Asatru Folk Assembly - 6⧸18⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 154 - Sæmundr and Snorri

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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 We'll be right back.

00:03:00.000 hello and welcome to another exciting edition of victory never sleeps

00:03:17.040 it's good to see everybody tonight um we have swan joining us again we got two spawn episodes

00:03:25.840 in a row due to the the uh birth of the guest we would have had last week's first child so the

00:03:35.280 savages are getting used to life with their with their baby girl and me and swan are gonna have to

00:03:43.120 find things to entertain you with today so we are hopeful that you guys will enjoy the show

00:03:48.240 taking a little bit of a break we're at a point now in our um

00:03:51.440 um lore on our progress through the eddas that uh and the reason that we chose to do the aside

00:04:02.960 of going through the bolsunga saga is that the remaining poems in the uh in the edda are

00:04:11.360 all based around that as the core understanding that people have they're different lays about

00:04:17.120 different characters and different happenings within that story so everyone needs to be familiar

00:04:22.340 with it but I figured because that was a seven you know a seven part episode with you guys that we

00:04:28.580 would take a little bit of a break today and not go through lore specifically but rather go through

00:04:38.540 you know about lore where does our lore come from how do we get our lore and hopefully

00:04:45.020 demystify something that I think a lot of people play a game of telephone with. You hear somebody

00:04:53.460 say something once and they say it to somebody else and just kind of take it to be true and

00:04:58.340 repeat stuff without really doing a full analysis of why we might think that or what we might know.

00:05:07.320 So tonight I'd like to talk a little bit about authority that goes with things, a little bit

00:05:14.580 about the source of how divine information comes to us, and specifically to talk about

00:05:23.740 two men that were very fundamental in us getting the lore that we have to this day.

00:05:30.860 And that's Simonder Froethi and Snorri Sturluson. I think that most people might be,

00:05:40.420 a lot of the audience might be familiar with Snorri. I think less are familiar with Simon Dirt.

00:05:48.760 But again, like I say, both men are instrumental in us having preserved what we have today.

00:05:56.080 Before we get in the heart of the matter, I would like to talk about a couple of things. We are

00:06:03.520 a little over one week away from Midsummer at Odenshof. We're going to be celebrating the

00:06:11.200 30th anniversary of the House True Folk Assembly. It is going to be spectacular. We're very excited

00:06:17.560 about it. We have, I think, somewhere around 130 people registered so far. So it's going to be a

00:06:30.680 big event. We would love to see everybody there. It's at Odenshoff in Brownsville, California.

00:06:36.460 If you can make it, we would love to see you there. I'd love to meet you. And, you know,

00:06:41.320 if I've already met you and haven't seen you in a while, we'd like to get a chance to catch up. So

00:06:45.980 that's going to be June the 27th through the 29th, like I said, at Odenshoff in Brownsville,

00:06:51.740 California. One month later at Sigurheim in Jackson County, Tennessee, we are going to be

00:06:59.920 celebrating Sigur Bloat or Victory Bloat. It's going to be going on from July the 25th through

00:07:06.640 the 27th. Looking forward to seeing everybody there. It is an amazing place. It's someplace

00:07:13.160 that is going to be extremely important for the AFA's future. We've got a lot of big plans there

00:07:18.280 and we'd love to see you guys there. If you can make it there, again, Fawn and myself as well as

00:07:24.640 producer Nick are going to be on site. And yeah, we'd love to make your acquaintance. So if you

00:07:29.700 can get out there, please do. And then one month after that, in August, we have Frey Faxi at

00:07:36.740 Baldershof, August the 22nd through the 24th. That is at Baldershof in Murdoch, Minnesota.

00:07:46.000 It's always an amazing event with some fantastic people at a spectacular and beautiful hoff to

00:07:52.340 Lord Balder. Please join us for that one as well. I would love to see you at any or all of these

00:07:58.080 events so now is the time make your plans now and you know i know that increasingly these things

00:08:07.360 happen closer and closer to our membership but it's still a long haul for some folks

00:08:12.800 it is worth it it's always worth it people that make the effort and show up always attest to how

00:08:20.160 worth it it is so it may seem like a long way but it's it's important and you will be rewarded

00:08:27.200 I'm confident if you, if you go.

