00:03:00.000hello and welcome again to another exciting edition of victory never sleeps
00:03:16.880uh it this last week has gone by quick it's hard to believe it's been a week since i've talked to
00:03:22.480you guys um it's gonna be an exciting show tonight we've already got a packed chat room and
00:03:30.000this is going to be an interesting episode because of our uh of our heroes i think
00:03:39.600this one is the one that we're going to have the most
00:03:44.000the most current and the closest to our time as far as information and stories and i'm not sure
00:03:55.340Sarah's situation, but I never got to meet the folk mother. But I know people who have. So at
00:04:01.740least we're a step closer than a lot of our heroes that are further back or that are poorly
00:04:06.540documented. So I think this will be an interesting show tonight. It's a very timely show because I'm
00:04:13.640flying out of here tomorrow. And this weekend is the third annual Elsie Fest in Wisconsin,
00:04:18.920which our guest tonight, Sarah and her husband, James, are hosting. And they've hosted
00:04:23.400the previous two years as well. It's a fantastic event. I will say this, I've been to lots and
00:04:30.520lots of these events. And this is one of the only ones we're doing lately that doesn't happen to be
00:04:36.360at one of our Hoffs. But used to be doing events at a camp or at another facility was kind of our
00:04:43.180standard thing for all the events we did. And yeah, I think the alts run a much tighter and
00:04:51.200top-notch event compared to any of the other ones I've ever been to. It really works out well. They
00:04:56.220both do a great job. They're friends. They have helping them do a great job. And I am excited
00:05:00.160about the fish boil. At any of these events, I've got to eat last. I've always got to be the last
00:05:05.840guy in line. So I'm very hopeful that I'm going to get some fish boil. And anybody who happens
00:05:12.520to be in front of me, please keep that in mind. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that. That's this
00:05:18.420weekend. Um, if anybody wants to be there, if anybody's in Wisconsin, if anybody can get to
00:05:24.500Wisconsin, let's make that happen. Reach out to your folk builder to get vetted. And, uh, I would
00:05:30.560love to see you guys there. Um, thinking of any other things we have at the top of the show. Uh,
00:05:36.240once again, this is being broadcast live on Odyssey, VK, YouTube, uh, Twitter and over on
00:05:46.760entropy and if you guys want to get your questions to the front of the line we already got questions
00:05:52.280stacking up so if you want to do the super chat and get your questions up front come over to entropy
00:05:57.320and and donate and we can do that if you guys just want to donate and help us out
00:06:02.120we appreciate any of any and all of y'all's generosity on that um
00:06:10.920yeah i think that's where we're at i think it's also worth noting that next month and nick will
00:06:16.040throw up the link and the exact dates for it but middle and next month at odenshoff we're going to
00:06:21.320be celebrating midsummer that is the oldest of our national events that is the the district event for
00:06:29.640odenshoff district it is typically and always has been our biggest event winter nights came
00:06:35.880really really close last year it was within 10 of uh of midsummer at odenshoff which it was a
00:06:42.440record-breaking midsummer at odenshoff last year but usually one of our biggest it's great we'd
00:06:48.120love to have you guys come out to odenshoff so anybody who can do that it's in brownsville
00:06:52.280california you got time so um let your folk builders know about that and also i don't think
00:06:59.720it's too too far out to give you guys a heads up in july we'll be celebrating the first annual
00:07:07.880sigger bloat at siggerheim now it's going to be kind of rustic it's a it's a long-term project
00:07:13.480we don't have a lot of our infrastructure built there yet but it's an amazing place it's very
00:07:17.400special to us and we're going to be having folks out there and that's going to be in july so if
00:07:23.240you guys can do that or want to do that also please reach out to your local folk builder
00:07:27.880they'll get you all taken care of without further ado and we're gonna we're gonna pause for a second
00:07:35.480on the main subject because this is a folk builder sarah alt's first time joining us on the program
00:07:42.840sarah can you introduce yourself to folks and tell them a little bit about who you are what
00:07:47.880you do for the afa and if you could also tell them a little bit about how you came to aussitru and
00:07:52.920how you came to the astro focus simply please um so my name is sarah alt um i am a folk builder in
00:07:59.640wisconsin um i joined the afa about four maybe five years ago now my husband had already been
00:08:11.240a member and he was very happy with he was making these trips up to minnesota to hang out with the
00:08:19.400northern blood kindred and folk builder jason gallagher and he would just come home so happy
00:08:24.440about this and um a lot of the other things that him and i had been involved in in the past with
00:08:30.520like the the white national movement he wasn't always happy about that and it was just very nice
00:08:37.400to see him happy and i went up to minnesota um for one of the events at jason gallagher's house
00:08:45.800this was before Baldur's Health existed. And I was welcomed with open arms. Jessica Hansen
00:08:56.120and Githya Anna Clord were amazing and welcoming to me. And they made sure that
00:09:04.440that I understood that I was welcome there and that as a woman I was accepted. And that's,
00:09:09.560you don't get a lot of that in the white national movement because that is a very
00:09:13.160manly thing, and women are a rarity in that. So it was nice to have that environment and to have
00:09:20.900families. There were a lot of kids, and it was very welcoming. I had also seen a lot of pictures
00:09:27.660from Odenshoff with Mark McLeod and his family, and to see generations in the AFA, to see the
00:09:36.200bloats that were taking part to the old gods, this was something that I really wanted to get involved
00:09:41.400in so i joined and then um my husband became at that time something called there was something
00:09:50.360called an event coordinator which was a step before apprentice folk builder
00:09:56.280so he was doing moots in the state and he wasn't getting he would get the same handful of men
00:10:03.800that that weren't really interested in joining the afa they just wanted to sit around and drink
00:10:08.200is i want the family i want that aspect of it
00:10:15.400and um so he asked me you know what do you think we can do and i was like well let's
00:10:22.360make it family oriented take it out of the bars take it out of that kind of environment and put
00:10:27.960it in parks things that people would want to bring their children to and let's go from there
00:10:33.960so he had his first very successful in a park we fed everybody we just said come we have a lot of
00:10:43.320food fed everyone and we had so many people join out of that and it just took off in wisconsin at
00:10:49.960that point and at some point after he became an oath folk builder after we did the first elsie
00:11:00.840Fest, I contacted Matt, and I was like, I have some questions about folk building. And I would
00:11:08.400just like to know. And so he sent me a list of things that folk builders at that time were
00:11:15.700required to do. And I took about almost eight months to think about it, because I take commitments
00:11:23.300very seriously. And at one point, I was just like, yes, this is the time. So about eight months after
00:11:31.820that, I became an apprentice. I was oath at this last fall fest up at Baldershoff, and it was an
00:11:39.320amazing emotional experience. I love the AFA. I love the things that are going on in the AFA.
