we believe. And it was put together intentionally to be as accessible as I knew

02:36:48.100 how to make it for. Our membership to reference or hearken back to, to kind of shore up

02:36:57.700 fundamentals but also for new people who have that question because for the longest time

02:37:06.100 and it's important to remember that the rebirth of alsa true that we embracing it uh in the modern age

02:37:14.580 is only

02:37:15.460 57 ish years old so we've done a lot of growing and i'm really proud of how far we've come in that

02:37:29.220 time there was a long time where you know when somebody asked hey what do you guys believe about

02:37:34.980 something it was this hemming and hawing and like well some people think this well this other well

02:37:40.580 what about i tried to consolidate that to succinct this is what we believe and that is in this

02:37:49.860 document called yes true true log ball we're working on getting it um you know in a physical

02:37:56.100 form for people it's not a long document because i wanted to keep it simple and just to the

02:38:01.140 fundamentals but i think if anybody's curious it is it would it would certainly tell you

02:38:08.260 clearly what we believe about things one of the things it tells you about is the afterlife so

02:38:15.140 that is the question i'd be very interested to learn about the afterlife in this type of world

02:38:20.180 view is there one announced true absolutely there is um so

02:38:28.020 the breakdown on it and it doesn't have to be a long-winded thing but

02:38:36.660 we believe that yeah we believe that the afterlife is a thing we believe that the

02:38:48.700 natural course of that for most people is that you go from this side of the veil to the other

02:38:59.680 side of the veil. We refer to that as the veil between the living and the dead. You go

02:39:05.540 to be with your ancestors.

02:39:09.840 And I think it is

02:39:11.600 tempting to

02:39:15.660 be overly precise with exactly what that looks like

02:39:21.640 and to claim that we know things that we don't know.

02:39:24.920 But we do know that our ancestors live on after death.

02:39:28.520 We know that we can interact with our ancestors and our loved ones

02:39:32.080 after they pass through the gift cycle.

02:39:35.540 we know that our loved ones await us on the other side and often are part of the process of

02:39:45.860 transitioning a soul from this side to that side and so the general thing is if your ancestors

02:39:54.660 accept you then you get to go be with your ancestors for how long or exactly how all of

02:40:02.340 of that works. We will know when we get there, but it isn't just stasis. There is life and

02:40:10.820 meaningful willed interaction after death. That is the vast majority of people. But we also

02:40:21.080 believe for a very small number of people, and so something else to be said, your ancestors

02:40:28.380 are judging you even as we speak.

02:40:31.460 The gods are judging you even as we speak.

02:40:35.240 We have no reason to believe that they are obsessed with the minutia

02:40:40.800 in the way that some desert conceptions of deity do.

02:40:46.660 But they judge your value and your worth.

02:40:51.260 if the gods and the ancestors all decide that you are of such a negative value by your existence

02:41:00.560 because you are such a horrible person um you know again these are decisions made by the gods

02:41:08.540 and ancestors it's not my determination but you know people that horribly torture and abuse 1.00

02:41:16.240 others that torture and abuse and molest children horrible horrible people their soul souls that are

02:41:23.680 beyond value are sent to the strand there's a special part of of helheim which is the land of

02:41:33.680 the dead called nostrum which is the strand where these souls are dissolved the imagery is a lot of

02:41:41.840 like venom and the chewing up of corpses by Nidhogger,

02:41:47.600 but the breaking apart into the core elements

02:41:54.540 so that your material can be used for something better

02:41:59.320 and your soul is completely dissolved.

02:42:03.380 That's a very small number of people.

02:42:06.060 You don't find yourself in their company.

02:42:07.980 um but we also believe that heroes the gods have the ability to elevate people and the souls of

02:42:18.360 those who've passed to something more to something closer to them to something in a closer state of

02:42:25.740 communion with our gods that's depicted in our lore as as being in the halls of the gods or

02:42:33.520 or that what you may be most familiar with is val hall uh the all-fathers hall where where

02:42:39.760 he brings his champions after death so there is the ability to level up and evolve spiritually

02:42:48.800 where your your soul becomes something more to where it ascends we believe that can happen

02:42:56.080 at death when you're you know they're sorting out what to do with you but also at some point

02:43:02.560 posthumously that can happen too and the gods have the power to make these choices

02:43:11.040 we don't get to determine who goes where by what we say it's ultimately who the gods want to

02:43:18.320 to call up or who the gods would like to elevate for the reasons that they choose

02:43:24.560 but we can help in that process by celebrating our heroes

02:43:27.840 by um building reputation for those who've passed and celebrating them and bringing attention and

02:43:36.240 fame and worth to their legacy these are all things that we can do but yes we absolutely

02:43:43.040 the afterlife is fundamental because a huge part of alsatru is ancestor venerate veneration we

02:43:49.760 venerate our ancestors in you know big ritual but very often we venerate them in private ritual at

02:43:56.880 our home altars the honoring and the pouring out offerings and praying to and you know having that

02:44:07.760 relationship with our ancestors who've passed is a very fundamental part of our faith so we

02:44:12.800 certainly believe in the afterlife is there any any things you would like to leave folks with tonight

02:44:25.840 chris

02:44:31.440 hail the gods hail the ancestors hail the folk hail red bod hail red bod indeed all right guys

02:44:39.840 well i'm looking forward to talking to everybody uh again next week as speckinger spawn and i

02:44:46.640 continue with our lengthy going over the guilt beginning which is again one of the more fundamental

02:44:54.320 pieces of our lore that lays out what our beliefs are in such a clear way so we're very excited

02:45:02.400 about that i hope everybody has an amazing week i will see you guys then until then hail the

02:45:11.040 is here of the folk hail the afa and remember the victory never sleeps hail

02:45:41.040 Transcription by CastingWords

02:46:11.040 Thank you.

02:46:41.040 Thank you.

02:47:11.040 Thank you.

02:47:41.040 Thank you.

02:48:11.040 Transcription by CastingWords

Asatru Folk Assembly - April 09, 2026

4⧸8⧸26 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 196 - Radbod and the Struggle for Frisia

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