00:08:30.660 I remember one time guys coming from Texas up to Pennsylvania for winter

00:08:38.000 nights. Amazing. That amazing that they did it. And then they, they just,

00:08:43.600 it was a whole adventure in their entire life of traveling together and making

00:08:50.200 the trip and then being with everyone. It was,

00:08:54.540 they still talk about it today.

00:08:57.200 Yeah, it's fantastic.

00:09:05.100 Sorry guys, there's some kind of a software update and my little camera is too smart for

00:09:10.260 its own good and I don't know how to turn off the little auto tracking.

00:09:13.680 So it's trying to follow my head around as I move and it adjusts.

00:09:18.980 So bear with me, I will turn that off just as soon as I figure out how to with the new

00:09:23.080 configuration um with that also something to keep in mind uh this show is very much

00:09:36.680 question driven from the audience it's very conversational in nature if this is your first

00:09:41.000 time joining us so we encourage any and all of your of your questions tonight we'd like to address

00:09:50.920 certainly all of those. And yeah, that's really going to dictate a lot of the flow of how our

00:09:57.540 conversation goes this evening. I suppose a good place to set the scene is what things

00:10:13.600 are typically referred to when we talk about the lore. I think those of you that might be

00:10:20.400 new to Ausatru, you will hear the term, you know, lore very frequently. I think there is a very

00:10:29.820 broad definition of lore, kind of the entire corpus of archaeological and

00:10:40.560 ethnological studies in the ancient world that refer to Germanic peoples.

00:10:50.400 Um, the early things are, you know, a handful of different Greek and Roman accounts.

00:10:59.860 There is an account from, uh, Ibn Fadlan, an Arab, that's kind of, I guess, the most

00:11:06.620 diverse account.

00:11:08.500 Um, and then we deal with a lot of Scandinavian material, uh, from the Old Norse period.

00:11:18.180 and that's where we get most of what i think people would generally refer to when they talk

00:11:27.320 about the lore i think you also get uh you know i i would include jordan's history and deeds of

00:11:37.080 the goths and saxo grammaticus writing about the history of the danes and then you have

00:11:45.080 various scandinavian authors and i think that you get the most distilled version and i guess

00:11:52.200 the greatest abundance of sagas from the icelanders what you also get is the eddas

00:12:01.100 uh the the prose and poetic edda and they are the they are the meat of where we get our high

00:12:09.900 mythology, where we get the stories of our gods, where we get that presented in the most

00:12:14.960 complete form that we have to work from. And so I think that there is also modern lore. I think

00:12:24.300 there's also modern material by folks that practice Ausatru in the last 50 years. It's

00:12:29.700 very valuable. But when people talk about the lore, the Eddas are usually the biggest thing

00:12:35.200 they talk about, followed by the sagas, and then bits and pieces of, like I mentioned,

00:12:41.900 the different, you know, archaeological and sociological work of scholars, be they ancient

00:12:47.860 or modern. Today, I think a focus that we're going to talk about is the two Eddas and the

00:12:58.920 men that put those together and kind of set the scene for what that world looked like.

00:13:06.260 Svon, could you bring people into the world of

00:13:11.180 late 11th century and 12th century Iceland?

00:13:19.420 Oh, yeah.

00:13:22.220 I was just, the fact that we're talking about this and when you propose this at such short

00:13:28.500 notice that it was just like, Hey, you want to do this? And I was just like, yes, this is like

00:13:34.000 bursting. But, um, yeah, no, for, for, uh, as you had said, when you were talking about

00:13:40.560 the continental European lore of the Goths, of the Lombards, of, um, the Rus and all of this,

00:13:49.840 the best way that I've always kind of organized it is pre Linden's farm, post Linden's farm.

00:13:57.080 And the only reason why I use Linden's Farm, the attack on Linden's Farm, is because that's something that I think even people who are not ousted through know about.

00:14:07.620 They are aware of the attack of the Vikings when they first showed up and the English were making poems about the Northmen.