00:11:46.700um if you get me started on subjects like the ossature academy i can talk for hours because
00:11:55.720it is amazing what just one program like that did for the growth of the afa for the growth of
00:12:02.620families for retaining families and teaching our next generation and i'm so proud of what
00:12:08.760gothy stam and the rest of the staff have created in that academy so that's one of the things i'm
00:12:15.640involved with and then recently i joined up with githya sheila mcnallan to who had noticed that
00:12:23.960the older people in the afa those like over the age of 50 she wanted them to become more
00:12:31.000bonded and more realized that they were part of the afa so so she asked me to help her with that so
00:12:40.920we have that going on we have a group on me we she sends out emails to keep up with everyone
00:12:47.320and we do a meeting every friday and it is so interesting listening to these people who have
00:12:53.640been one members of the afa from the beginning talk about the way it has grown their lives what
00:13:01.240they remember also true was years and years ago and i've just learned so much from these people
00:13:07.160and that has been very enjoyable. I'm part of the Ruinstone staff, so if you get those every month,
00:13:14.920you should really open them and read them because they are filled with so much information about the
00:13:19.560AFA. It is so interesting to be able to put these in every month, so I get to read them from all
00:13:26.120four districts. There is so much going on on a weekly basis in the AFA that most people
00:13:32.840don't even realize there's really very little excuse not to get out among your folk um let's
00:13:40.920see what else do i do uh i help uh folk builder nick rice with the uh balder soft website which
00:13:50.280you should check out because it's really awesome looking and has a ton of information um not only
00:13:56.120on Baldershof, but on the folk mother, because there is a memorial for her and altar to her at
00:14:04.180Baldershof. I do a book study three times a month with Witten Brandy Callahan. Right now we are
00:14:13.480working on Beowulf, and I encourage all, it's just for ladies, and I encourage all women to either
00:14:21.700listen to the recordings or come to that there is she shares such a wealth of information the
00:14:27.380last book study i did with her on deep ancestors went on for a year and a half because there's so
00:14:33.460many rabbit holes she goes down and you learn so much from her uh and on tuesday nights i do
00:14:42.580a lore study with melissa mills and that has been an incredible experience gothy
00:14:49.540jason plored is such a wealth of information in that you can come you can ask questions
00:14:57.480we read the lore together and at the end of the month melissa runs a trivia contest where
00:15:02.960we go over everything we've studied and you have a chance to win prizes and it
00:15:07.060really has helped each of us learn so much and i'm sure i'm forgetting something
00:15:17.140but i guess that's a lot and i keep busy i i do
00:15:26.380well so and and i'm sure you are forgetting stuff but i think that illustrates that you do
00:15:35.300a lot for us and uh you you always have such an amazing attitude about it i think everybody on
00:15:42.680you can just hear in your voice, the attitude you bring to it. And I think that's a really
00:15:47.760beautiful thing. I remember it was really emotional. Oh, thing you all in and there was a number of
00:15:54.320people, but you specifically gave me one of the best hugs after that. And I just, it was really
00:16:00.600cool. And it's great having you on the team. Thank you. So without further ado, assuming that
00:16:09.740our audience has never heard anything about her before can you tell us what do we need and we'll
00:16:15.820have more questions and stuff to dig deeper later but what should folks know about elsie christensen
00:16:23.660um she is definitely an amazing lady so i'm just going to go over some of the basics and then
00:16:28.780later on we can dive deeper into um why she is truly the folk mother of ossature
00:16:34.460Okay, so she was born in Denmark in 1913, and she was originalized as a Lutheran as a child, but she never felt that connection to Christianity.
00:16:48.400And she even went as far as petitioning the government to declare her a non-Christian.
00:16:58.4401937. He was a woodworker by trade and she worked as a hand weaver until she injured her back and
00:17:06.600then she moved on to teaching children and adults with dyslexia. Alex had introduced her to a
00:17:14.360political concept which is centered on the idea that power corrupts and any elite ruler that
00:17:21.860cannot be ethically justified must be dismantled. This caused her to join the Strasserlite National
00:17:29.760Bolshevik faction of the Danish National Socialist Party. Now, she was not a communist. A lot of
00:17:38.920people see the word Bolshevik attached to her, and she wasn't. She just believed the idea that
00:17:47.040foreign capitalism being involved in government was a disservice to the people.
00:17:57.060So she basically agreed with all the ideas of National Socialism except economics and
00:18:02.680governing. For the most part, during the German occupation, they lived very well due to Alex's
00:18:09.620were woodworking. Since few had his talents, his services were in high demand by the wealthy. With
00:18:18.080the cash coming in, they could buy whatever they wanted on the black market, including guns and
00:18:22.840ammo. However, because of their allegiance to the Strasselite faction, that caused them to be under
00:18:29.020heavy scrutiny, which is why they had several visits by the German police. Since citizens
00:18:35.720owning weapons was outlawed this included a visit due to a tip that they had pistols pistols in
00:18:42.120their possession she cooperated with them because she knew it was easier and they wouldn't search
00:18:48.200the house she handed over the pistols they had asked for because if they would have searched the
00:18:53.960house they would have found all the other weapons she had including a belt-filled machine gun
00:18:59.560near the end of the war elsie and her husband were called in for questioning due to their
00:19:04.040political beliefs she was held for less than 10 hours and alex was sent to a cancer concentration
00:19:10.520camp for six months the germans had zero tolerance for any communistic ideas including those in the
00:19:17.160stress light fraction of the danish national socialist party national socialism was all
00:19:22.760encompassing and had no room for bolshevik ideas on governing after the war they bought
00:19:29.240a large sailboat which they had intended to sail to canada but the weather had not permitted and
00:19:38.360they ended up migrating to canada in 1951 they were living in toronto she worked as a waitress
00:19:45.080and struggled to learn the language eventually she worked as an x-ray technician and assistant
00:19:50.600to the head of a hospital until she retired elsie recalled being introduced to the writings of
00:19:56.920Australian Odinist Alexander Rud Mills. She started writing Alexander Rud Mills until his passing
00:20:04.280and continued to correspond with his wife Evelyn Price until her passing. Elsie was heavily
00:20:11.560influenced by ideas his ideas about reviving the worship of the ancient Norse deities. In 1968,
00:20:20.600Elsie and her husband started the Odinist study group with meetings in their home. A year later
00:20:26.120they would form the Odinus Foundation and move to Crystal River, Florida. She began touring North
00:20:32.200America to promote Odinism. Then in 1970, the Odinus Foundation was born. She started reaching
00:20:39.240out to three prisons in Florida. She recalled that the study groups were small, and she was
00:20:48.200the first to have Odinism recognized by any prison system. While working in the prison,
00:20:53.560she never had any misconceptions about her purpose there. She recognized that most prisoners
00:20:59.460were rotten apples, but she held on to the fact that a small handful would come out and do great
00:21:04.640things. She said of her prison work, no packed rooms in the prison. In each institution, I only
00:21:11.860have a few people, occasionally about a dozen, but five to six is more common. I certainly do not want
00:21:18.440the fellowship to be a club for cons or ex-cons. The advantage for a person is that when in prison,
00:21:25.960the inmates have time to discuss and digest what they read, a point that is often lost to people
00:21:31.920on the outside in the hubbub of daily concerns. In 1971, Alex passed away, and it is the same
00:21:41.700year the first publication of The Odinist was released. This publication took off like
00:21:49.080wildflower, especially in the prison system. She continued building Odinism and published
00:21:56.200The Odinist up until her death on May 4, 2005. On Odinism, she said, to understand my approach
00:22:05.540to Odinism, one simply has to realize that only when one knows all the aspects of an
00:22:10.940ideology can one choose wisely. If you only know half of it, you're out of balance.
00:22:18.620She also wrote, Odinism to the consternation of many people. Odinist, as well as non-Odinist,
00:22:26.380is not dogmatic. We will have to agree upon and tolerate several main interpretations of
00:22:33.180Aussitou Odinism. Eventually, I believe it will all come together. Although I, at present, do not
00:22:40.380deal with rituals and ruin more i'm certainly aware of both and agree that they are part of
00:22:45.500our ancient religion i'm simply not able to deal with them so i leave them be until somebody appears
00:22:52.220who can do so in any way i can accept as the closest to the real thing when my instincts tell
00:22:59.180me they are lc christian was bestowed with the title folk mother due to her devotion to rebirthing
00:23:07.340ostrich after picking up the torch from Alexander Rudmills. Most of those who have since come to the
00:23:14.000reawakening probably would not have done so had it not been for her. Her dedication to bringing
00:23:19.680people back to their ancestor roots, especially those in prison, is something that should inspire
00:23:25.280us all. One of my favorite quotes from Elsie is from 1992. We're all more and less caught up in
00:23:35.220speed of modern society we have just witnessed the olympics where a fraction of a second
00:23:41.940makes the difference between a win or a loss but in life you're not in competition with anyone but
00:23:47.780yourself you're not out to win medals you're here as a member of your folk and your efforts are not
00:23:53.860counted in seconds in competition with other people but rather in the quiet continuous influence
00:24:00.900you have on the overall future in the life of our folk. The Ossetree Folk Assembly
00:24:08.020holds a day of remembrance for the folk builder on the 9th of May,
00:24:12.180and there is a memorial altar dedicated to her at Baldershof, the third half of the AFA.