00:14:18.340 And ironically, of course, it does highlight, too, the great loss, how far away the Anglo-Saxons had fallen, at least surface level, from their native religion.

00:14:34.300 Um, so I generally look at the, it's like 793, um, before that's continental. And then you have

00:14:45.680 the Nordic period that carries a lot of that. And that goes past the Nordic period to what you just

00:14:54.100 asked me to explain. In the year 1000, Iceland is established. And it's established in a very

00:15:07.680 unique way. Most of the people that went to Iceland went because they were avoiding

00:15:15.000 Harold the Fairhair, who we spoke about in Eil Skalagrimsson's saga.

00:15:24.040 So one of the things that they wanted to do was not create a monarchy, but to create a

00:15:33.020 collaborated group under a law. And then the Gothar would memorize the law and guide the people and

00:15:41.580 make sure everyone was following the rules, and there was courts to be held, and so on and so

00:15:47.260 forth. One of the big things that was going on, obviously, is that throughout mainland Scandinavia,

00:15:54.400 Christianity was spreading, but that's actually a misnomer. See, it wasn't Christianity.

00:16:02.800 The people that spread Christianity were very much Viking or Northmen warriors, and they saw an opportunity. They saw a future in which they could collaborate and consolidate their power under this new religion.

00:16:24.540 So it wasn't the religion didn't spread. The churches weren't out there converting people. It was warriors that were utilizing this. And they did it quite violently.

00:16:38.620 And so the folks in Iceland saw this and they decided, OK, instead of us converting by war and we're going to have a big fight, let's hold a vote.

00:16:57.260 And the vote was that on Sunday, you go to the church of the God of Rome or the God of Israel.

00:17:07.480 And then when you're at home, whoever you honor, that's your own business.

00:17:14.840 And that was one of the most diplomatic ways in which Christianity was accepted.

00:17:22.220 And it ironically, too, was accepted in a non-Christian sense because the head of Iceland at the time went under the cloak.

00:17:31.920 He, in essence, performed an act of seether in order to get the guidance he needed in order to proceed on from here.

00:17:43.520 And what that was was the compromise between the two.

00:17:47.560 Now, ultimately, though, propaganda and a lot of things happened in Iceland to where the old faith was, again, demonized.

00:17:59.840 And it really depended on how the church looked at the old religion.

00:18:05.400 And we're going to talk about that today with the Adas, because the demonization of the gods was not fully ramped up yet.

00:18:17.380 And I would argue not even fully ramped up during the time of Snorri.

00:18:22.520 I think that he was more concerned with the political power of the Norwegian church specifically.

00:18:30.140 But we'll get into that later.

00:18:33.240 Or about his prologue.

00:18:34.700 And as some people who've read it, I know there's probably a lot of folks here who have read it and they know what I'm referring to.

00:18:42.420 But I'm going to have to try to phrase it, too, for people that might not have read it.

00:18:47.360 So the transition from the old faith to the new faith was not one of sweeping violence.

00:18:57.780 It was not one of marriage and indebting families and clans or putting them in debt through war or through marriage.

00:19:14.160 it was done softly. And in doing so, it kept a tradition that was the skaldic poetry of the age,

00:19:29.000 of the last, I would even argue, 500 years. And it had changed very little. The concept was,

00:19:37.900 Why write things down? You have a storyteller, you have a poet, and then you have your gothar who are often both one and the same. And, you know, you would gather at the Hoff, you would gather at prominent houses for holy tides, and you would hear the stories and the stories would be passed down to their apprentices. And it didn't change a lot.

00:20:01.320 So, when Icelanders took to writing things down, it wasn't such a stretch for them. The usage of the Latin alphabet was adopted. And this is one good thing that certainly, and I bring this up a lot, and people get mad at me for saying this, but there are benefits to the coming of Christianity.

00:20:28.460 And I have been vocal about the violence in Scandinavia, and many of our heroes died at the hands of Christians. But I can also look at some of the benefits and the honings. And one of them is that writing came to Scandinavia. 0.98

00:20:46.240 And so the stories were being spoken while simultaneously they were being written down and there were smatterings here and there.

00:20:59.080 So what we have to realize is from the year 1000, it's almost 200 years when Snorri compiles a lot of the stories and then adds his own onto it.