00:24:20.500Well, thank you for that. That's already more than we've got on our other heroes that we celebrate.
00:24:28.420a couple of points that i that i want to point out on that um
00:24:36.420first uh i guess going last to last to first or whatever her comment about her lack of doing uh
00:24:44.340rune work ritual work i came across a letter of correspondence between her and uh steve mcnalen
00:24:54.260early on and that was one of the really interesting points in there because she fully acknowledged
00:25:00.580that um she wasn't doing a lot of of ritual and and more esoteric work and that steve was
00:25:10.420and so that was one of their their points of of interaction over the years was you know she
00:25:17.300acknowledged that steve was filling the religious function that that she you know just wasn't equipped
00:25:23.940to do at that time and so that that was some of the early connections between her
00:25:29.700and what would become the austral folk assembly and i think this letter is from the 1980s
00:25:36.420um also something interesting to know and i know it the crucible of political ideologies
00:25:48.340in the 1920s 30s and in 1940s is really hard to unravel because especially you know even within
00:25:59.380the more right-wing political circles of europe there was a big spectrum of
00:26:10.260political ideologies both economically and ruling and other things and something else that i want
00:26:15.940people to know is the significance of elsie is in her contribution to our faith you'll notice
00:26:24.340that you know i i don't think that i i would agree with a lot of her her political ideology
00:26:30.100when it came to when it came to elitism or when it came to authority or when it came to different
00:26:36.660things but what was so special is she was one of the most you know one of those very early people
00:26:42.820that went out and did this, or the proto version of this, when nobody else around her was.
00:26:54.120The efforts that she started in her prison ministry
00:26:57.920blossomed to where I went to do prison ministry at a high desert penitentiary up in up around
00:27:09.660susanville california one there was one guy that wasn't i didn't know whether he was in bad graces
00:27:16.460or whatnot but on the two yards that i did uh did the prison ministry on 100 of the white prisoners
00:27:23.580there came to practice house of truth so you know when when her things were poorly attended
00:27:31.900that grew exponentially for us over the decades
00:27:35.740um i'm checking because i'm getting a little bit of an echo
00:27:43.260but we've got some questions stacking up and i'll say this it's really great to have
00:27:53.580to have people as closely connected and as devoted to this particular hero um
00:28:01.180oftentimes our heroes are not appropriately celebrated and get forgotten. And it is really
00:28:09.800nice. And we'll see that throughout the questions, throughout the discussion,
00:28:12.920already see that stacking up, but just how much you, you do to preserve the memory of the folk
00:28:22.160mother and to celebrate and to honor her. It's really beautiful. And I want to see that for,
00:28:27.020for all of our heroes and it's really cool that you do that and really quick one thing
00:28:33.740you reminded me of as you were talking is if you read the issues of the odinist the the older ones
00:28:40.540you have to remember that at that time that is what she knew but her as all of us as we grow
00:28:48.300in knowledge she over the years there were some things about her that that changed and
00:28:53.180her feelings on different things. Now, I'm often asked if I think that Elsie would be a member of
00:28:59.520the AFA today. And I can't answer that, obviously, because she's no longer with us. And it's a
00:29:07.080different AFA today than it was when she was alive. I do know she never joined under Stevie
00:29:14.520McNallan. She did send people who were interested in rituals and learning that kind of thing that
00:29:20.140he was doing. She sent people to him because she admired and respected him. But obviously,
00:29:26.420I don't know. I'd like to think she would. So I would absolutely love to conquer the entire
00:29:33.700world of Alcetru and have them all under the trihorns because I believe it's the right thing
00:29:37.980to do and the right way to go. Do I think Elsie would have necessarily joined the AFA? I don't
00:29:44.060know, because minds can change. Do I think if magically we brought back Elsie from the day she
00:29:50.720died to see if she would join? Probably not. But I would still love to invite her to everything we
00:29:55.720did. And I would be so honored if she came to it. And hopefully we'd have the discussions and she
00:30:02.620would. But I can't I can't put that on her or her memory and I wouldn't try to. But there are a lot
00:30:10.920people that were at different levels of their spiritual development that laid the foundation
00:30:17.080for us and i think it's really important to look at especially um our heroes from the the 19th and
00:30:25.320the 20th century that came before us because our our ausitru has evolved quite a bit and it's and
00:30:35.640it should and i hope very much that they will be proud of what we've done um again i can't put that
00:30:44.360on them and i'm not going to go back in time and put words in people's mouths that's not right
00:30:49.000but i hope that they'd be proud of it and it's important for us to look back and appreciate
00:30:56.520the steps that they made instead of criticize things that we think with you know 100 years
00:31:02.200hindsight we would have could have should have done differently um because whatever you know
00:31:08.760the steps that they took were what allowed us to to be where we are today and that's extremely
00:31:14.520valuable and hindsight is always 20 20 and things look real different when uh when it's in the here
00:31:20.920and now and not armchair quarterbacking the past our first question of the night from uh gofie
00:31:30.040trent east question for both sarah and y'all's here you go which god or goddess do you feel
00:31:37.000closest to and why sarah which god or goddess do you feel closest to and why uh frega um
00:31:45.880i i totally skipped over how i came to ossature but um i had a deep connection with the celtic
00:31:55.000goddess, Bridget, before coming to Asatru. And with the mother aspect that I saw in her
00:32:04.160is the same thing that I see in Frigga. And with the story of Frigga and her son, Balder,
00:32:12.340with me, it resonates that you try to protect your child from everything possible in the world,
00:32:19.040but in the end you cannot change that you cannot protect them from where their destiny is taking
00:32:25.920them and that is why i relate to her so i honestly feel feel inappropriate answering the question
00:32:39.920because i i don't want to i don't want to be disrespectful and i don't want to leave anyone
00:32:44.880out it's like who's your favorite parent you don't really want to necessarily answer that
00:32:48.400question out loud. Different times and different seasons in my life, it's different. There's a
00:33:00.240number of gods that I've made bonds with that I feel very, very close to in that way. And there's
00:33:06.800others that I really look forward to. Starting out, I think the God that I related to the most
00:33:16.060starting out and was most a part of my uh becoming involved in also true was also for um for again i
00:33:27.820was a i was a young guy and and the idea of the strength and the power and you know fighting
00:33:35.420giants and you know all of those things about thor were very appealing to me still are um
00:33:42.140And that was that meant a lot, the idea of him protecting the gods and protecting the folk at that time.
00:33:52.520You know, that was. Well, I guess not at that time, but a number of years later, you know, I spent a lot of time being a bouncer and being involved in security work and things like that.
00:34:05.540And I think that, you know, that was very relatable to me.
00:34:12.140So as time went on and I got more and more involved in the AFA, more involved in leadership
00:34:21.020of the AFA, because I've been, time sneaks up on you.
00:34:25.180I'm coming up on seven years now that I've been the Elseria Gothi, but long before that
00:34:30.100I was, you know, I was a, I was a Gothi before that I was a folk builder.
00:34:34.560I was the folk builder coordinator for a time.
00:34:37.480and i was really fortunate for a long time to have a lot of interactions with steve mcnalen
00:34:44.440early on and with with others that were leading the afa at that time and during that time i i
00:34:52.200came a lot closer to to the all-father odin and very very strongly connected to uh to odin and
00:35:09.200What's helped a lot to facilitate really strong connection between me and Balder and Thor and Njorther has been our establishing these Hoffs.