00:21:19.380 and i think a lot of people don't realize that and to put that into context it's like us now

00:21:27.060 taking manuscripts from 1775 and compiling them together and there will perhaps even take a

00:21:38.020 little bit of work to unify them but you want to keep them as authentic as possible and then

00:21:46.580 And basically, it would be like me flexing and saying, I am so well versed in these 1775

00:21:55.700 manuscripts that I'm going to add this addition and I'm going to explain to future poets

00:22:03.140 why our ancestors were doing this, why our ancestors were utilizing these things, because

00:22:09.600 Snorri had a great connection to a lot of the lore that is completely lost now to us.

00:22:18.680 But in between the foundation of Iceland and Snorri, we have to talk about Simon der Froði.

00:22:31.840 Simon der Froði is awesome.

00:22:35.400 He is a wizard.

00:22:39.000 He was speculated to study in an ancient medieval school called the Black School, which was a mountainous cave system in the Carpathian Mountains where the devil led the classes.

00:22:58.000 and or or that they they received their works through holes in the wall so that they were

00:23:04.740 like living and scholarly writing things down and then he magically came back to iceland i mean

00:23:12.740 there's a lot to talk about simon and a lot of that is is again it's the legend and that's when

00:23:20.100 we start to see nordic and i guess medieval magic starting to overlay with each other

00:23:27.240 because he goes to a school that's supposed to be run by the devil.

00:23:31.980 But then he travels back to Iceland with shape-shifting,

00:23:39.940 which is, I think, more a Nordic or just a Germanic sense of legend.

00:23:48.780 So you do see a lot of dabbling back and forth.

00:23:51.320 But what really is more important for people to understand

00:23:55.100 is that he formulated the original Codex Regius,

00:24:01.500 or he did the Nore Kanungatol, the story of the Norwegian kings,

00:24:13.720 and that is what Snorri ultimately pulled a lot of his stuff from

00:24:20.080 and made sense of it, honed it, if you will, put it into a, he purposely brought it together.

00:24:30.520 And I think he had a very, very legitimate reason. And I'm, you know, I was thinking too,

00:24:35.560 we will certainly go over that. I mean, there was many reasons, but there was a really good reason

00:24:41.660 why. He was ramping this up and making sure that Icelandic poetry was about to be brought forth

00:24:50.680 on the world stage, or at least the Scandinavian stage, in authenticity. And so that's kind of

00:24:59.560 the spot between the founding of Iceland

00:25:04.840 and Snorri Stutlarsson himself,

00:25:10.640 a very enigmatic character,

00:25:12.700 and it depends on who you talk to

00:25:14.460 or what their opinions are

00:25:18.400 as to whether or not he was an Icelandic nationalist

00:25:20.980 or whether he was a shill for the Norwegian king.

00:25:26.580 You hear it kind of both,

00:25:28.040 And I'm very neutral on him in relation because I ultimately believe he was a part in the machinations of the greatest king, Lord Odin.

00:25:44.060 But I think that's more like end of show kind of summations.

00:25:48.680 But, yeah, I think that it's also worth noting that a lot of the stories that came to Saimander and also Snorri, their structure is older than themselves.

00:26:06.260 So, the writing system, again, using that analogy I had before, if we were talking about things in the 1700s, but the writing system or traditions, and specifically poetry, going all the way back to the 1500s, 1400s.

00:26:30.160 And poetry, one of the benefits of poetry versus writing is that its structure keeps it longer without any physical copy.

00:26:46.860 It's like having strict rules on sounding and changing them is extremely hard and extremely noticeable.

00:27:00.160 If you go against the poetic laws and go against the poetic meters, it's very easy to see that somebody's been editing them.

00:27:13.500 And that's another big important thing that we need to consider when we talk about Snorri in relation to the lore because of his drive built on poetics.

00:27:26.340 But yeah, that's to answer just your question about from the year 1000 to Snorri is, you know, is 1200s, it's 250 years or so from the foundation.

00:27:40.740 And again, a lot of the stories that we gain, the way that the words and the poems themselves are constructed lends to an understanding that a lot of them were probably comprised in 800 or just before 1000.