00:35:24.560one of my great honors as the alzharrier gofi is that i've been involved in making these hoffs
00:35:32.680happen and that i've been able to officiate the dedication of these hoffs and dedicating a temple
00:35:39.400to one of our gods is a is a real big deal to me and i think has helped us build a much you know
00:35:47.940as a as a whole as our afa family has helped us build a closer relationship with these gods but
00:35:52.920certainly has helped me personally um and lately i've been very much i don't know building a closer
00:36:02.520relationship with tier because i'm going to be moving to sigerheim with all the work on sigerheim
00:36:08.600that's where tears hoff will end up being and so i've spent a lot of time in prayer and meditation
00:36:14.760and devotion work to tear to have his his help in guiding that um our next question matt can you
00:36:23.480explain a little bit about the story behind the thumbnail for tonight's episode yeah ideally i
00:36:29.080want to use a picture of me and the person that i'm doing the episode with but the only pictures
00:36:34.600of me and sarah together and we should fix that at uh at elsie fest the only pictures i have just
00:36:40.200of me and sarah are with a big group of people and they didn't work well for just me and sarah
00:36:45.480you'll notice the other ones that i have of me and my guest it's like just us so if i don't have
00:36:50.920the perfect one i want then i go ridiculous and i try to find either something about the time period
00:36:56.440or a wrestling tag team or something ridiculous because the height of lc's work was in the 1980s
00:37:05.080i hearken back to uh hunter which was an awesome show for any of you guys that don't know you kids
00:37:10.840may never not have heard of hunter but it was a real good show and the thing was hunter who was
00:37:16.600me in the picture he had this female partner and it was strange i didn't understand it as a kid i
00:37:21.560was trying to figure it out but she had these painted on eyebrows anyways i digress so it was
00:37:26.760a it was a guy and his female partner and they're you know it was a cop show and it was cool from the
00:37:31.6401980s which was the appropriate period so that's that's that's as deep as that goes um
00:37:42.360king of cheese matt sarah it's great to see both
00:37:45.560how are we doing tonight i appreciate you asking tony uh sarah how you doing tonight
00:37:53.480been a pretty good night so far i i was a little nervous i'm getting better and um it's been a
00:38:00.200good day and i'm thankful to be here tony i'm doing fantastic i tell you every week but i look
00:38:06.760forward to these they're awesome and i'm really excited because tomorrow i am flying out to elsie
00:38:11.560fest and i'm looking forward to that um but i should have read this one earlier but it popped
00:38:17.880on and i didn't get it in time but with a five dollar donation thank you very much michael we
00:38:22.920appreciate it hail matt hill sarah hail the gods and hail the folk uh thank you both for your
00:38:30.040valuable work on behalf of the folk and faith we appreciate that michael thank you very much
00:38:35.480and thank you for your donation uh and thanks everybody who's in the chat um this is a
00:38:44.520so much of this is uh audience driven as far as the questions and answers and we have been
00:38:50.680really fortunate to have great people on here every week and we've got a full chat room tonight
00:38:55.080so i'm excited about that you guys you guys bring the content with your great questions
00:39:01.320ah tyler asks sarah can you speak about where the idea for elsie fest came from
00:39:09.000and why it's so important to celebrate her
00:39:11.400yes um uh two years ago the afa was structured differently it had regions instead of districts
00:39:22.120and the midwest was looking for a regional event to hold and my husband james suggested elsie
00:39:32.200because he has a he has a connection where he's he's always wanted to head a prison ministry
00:39:54.020So it was a remembrance for Elsie Fest.
00:39:57.480And then in the middle of the planning,
00:39:59.820Matt decided to make districts instead of regents.
00:40:03.940So suddenly all these people who were in regents with James,
00:40:08.320because I wasn't in leadership at that time. We're now in a faraway district, so they weren't as
00:40:15.620keen on helping because they were doing their own stuff in their own place, which is totally
00:40:19.800understandable. So we found a camp here in Wisconsin, and this camp is amazing, and they
00:40:28.560know exactly who we are. They know what we're about, and they still like us. So it was a very
00:40:37.380good find. They're good people. And Elsie is just a wonderful person beyond her revival of
00:40:49.380Asitru. This works. Prisoners are just so often forgotten. They're still our folk. Not all of
00:40:58.180them are wonderful people. Not all of them are going to be awesome when they come out. And,
00:41:03.740but they're still our folk and they still deserve a chance to learn more about our folk and be a
00:41:12.680part because essentially they're still a part of our folk soul so it makes sense to educate them
00:41:18.960to help them grow to give them the tools to put that in their hands so that they can go forward
00:41:24.860with that knowledge and make their own decisions with that you will get
00:41:29.800in our leadership, there are several amazing men who you would never guess came out of the prison
00:41:42.240system. Ositru has changed their life, made them better people, and given them something to hold
00:41:50.940on to instead of reoffending and that is the lesson that i believe elsie started and um we
00:41:59.180mirror that now in the our prison ministry that we started we we understand that they're not gonna all
00:42:06.220come out and join the afa and they're not gonna come out and not go back in but we are giving
00:42:11.820them the basics to help them have something to hold on to have something to grow have knowledge
00:42:17.980to learn and and that's why it's important that we remember her so my old timers over on the side
00:42:25.660hunter's partner name was dd mccall i appreciate you guys remembering that i remember i was again
00:42:33.340i was a little i was young for that particular program at the time but i watched it when it was
00:42:38.860on and i also watched the you know pretty close to it reruns on cable as well i remember i was
00:42:46.220sick one day from school and there was a i was sick actually two days but there was a three-part
00:42:51.420hunter episode so i i faked being sick on the third day kids don't do this but i faked being
00:42:57.340sick so i could stay home to see the thrilling conclusion of uh a three-part episode but i
00:43:02.940appreciate you guys on the side um us old-timers gotta stick together that said with uh a note on
00:43:11.500some of the prison stuff um yeah some of so i've been doing this for austro that is prison ministry
00:43:22.380i've only been doing very very recently but uh also true i've been doing for a long time and
00:43:28.220i've seen a whole lot of ex-cons that are tragic and very very disappointing but you know what i've
00:43:36.620seen a couple i've seen a few seen some that have been absolutely amazing and that's worth it you
00:43:43.980know i go in there and every first of all say this i had no idea what to expect when i went in um
00:43:51.820no idea whatsoever but i wanted to go in it's i am a priest of the gods and if we have our
00:43:58.780folk that want to connect with our gods it's quite literally my job to try to facilitate that
00:44:05.260everybody when i've been in there has been extremely extremely gracious and thankful
00:44:10.460for me coming in and have been fantastic will a lot of them end up being turds if and when
00:44:17.580they get out maybe i don't know i hope not but if just some of them turn out being fantastic
00:44:26.220and turning their life around doing something great with it absolutely worth it um
00:44:31.820it's important that we go where our folk are. And unfortunately, a lot of our, a lot of our
00:44:39.560folk have situations in their life and make choices that find them in prison. And if they
00:44:48.080want to turn their lives around and embrace our gods and do that, then it's really important
00:44:54.940for me that that I and that our go thar can do something to facilitate that make that a little
00:45:01.680bit better and like I say it's not gonna it's not gonna fix everybody it's one of the reasons that
00:45:06.900we don't allow you know we don't allow someone who's incarcerated to join the AFA while they
00:45:13.400are incarcerated but we hope that they will when they get out if you know if they choose to to
00:45:20.460maintain that when they get out and uh when they get out in the real world and they have all those
00:45:26.140choices before them that's when we see you know if this is real to them or not but hopefully it is
00:45:32.360hopefully it will be and i know it has been for some of our some of our very best people and some
00:45:37.100of my very best friends um you don't always choose where you you target where you want to go
00:45:43.900we have, excuse me, we have to go where our folk are. And we've seen largely because of the work
00:45:51.220that Elsie put in, that prison is a place where a lot of our people can find their path home to
00:46:00.620our gods. And I know it's turned the lives around of many, many people over the decades.