00:28:02.040 So 800 to 1000.

00:28:05.460 So, that said, um, so guys, you may be aware, as Svon said earlier, this was kind of a

00:28:29.100 So, quick topic we decided on, so figuring out the best ways to piece out something really

00:28:36.900 big.

00:28:46.360 How?

00:28:51.080 All right, this is the background in which we find the written material of

00:28:59.100 lore that would come to be known as the Ediths. Can you tell folks, I guess, let's focus in

00:29:08.340 on the biography and understanding of Simondr. For anybody who doesn't know, Simondr Frohdy

00:29:17.640 is like Simondr, the learned, silent, the scholar.

00:29:22.980 Simon the wise or Simon the learned. Yeah, you want me to kind of just

00:29:36.780 tell people who he is and Nick if you can throw up his cool statue.

00:29:41.340 so back then in iceland there's a statue oh wait i want to see everybody look i don't know if they

00:29:52.940 can this is actually on the site or in the area of the institute that he founded at the time um

00:30:05.580 Yeah, it is, as Scandinavians often do, this is kind of an interesting modern style that's very clean, but it's of him clubbing a seal with a book, and Svan will get to what the seal illustrates in his story here.

00:30:29.120 Yeah. So it's. He. Simon, there is a scholar of in Iceland and we're going to go back to, I guess, Iceland or Icelanders, especially in the grand stage of things.

00:30:49.120 I know people were there were some Internet goobers talking about, oh, you know, they think they're so whatever with their with their Iceland or talking about me.

00:31:02.180 And I'm half Icelandic, but that was kind of a thing even back then when they had the, after a couple, about 150 years after the conversion or the establishment of Iceland,

00:31:20.320 Icelanders were kind of known for being chronological writers of history and or speaking.

00:31:33.620 And so I don't know what it is about islands in a sense.

00:31:38.120 Like there's skaldic tradition in Iceland and say poetic and musical tradition in like Ireland.

00:31:45.980 So I'm going to interject.

00:31:47.500 You said you don't know what it is about islands.

00:31:50.320 this is a thing that i've mentioned on the broadcast a number of times but all right so

00:31:58.240 our loyal audience that listens regularly please be aware that a lot of folks don't watch regularly

00:32:07.680 and might not know some of the things so if i repeat myself uh grant me the the credit that

00:32:13.840 it's it's my advancing age or that i'm speaking to an audience that maybe hears it for the first

00:32:20.400 time but this is really important wait a minute there's a concept called you are also old

00:32:31.680 you can tell by the gray in your beard purely circumstance so somebody random aside because

00:32:38.560 we do stream of consciousness on this program um some of you might wonder how come in the

00:32:44.080 winter time i have a beard and in the summer i don't it all came out of the genesis when i

00:32:49.520 started and just kind of curious used to be i kept a short beard all year long then i shaved

00:32:56.800 it off because i got tired of it then a couple of years went by and i'm and i don't know just

00:33:01.360 got curious and let it start growing in but i noticed it's getting gray in my beard and so

00:33:06.080 I always kind of look forward to every fall. I stop shaving on the fall equinox and I resume

00:33:14.000 shaving. I mean, I trim it or whatever, keep my beard trimmed, but I resume, you know, being clean

00:33:19.260 shaven on the spring equinox. And every year I look forward to seeing how much more gray is coming in

00:33:25.420 and a little bit more every year. So that said, what's this thing about islands?

00:33:33.180 there is a i guess there's two points i'd like to cover here before i get back to

00:33:40.460 swan's telling of the life and times of simon or frody so there's a concept called the zealotry

00:33:48.860 of the fringe that we see with cultures that um when there's a lot of migration

00:33:55.820 we see that as a culture spreads out over distance the far edges maintain the tradition of the

00:34:06.100 culture in a very particular and special way because they are further removed from the sights

00:34:15.960 sound and ever presence of those things of their homeland so they cherish those things in a really

00:34:25.220 special way those stories and legends and poetry and those cultural things that are mobile they

00:34:38.020 preserve those because that's their piece of home that they take with them

00:34:44.900 so the further you see the migration of a people you have this zealotry of the fringe

00:34:49.700 where the people on the frontier are very connected with their roots very connected with

00:34:56.420 where they're come from because they bond with and forge their identity around those things

00:35:02.500 it's very easy when you are in a location and your parents were there and your grandparents

00:35:09.220 were there and everybody who's ever been in your they've all been there since the dawn of time

00:35:13.300 to get very complacent. And I think we all do this to a different degree. Sociologically,

00:35:21.060 you see this over the course of generations or even longer, but we see it within our own lives.