00:46:09.480And that's something that Elsie put in motion. And she mentioned, I think it's important to
00:46:13.460mention this Sarah's husband James is the head of our prison ministries he has done more in his
00:46:22.580short time leaving that program than we've ever had before in the AFA as far as making this work
00:46:29.020and it's it's a anything dealing with prisons is a very slow progress but James has stuck with it
00:46:35.860he's done awesome and we've had three or four people before him say they were gonna do it and
00:46:41.860just couldn't couldn't quite get their footing because it's difficult working with those systems
00:46:45.700working with different prisons arranging different things uh james has really made a big impact and
00:46:51.300i'm personally very grateful for that he's doing a really good job um
00:47:00.100next question do all hoffs have dedicated spaces to elsie or just the beautiful balder's hoff no
00:47:07.380just Baldershof right now. Each of our Hoffs have a different hero that they celebrate.
00:47:14.100At Odenshof, we have Meister Guido von List. At Thorshof, we have Alexander Red Mills.
00:47:21.220At Baldershof, we have Elsie. And then at Njordshof, we have Rauld the Strong.
00:47:28.580Shay says, fish boil. Please tell me more. Recipe. What kind of rolls or sides do you all serve with
00:47:35.220it yum you have something to add on this can you tell uh shay about the wonderfulness and
00:47:41.060deliciousness that is the fish boil uh fish boil is um it is a wisconsin staple um the more dramatic
00:47:50.820places up in door county actually hold it outside they have a big pot over an open fire so you're
00:47:57.460putting small potatoes in it carrots little onions and white fish uh james uses either
00:48:06.020cod or haddock in his and then you're putting it in the salt water so all the fat and all the salt
00:48:13.860rises to the top of the water and the final act in these dramatic ones is something called a boil
00:48:19.780over where all that is just you're adding stuff to it and it just all boils over into the fire
00:48:26.340so then you dump all that out and you serve it in a bowl covered with melted butter and
00:48:34.820typically you get a side of coleslaw and rye bread with butter on it and it is delicious
00:48:43.380it is absolutely delicious and probably it's good for you up until you add that butter
00:48:50.900depends if it's cold outside it's all good for you depends on what you need the extra fat for
00:48:55.220but it's delicious it really is good stuff i look forward to it it's not the most complicated thing
00:49:00.500in the world but it's amazing and it's it's awesome and i'm you guys have heard me fast
00:49:05.140a couple of weeks a couple three four weeks talking about that on here because i really
00:49:08.900am looking forward to that um so we got a question here about some lc biography stuff
00:49:18.420we've all right no i think we've covered all of that question um next question is sarah oh this is
00:49:32.740from sarah so i don't know this from you or from somebody else uh matt since elsie was added to
00:49:38.180the remembrance days during your time as i was here you're guilty can you explain
00:49:42.100what about her life indeed stood out to you that you wanted to make sure she was honored um
00:49:48.420Yeah, so when I became Alzheimer's, our days of remembrance were kind of forgotten.
00:50:00.480It was something that folks did during the free assembly days, and it wasn't really a prominent thing.
00:50:09.520I think people that read some of the older literature and some different stuff about Alcetru kind of practiced it on their own at home or whatever.
00:50:17.360on some of those days of remembrance almost all of them were were from martyrs that you
00:50:22.880find in the heimskringla saga about the different kings of norway and the conversion process
00:50:29.280and those of our folk who stood up against that almost all of them i think the exceptions were
00:50:36.320um radbod in august and uh in september armenius or herman and i wanted to make sure that we honored
00:50:52.160our modern heroes that did so much to build what we all have today as opposed to just confine it
00:50:58.880to to an ancient period of time that was really important to me and in examining modern people
00:51:06.000that had been so influential in making this happen, you know, Elsie was certainly one of
00:51:12.520those. She's one that so many people talked about. A lot of people that I knew had stories about.
00:51:20.580And through the work that she did and the path that she laid out, it brought a lot of our people
00:51:27.920home. And again, what was there's a whole generation of these people that did this,
00:51:37.680many of them without knowledge of the other, or at least they started it that way. Elsie
00:51:45.280and Sveinbjorn Vintansson in Iceland and Steve MacNallan all started doing this
00:51:53.440complete at this within a couple of years of one another completely not knowing of the existence of
00:52:02.080the others um so that was that was our gods working in a very very interesting way that was
00:52:13.380that spirit of odin working amongst our folk soul in a in a really profound way and
00:52:20.000I've said this before, but I think we all can learn from this. The biggest distance is
00:52:29.360between the couch and the front door. The biggest difference is between doing nothing
00:52:33.960to doing something. And after that, you pick up momentum. After that, you build upon what you've
00:52:40.480done. But the biggest thing is going from stasis and theory and it all in your head and something
00:52:46.700you think and something you ponder and you plan and then actually going out and doing also true
00:52:55.260and it's so much easier now because we have such a support system we have all these other
00:52:59.420people out here facilitating it and and helping us do this but elsie did this at a time where
00:53:06.780it didn't exist she read about this australian guy on the other side of the world that decades
00:53:14.380earlier was doing something and from that she built in you know in canada and in in north america
00:53:25.340a network of people she built what she had from nothing and contributed i mean she was
00:53:32.140directly involved with so many of our early practitioners of our faith and in bringing
00:53:39.980so many people to alsatru and she absolutely deserves to be honored and celebrated for the
00:53:46.060rest of time amongst our folk and it was unfortunate that she wasn't at the time
00:53:52.620and i wanted to do what i could to to remedy that
00:53:58.700our next question from brandy hail sarah could you tell us about the gifts you bring to elsie's
00:54:06.300altar at Baldur's Hof? Since I've been going up to Baldur's Hof and the altar has been there,
00:54:17.340it is part of my ritual. The very first thing I do when I get in the building, I don't
00:54:24.700say hi to a lot of people. I go right to Elsie's altar and I have a moment with her and I usually
00:54:29.820bring something, a gift for her, whether it be an acorn or some other piece of nature,
00:54:39.260flowers, or I made her a glass jar full of acorns that has a hammer in it that another
00:54:50.000There's a gift on her altar of something that Ron McVann had made.
00:54:54.400And it's just important for me to have that first moment with her.
00:55:02.680I consider her, I guess, something that you would call like a sister of the past because I'm not related to her.
00:55:14.100I never got a chance to meet her, even though she was alive during my time.
00:55:19.280And I am blown away by the amount of inmates that I have met that have come out of the prison system who she touched their life just through the correspondence that she was doing with them.
00:55:37.500And that means a lot to a lot of people.
01:19:19.740that is what i do there you go there's a lot of different things that people do and some of them
01:19:27.340are very small things or very small actions or actions that don't take a lot of time or
01:19:34.380don't seem big but they can make a big impact on someone's day um you know i
01:19:42.860Some of these things sound really small, but I think, and I'll reiterate this, I've said this a lot.
01:19:53.600Our gods and our ancestors are bigger than this, our gods certainly, but we take our cues from how we interact with people that we know on this side of the veil.
01:20:07.060if someone reaches out to you and tells you good morning or asks you how your day was
01:20:13.300it's really simple but just getting that text from somebody means a lot
01:20:19.140you know getting a phone call from somebody just checking in on you wanted to say hi
01:20:24.380means a lot calling your parents calling your grandparents just checking in and saying hi
01:20:31.940means a tremendous amount. I have to believe that that means a lot across the veil, especially when
01:20:39.060these people have been forgotten by a lot of the people they knew in life. Reaching out just to say
01:20:45.180hi and to have a kind word to one of your ancestors, I think that means a lot. I think
01:20:53.320reaching out, you know, making a small offering and saying something to one of our gods,
01:20:59.200that act in and of itself is meaningful, and it keeps that cycle of gifting alive,
01:21:05.500even if it's something really small and really simple. Those things are very important. Some
01:21:11.320people like to do that in the morning when they first wake up. Some people like to do that at
01:21:16.000night before they go to bed. Some people like to do both. But I encourage everybody to speak
01:21:22.720to their ancestors speak to their gods do it often
01:21:28.560sarah can you expand on the prison outreach program you are involved in with the wau
01:21:36.720um yes uh i i will note that my work with the wau is completely separate from the afa
01:21:45.440where the afa is my spiritualness my my religion um the wau is my sisterhood and part of my
01:21:54.640political belief system that is completely separate from the afa um one of the things that
01:22:02.720wau has been around for 35 odd years now and i have been a member for 20 years one of the
01:22:09.680biggest things we do is we have a prison outreach not really close to what lc's was because we don't
01:22:19.040actually go into prisons but we correspond we have a newsletter called behind the wire that
01:22:26.720has articles written by different prisoners and from our sisters on various subjects
01:22:33.920just so they have something to read inside um and this is actually how i first heard about
01:22:43.040elsie because a lot of these men that we would write to would would talk about elsie in the
01:22:49.280letters that they received from her and um i i guess i at that point in my life i didn't realize
01:22:58.240how important she would be to me later in life so i heard about her while she was alive
01:23:07.200and i could have met her and it's just something that i think of now and then but um
01:23:14.960again as i had mentioned earlier these these men and women behind bars are often forgotten
01:23:21.760but they are still our folk and and we do want the best for them as we do for all our folk
01:23:28.240next question uh matt you say there are some convicts you will not who will not work out
01:23:39.440when they get out are there convicts who you will not work with or bring into the afa upon release
01:23:45.940well yeah um so here's the thing it it becomes really challenging because we want all of our
01:23:55.380people to have a pathway to something better and to a connection with their gods. But there's
01:24:02.580obviously things that transgress that. If you are convicted for sexually molesting a child,
01:24:12.820you are broken to a degree that we cannot and will not let you be involved in the
01:24:17.220AustroFolk assembly. It's a danger to our children. It's a danger to our families.
01:24:23.140and once you've crossed that particular bridge there's there's not anything we can really do for
01:24:28.340you um there are some crimes and it all depends that are absolutely so heinous that no once you've
01:24:38.020done that we really don't want to be have anything to do with you um most of those situations that
01:24:46.660would fall in that category are segregated in the prisons that we would go to and we don't extend
01:24:52.580our prison outreach to those yards for the sex offenders that's not something we want to be
01:24:58.260involved in in any way um so most of that happens there as far as when they come out it depends um
01:25:06.900if the nature of their crime is something that we that if they continue with a level of criminality
01:25:13.860that's something that wouldn't warrant them being members of the afa in the first place
01:25:19.780then certainly we don't want them until those things are fixed we don't want anyone who's
01:25:26.660likely to be dangerous to our families or to our folk we don't want to introduce that around our
01:25:32.020around our children but some of the and again a lot of people end up being dirt bags they're
01:25:40.580in prison for a good reason lots but there's some really amazing people and some of my best friends
01:25:47.700that have had to go through there because of mistakes that they've made but have turned it
01:25:52.900into something amazing and wanted to really you know one of the things is you lose time and you
01:25:58.740lose so many things uh this is as i understand it again i've never been in that situation thankfully
01:26:05.220but a lot of people come out wanting to make everything better and wanting to make up for
01:26:10.820lost time by doing and by building for our folk and our gods and that's a really good thing that's
01:26:16.020a really beautiful thing and i wouldn't want to hold that back but yeah there are plenty of
01:26:19.820convicts who get out that i wouldn't want to work with and i wouldn't want to bring in the afa
01:26:23.660but those are individual situations and we don't typically do that by blanket rule other than
01:26:29.560If you have a consistency of violence towards women, violence towards children, violence towards elderly people, violence towards people that you can victimize, no, we don't want those people, obviously.
01:26:45.920But yeah, beyond those bounds, it is kind of a case-by-case basis that our leadership talks about.
01:26:52.300So James asks, I think he knows the answer to these questions. Are Elsie's writings available
01:27:00.400and will they be preserved? Sarah, what do you say? They are working on, James is working on
01:27:10.960preserving them. He is compiling them in a book and uploading them on a website so they're
01:27:18.660available for all people. He is missing a couple of the issues of the Odinus that he has been
01:27:26.440hunting down. And yep, that sometime soon, hopefully that'll be available for more people
01:27:36.760to be able to read her writing. You have to understand that she was typing this stuff out
01:27:41.820on a typewriter and then using a very, very old printing press to make copies of them all
01:27:48.280completely on her own without any help so a lot of these um they're they're off center they're
01:27:57.000very hard to scan because they go in different directions and it's been very interesting
01:28:04.360reading through all this history as we do this but it is a tedious long project but it is well
01:28:10.920worth it and in the end just to have everything together in one place available to everyone will
01:28:18.120be wonderful that's something james that i want to talk to you more about this weekend i think
01:28:23.320it's an amazing thing that you're doing and that's awesome and it follows right on with what i was
01:28:28.920saying earlier um there's a lot of conversation over in the side chat about dogma stuff we have
01:28:35.960a question that i'm going to get into that a little more on but please know i do see the side
01:28:40.040the side chat and i am going to address that here in a bit um next question from the king of cheese
01:28:48.120so sarah uh you've told us about how you came to the afa how did you get into paganism you said
01:28:55.240you worshiped uh rigged uh before where did it all start i was a roman catholic for 28 years
01:29:07.680And ever since I was a child, I've been kind of, for lack of a better word, sensitive to things with nature and to other things kind of on a supernatural level, as kooky as that sounds, without every understanding of what I was doing.
01:29:31.180And if anyone has ever been Roman Catholic, you know that it is a dull, dead religion that does not bring forth any joy.
01:29:44.320From that, I was a United Pentecostal for six years, which is a very lively religion.