00:35:27.960 Often, if you live a place for a long time, when you have people from the outside that come and

00:35:31.780 visit, they're amazed by all of these things. We all tend to take things for granted when those

00:35:37.580 things are around us. I grew up in Alaska and, you know, all the super cool who's and

00:35:44.540 ah's that people have about Alaskan stuff. Yeah, I enjoyed those things or those were

00:35:49.520 cool things. But that was just Tuesday. That was, you know, just what what was. But you'd

00:35:57.660 have tourists that wait their whole lives to go visit this amazing place and are blown

00:36:02.840 away by every element of it to where those of us that are from there, not in the same way because

00:36:10.020 we're surrounded by that. It has become normal and fades into the background. So this idea of

00:36:16.120 the zealotry of the fringe is really important when you get culture pushed to its edges. It's

00:36:23.280 the same reason that Iran and Ireland are named land of the Aryans, because those are kind of

00:36:30.360 the furthest edges of Aryan migration until, you know, 1492. So what we see, if you look at the

00:36:41.440 same distance, just about that same distance away, you have Iceland. And

00:36:46.680 it's interesting, linguistically, modern Icelandic is mutually intelligible to Old Norse. It's

00:36:58.380 Exactly the same as Old Norse in a lot of ways. And in the ways that it deviates, they're small enough that it's said that, you know, a modern Icelander could talk to a, you know, to a Norwegian Viking from 900 and they could have a conversation.

00:37:14.400 Their points of reference might be different, but linguistically, they could have a fluid conversation.

00:37:20.980 You don't see that same continuity even in other Scandinavian language groups that are all derived from Old Norse.

00:37:31.760 Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are all very different because they haven't as staunchly hung on to those linguistic traditions.

00:37:44.260 the way that Icelanders have so we even see this focus on preserving authentic lore authentic

00:37:51.540 culture authentic language in Iceland to this day and it's it's really kind of a special thing

00:37:58.020 so continue I just wanted to interject that yeah no um and I I'm gonna go off on a little bit of

00:38:09.220 a tangent here. So Simon Durr was, if you look him up, he's mentioned as being part of the

00:38:19.720 Svartascholi, the black school. But what that really is referring to is a common medieval trope

00:38:32.160 that was flying around um back then especially in scholastic circles um of what was called the the

00:38:41.360 scola months or the scola mancy the scola minari there is uh the skull manata this school um

00:38:51.040 In Romania, where the scholar would go in, he'd be in a group of nine to 13, again, significance there, and he would have to learn all of the history of humanity from the collected book that is there, and then also add his own knowledge to it.

00:39:19.360 but yet he was also learning. It was underground. The students were not allowed to be exposed to

00:39:29.920 the sunlight. The devil chose one who, the graduates to be like what they called a weather

00:39:39.580 maker. And he was tasked with riding a dragon to control the weather. So you got to bear in mind

00:39:49.240 what this really is, is that Simon der leaves Iceland and he learns much. I don't, we don't

00:40:00.220 know where he goes. We don't know all of the things he learns. However, I think that the

00:40:06.960 Solomance or the, the Skolomance is a, it's kind of an education system outside of the church,

00:40:16.220 which is the big important part and i think that's also why there's a great level of demonization

00:40:22.800 against it is that there's these scholars that are learning things of lore from before the

00:40:32.780 establishment of the holy roman empire and certainly influenced by it uh because it's not

00:40:40.860 just cut off and then restarted. Everything's kind of flowing into each other. But then what

00:40:47.280 ends up happening is there is this whole secret society feel to it. But I honestly believe that

00:40:57.460 it wasn't what everyone was trying to make it out to believe. And I do believe that it very much was