01:29:54.000um a lot of hallelujahs and dancing and and stuff but it it all seems just kind of going through
01:30:03.300motions in an act and and the god that they talked about i couldn't connect with it i didn't feel like
01:30:11.620home so as i i i am i'm adopted through my father's side so when i started looking into
01:30:22.900things with my biological father i um did a dna test and
01:30:28.420he is almost fully irish and so as i was discovering more about ireland and certain
01:30:40.580people came into my life that that were actually from ireland i learned more about the magical
01:30:46.660side of ireland so i dealt kind of dwell into the druid stuff the the nature the
01:30:54.580a little bit of wiccan and some ancestral witchcraft type stuff
01:31:00.920which felt more to me but yet it wasn't complete um so my connection to bridget
01:31:11.980was was very intense and deep but not all-encompassing and finding more about
01:31:22.900ossature well actually odinism and wotanism at that time because it's going from from the
01:31:30.660the celtic irish stuff into um speaking with david lane and learning about wotanism and then
01:31:39.960ron mcvan with wodenism finding more about um odinism and then eventually with james coming
01:31:48.280to ossitrew and this is this is home ossitrew is home i i know it's the blood memory i know that
01:31:57.640that's the call but home is just the all encompassing of what to call it
01:32:04.280and and that's where i am at this point i'm just i'm home
01:32:08.800i love hearing you say that um that's what a lot of our people myself included feel
01:32:17.300and what we say it's it's not just a marketing thing our kind of our slogan is it's about roots
01:32:25.140it's about connections it's about coming home this is our home and this is our family and we
01:32:31.100really mean that and i know it you know it sounds whatever to folks that aren't a part of it but
01:32:37.340when you join the afa you feel like that or hopefully you do for doing it right um so nick's
01:32:44.940got that picture if he can throw that picture up this was at a time where a lot of folks were
01:32:51.260they were selling commemorative coins and t-shirts and all kind of stuff to try to
01:32:57.100raise money to help elsie i don't know if you can make that any bigger james but it's kind
01:33:02.300of little or not james i'm sorry nick it's kind of little um anyways that's a steve in the 90s with
01:33:12.540the with the shirt on there um i think it says i can't even read it because it's tiny so i gotta
01:33:18.620pull it back up on my phone um yeah it says house true it's the odinus logo of her newsletter
01:33:26.380that she had says lc christensen defense fund uh we stand up for our own and that's that's
01:33:34.460a way that so many people felt at the time there we go now he's got it enlarged we appreciate our
01:33:40.620producer uh nick rice he does an awesome job for us every week this week is no exception
01:33:47.260um so king of cheese says uh matt how have your family uh been doing i ask every week but i forgot
01:33:58.000to ask about them they're doing great um you know mandy's mandy's got some kind of cramp in her back
01:34:03.460right now so she's not doing doing doing that great but no we're all doing really really well
01:34:09.420aubrey is in the face where she says no to everything whether she means no or not it's
01:34:15.720just know all the time and she'll growl it, but she'll still do what we do. And then if you tickle
01:34:21.220her, she'll start laughing and it breaks the grumpy face. So she's doing good. We're all doing
01:34:27.100awesome. Three is challenging, but what's cool is it seems like you watch her learn something new
01:34:35.000every single day, new word, a new, you know, knowing how to do something on her own, knowing
01:34:41.940how to the other okay so something simple and stupid like those little cuties the little the
01:34:48.100little oranges she went i watched in 24 hours her go from not having any clue what to do to watching
01:34:57.380me do it and kind of break it open with her teeth and then smush it and whatever now she can open
01:35:03.860those like a pro and she's awesome and i watched her figure that out in one day and it sounds
01:35:07.620ridiculous parents out there will probably understand what i'm saying but it's really
01:35:11.780cool to watch them you know in real time learn how to do stuff that's really neat um
01:35:22.420i'm checking because i think i may have to reload on something here in a second
01:35:29.620i am going to click reload but first i'm going to read this question i'll be answering this
01:35:34.260while i do my refreshing because i can multitask like that i understand else okay this is from
01:35:40.260michael um same guy who gave us five bucks earlier we appreciate that uh i understand that elsie was
01:35:45.780a strasserite a naz bowl in her younger days did she ever change from that myself i am a national
01:35:52.900socialist and believe that the german fuhrer adolf hitler was a great man um sarah did elsie's
01:36:00.820political position change as she advanced in years i do not know there is her writings
01:36:11.140were always focused on the odinism aspect in later life um i haven't read anything in interviews
01:36:19.140or the order her publication or any of the other things she's written on the political question
01:37:43.900And we can't agree on a lot of history because we view it through our modern lens, but during the time in which it occurred, there was a lot of other things to consider.
01:37:56.540And I think we were in a phase at that time where a lot of the elites and the monarchies of the time had become completely flaccid and effete and overgrown and weren't meeting the needs of their folk in a lot of different ways.
01:38:19.160And I think there was a lot of reactions to that that were extreme.
01:38:23.240And I say that at no point would would I support Strasserism or or Bolshevism.
01:38:30.320But a lot of people at that time were trying to figure out, hey, what's going to work here?
01:38:38.380And so people were were flailing for something new and for something different.
01:38:42.900One thing that is very important to the AFA is that leader principle that was so important at the time on the opposite end of where else he was at was the idea of individual leadership taking responsibility for their departments, the areas that they had control over, and the buck stopping with them as opposed to bloated committees and different bureaucracies.
01:39:09.500And that was that's really important to the AFA. But honestly, times are really different. And you also have to consider that her relationship to German National Socialism is different because she was in an occupied country that wasn't, you know, part of pre-war Germany.
01:39:33.460um that makes that outlook probably look very different than it did if she was in you know
01:39:40.740berlin uh her being in denmark made her situation a little bit different
01:39:45.300and i'm not sure how that developed as she grew up i wish i knew a little bit more
01:39:50.100um next question i have is what about the bloat what about the blood sacrifice
01:51:11.120And late at night when it's dark, Matt will be doing an Odin's Bloat,
01:51:15.300which is very, every year it has been intense and emotional and just incredible.
01:51:23.500There's a hill we walk up that's lit by candles.
01:51:28.000And in the darkness, you have the fire in front of you
01:51:31.840And it is just an intense thing. And I think you'll really enjoy that, Sterling.
01:51:37.860The next day, there will be breakfast and folk builder James Alt will be doing another talk on Elsie.
01:51:45.840And then after that, Githia Katie Erickson will be doing the bloat to Elsie.
01:51:51.980Every year that we have had Elsie Fest, it is always a female that does the bloat to Elsie.
01:51:58.520They are always emotional, and she is honored, which I think, hopefully, she's happy with it, but I think she's honored very well with that.
01:52:08.140The very first year, it was Githia Anaplord, and at the exact same time she was doing that, we had a bunch of AFA members up in Canada at her resting place did a bloat, and that was pretty powerful to have that connection.
01:52:26.020um last year it was githia um brandy did the blow to lc and like i said this year it's githia katie
01:52:34.420um after that there's a another speaker there's lunch and then the viking games which will have
01:52:43.540a hammer toss maybe the camber thing if we can find a log and there's a a device called an
01:52:54.180atlatl there is the hammer toss the atlatl uh axe throwing and two other ones that i can't
01:53:04.900remember right now and during that time i will have the kids with me and we will be doing a
01:53:10.300kid's bloat and a kid's sumbo and a kid's craft because the viking games tend to take a long time
01:53:18.140And after that, lunch, or maybe lunch is before that.
01:55:07.380okay so i knew this one would come up i hope you're prepared for this uh sarah five favorite
01:55:13.060books and your favorite saga okay i am prepared for this we're going to start with
01:55:23.460starship troopers which is is an awesome classic
01:55:27.940the federal siege at ruby ridge by the weavers which is an amazing firsthand account of what
01:55:38.960our government was capable of doing this is a recent book that i have found it's called the
01:55:44.940healing home and it's by christina taylor she is married to someone that i i consider
01:55:52.380um Matt would you say he's he's one of those pioneers of Austin True also Robert uh yeah he
01:56:00.220was certainly he and he is the most interesting man I have ever spoken to hands down he has
01:56:07.240definitely lived a life and he'll tell you about it for hours yes I I enjoy talking with him but
01:56:15.960his wife wrote this book. They have a son with autism and it uses spirituality to help moms
01:56:24.760of other special needs to find themselves in the middle of all this, what they do. So it's
01:56:31.080called The Healing Home by her. And one, two, three, four. Northern Mysteries and Magic by
01:56:41.260Freya Aswin. It is one of my favorite books for knowledge on ruins. And Project Ruin by Troy
01:56:52.220Wisehart. Another really good one on all the different types of ruins and how to dwell deeper
01:56:58.940in them. And let's see, that's five. And my favorite saga would have to be the Volsung.
01:57:06.880just because it is all our segas are really cool but this one it's like a soap opera there's so
01:57:15.580much stuff going on in this it is it is incredible a man man sleeps with his sister has a baby with
01:57:21.720him a mom kills her children because they're they're weak it just it reminds me of a modern
01:57:28.100day soap opera and you learn a lot from it absolutely um no i think the volks volsung saga
01:57:37.700is great i think the nibbling lead which is the high medieval german telling of the same saga
01:57:46.580is really interesting and comparing the two is is awesome those are definitely some of my favorites
01:57:51.460as well um i didn't know that uh the tailors had written a book about that um that's really
01:57:59.860interesting i want to learn more about that um shay asks any siggerheim updates will there be
01:58:08.900drinking water or any facilities present as soon as july also wondered what the heroes would be
01:58:15.140represented at uh freeshoff and tiershoff so i am told that there will be drinking water available
01:58:25.700by july we'll see if there's not we'll have a bunch of bottled water and stuff for people to use
01:58:32.420it's going to be pretty rustic not going to lie we don't have our facilities there yet but what
01:58:36.820we are going to do is get a big pavilion tent set up where the great hall will eventually be
01:58:44.180and we're also going to get a big tent set up where tiershoff will eventually be
01:58:49.540and we'll use those there will be tables and chairs we encourage people to bring chairs as
01:58:56.420well if we can there's also we'll figure out um some porta potties i think we'll try to do like
01:59:03.460two porta potties just in case that'll be on site though for sure and other than that it's going to
01:59:12.020be camping or figuring out your own accommodations and that's that's factored in uh shane knows what
01:59:19.540i'm talking about though because he was one of the first people out there with us when we when
01:59:24.500we first got it when we had our first event there in july or in january and so yeah that's that's
01:59:30.900what we're going to have on site we're going to be doing you know potluck kind of food there for
01:59:35.940saturday and we'll get that that all figured but yeah it's gonna it's gonna be rough it's gonna
01:59:42.820be rustic camping for folks that want to so please dress and pack accordingly but it's gonna be
01:59:49.620awesome and i'm really really looking forward to it uh one of the big things we're looking forward
01:59:54.580to do is uh get out there and do some work on the cemetery that's there so it turns out um there's
02:00:02.980a very old family cemetery that's on the property and it actually has a revolutionary war veteran
02:00:09.220who's who's buried there so we're going to try to take care of that as we do with you know with
02:00:14.980our stuff we want to take care of that site and repair anything we need to repair replace things
02:00:20.420that might need to be replaced and i plan to bring my mother's ashes and her tombstones already down
02:00:26.820there in the state of tennessee we'll get that over there and i'd like to put her her ashes to
02:00:31.540rest there as well um and the last question that we have currently
02:00:43.940how do we participate in the lc bloat from afar and what time and date sarah what can
02:00:50.260you tell us about it um the bloat at lc fest will be around 11 a.m central standard time
02:00:59.700Elsie fast tends to run pretty close on time, but then some things do happen. So it'll be around that time. So wherever you are, whether it's just you, yourself, or if you're around a group of people, just raise a horn to Elsie or have a little ritual to her.
02:01:16.640I see James in the chat suggested calling upon Odin and raising a horn to the folk mother.
02:01:24.000Take a picture of it, share it with some way with either me and James, and we'll put it in the video that we'll put together for Elsie Fest.
02:04:07.720But yeah, their connection with the folk mother is very important to them.
02:04:12.400and they have a really cool and you can find this on I don't know the address of it paganplaces.com
02:04:22.900maybe Nick can figure that out before the end of our broadcast I don't know but they're a place
02:04:27.660that lists our Hoffs as well and they have a really neat like stone ritual area that they
02:04:33.780have set up and a really cool um stone like altar thing for the folk mother that has the
02:04:41.500odinus logo on it it's really neat uh it sounds like go ahead they also have a facebook page
02:04:48.300that is incredibly active and a very beautiful website um obviously it's in spanish but you can
02:04:55.100translate it there you go and you know i don't officially endorse it because i don't know
02:05:00.380stuff about it i always see over on the side i did in fact neglect to answer all of your questions
02:05:05.900shay i apologize about that um so phrasehoff i don't know that's the discussion we're gonna
02:05:15.260have to have with phrasehoff leadership when we get closer to getting that happening um
02:05:22.940i know who it will not be it will not be a thaneric the king of the goths because that will be at
02:05:29.420tiershoff um and i think that hits the last of our questions sarah you've been aware of all we've
02:05:40.540talked about tonight and all the questions that have been asked what else do people need to know
02:05:46.140about the folk mother elsie christensen sometimes when we talk about the pioneers of the past um
02:05:55.900we think of them as as something far away in in the past we forget that they are real people
02:06:04.640and i think it's very important especially with elsie but all our heroes all the people we do
02:06:12.240remember in states too that they were real flesh and blood people just like your relatives just
02:06:17.740like your mom and dad and they should be treated and honored as such and i think that is a very
02:06:23.580important thing to remember as we as we talk about them and we speak their name out loud
02:06:31.260that that is important they are real and they were humans and and they're just like you and me
02:06:37.980so it's really i'm really glad that you said that um we have another question that popped up and
02:06:45.260we'll get to it but in also true we have people that are obsessed with history be it viking history
02:06:58.860or history of different time periods this draws a lot of people that are very fascinated by history
02:07:04.380It is imperative that when we study history, we realize that these people are real people.
02:07:17.460When we celebrate acts of violence, we need to remember this was violence inflicted on actual human beings.
02:07:26.360when we celebrate warriors they felt the same fears and the same hurt and the same struggle
02:07:37.360that any modern warrior would face they certainly had a different social context for it but these
02:07:45.160things are hard to do we look at heroes and the further back in time it's as if they're characters
02:07:50.320They're not. They're actual people who have the same pieces that you and I have the same brain that you and I have different cultural context.
02:08:04.320Absolutely. But they went through the same struggles that we did.
02:08:11.320did. Their acts of greatness and their acts of heroism that earned them that place of honor
02:08:17.700aren't because they are superhuman. It's because they are human and they willed themselves to rise
02:08:27.240to super levels. They went through the same struggles that we all face and they were able
02:08:34.320to overcome. But realizing that and realizing the difficulty that is for a real flesh and blood
02:08:43.080person, as opposed to a pretend hero, is essential. Their heroism isn't just in the fact that they were
02:08:53.500amazing. It was in the fact that they were regular and chose to become amazing through hard work,
02:09:02.640through dedication through boldness through through whatever method they ascended to something
02:09:10.000beyond what you and i are because of their willpower because of their determination to do
02:09:17.600so and that's what we're celebrating yes um and we are all capable of that because you have to
02:09:24.960remember as you're living your life every day we are our future ancestors someday that could be us
02:09:32.320they're talking about maybe not on that magnitude but we are important to the ones that come after
02:09:38.480us because we will be the ancestors you know hell maybe maybe of that magnitude
02:09:47.440don't sell yourself short that's the thing
02:19:33.100i have no idea what that is uh shay but i'm curious to hear about it um blocus is also
02:19:40.380fun again another game i've never heard of sarah what's your favorite board game
02:19:44.460i enjoy playing trivial pursuit um we used to play a lot of monopoly in our household with
02:19:54.220the older children but that got banned from the house because that board got tossed across
02:20:00.220the room too many times so i like trivial pursuit it's good game um i also really like this game
02:20:09.180called taboo and it's one of those you know you've get a you're trying to get your partner to guess
02:20:15.900a word and you've got certain words under it you can't use it's kind of like pictionary but with
02:20:20.940words i'm all about it but i get really intense um i feel bad because me and my friends used to
02:20:28.380get together and have board game night all the time me and my buddy adam we would just dominate
02:20:34.140if we were on a team we would destroy people but man on taboo i don't care about anybody's feelings
02:20:39.260i go hard i get the i get people to answer the questions but i may not make a lot of
02:20:43.420friends on it because i go hard on the taboo um and i think that officially is our last question
02:20:52.140of the night sarah thank you so much for joining us i am looking forward to seeing you here
02:21:00.380probably not till friday morning but uh yeah i'm very much looking forward to seeing you
02:21:05.740thank you so much for coming on and talking about the folk mother but beyond that thank
02:21:10.700you so very much for honoring elsie and being such a driving force in that we really appreciate it
02:21:22.140So I get a rando thing here that everybody does need to remember, please like and share and subscribe to all these things.
02:21:33.160It affects all the algorithms and all the stuff on whatever you watch this on, whatever you hear this on.
02:21:40.000If you hear this as a podcast on Spotify after Friday, or if you're watching this on Odyssey or YouTube or Entropy or VK or Twitter, all those little likes and shares and subscribes and stuff, those really help our algorithm.
02:22:01.180they help our our reach to get out there to folks that may want to hear this may want to listen and
02:22:07.900and learn from this or participate with this next time so please do those things
02:22:14.060it's been fantastic to talk with all of you i hope you guys have an amazing night
02:22:20.140and until next time heal the gods heal the folk
02:22:24.220hail the afa and remember victory never sleeps