00:41:08.280 a learned system or a group of teachers, people who were sending scholars to each other in order

00:41:17.880 to write things down, but they were distinctly outside of the church's control. And in doing so,

00:41:27.400 that created a lot. But the reason why I brought up about Ireland is, again, I think many of us

00:41:34.140 are familiar with the trope uh that comes from ireland of the musician or the poet who meets at

00:41:40.140 the crossroads and meets the devil and either uh well generally he tricks the devil out of uh getting

00:41:50.620 his soul and there that's no different with simon so the stories of simon dude um by the time of

00:42:00.300 snorty's age he knows these stories but there is a tangible uh book made by simon that which is

00:42:10.080 lost to us now um you can't find the uh the codex of of norwegian kings by simender but he was in

00:42:21.220 essence an editor as he came back to iceland he got all of the stories of his people uh together

00:42:32.340 in one place but i don't think they were in any distinct order i think it was again more about

00:42:39.700 how much he could get as fast as he could get it he saw what was going on and so he gathered

00:42:47.780 everything up and created the adas in a proto form and then snorty comes in later and i think

00:43:01.260 he links and and shaves some things to to be more streamlined for the poet and then he adds on a

00:43:10.160 guide to poetry um so the the two of them together very very important but uh the story about the

00:43:18.760 seal is that he so he's in this the black school the soul minari or um or the solomance and uh

00:43:28.080 one of the students is going to be given up to the devil so they don't know which one

00:43:33.600 and they the lots are drawn and it falls on simon dude um but simon the tricks the devil

00:43:42.640 numerous times uh there's one story where he tricks him about tying a mutton chop to the

00:43:51.040 inside of his cloak and the devil grabs him and grabs the mutton chop instead of his legs so he

00:43:57.660 can escape um there's all kinds of you know little stories like that and then of course too

00:44:03.200 there is the story of of him leaving and he says uh that you know he wants to return to iceland he

00:44:11.160 wants to go back to the land of his people and um uh the school says you know no you may you're

00:44:18.480 allowed to come in but you're all going to lose your souls but one of you is going to lose your

00:44:22.900 life. And, um, he convinces the devil to, uh, he wants to return, um, in, uh, without getting wet

00:44:37.160 is kind of how it's, it's said he, he makes, uh, that he wants to be carried home to Iceland.

00:44:43.920 in uh and as he escapes him at the end at their arrival when he hits the seal on the head with

00:44:54.000 uh the the bible and steps safely ashore so he tricks the devil and kind of gives you know old

00:45:04.060 nick the the the jabbing what it is is he rides the seal he can't it says uh he wants to without

00:45:11.420 touching water. And when he gets to the end, he hits the devil in the head with the Bible.

00:45:20.020 Now, I thought of a couple things about this. One, it kind of, I think, for the folk who are

00:45:27.060 just now, they're just coming out of the old faith. There's the new, this new faith is coming

00:45:35.060 in this trope is super common it's older than um than christianity itself but it also does kind of

00:45:46.660 safeguard simon dude from the up and coming church uh and more importantly it's again it's the the

00:45:55.140 people who are working for the church the people who are utilizing its rise to consolidate their

00:46:02.580 power. And I'm not saying that they're absolved of anything, surely not. But what I am saying is,

00:46:09.280 is that generally they weren't doing a lot of the work. The work was done by Nordic warriors who

00:46:16.760 did not see Christianity the way Christians see Christianity now, certainly. And also it could 0.84

00:46:27.920 simply just mean it was a fun kind of thing he you know he got the nev the the knowledge from

00:46:34.400 the devil and then rode across the sea and right before the devil uh you know gets his soul he

00:46:41.000 yeah still viking go bunk no uh it's it's just see it's a trope we can't get rid of it no um 0.79

00:46:50.640 And he hits the seal on the head with the Bible, and he runs up on the shore and escapes. So that is a lot of the more fantastical. 0.64

00:47:07.560 And just bear this in mind, too. So not only is there this medieval school as being a kind of common trope, it's utilized elsewhere. This isn't the only place that it's referred to.

00:47:22.920 um but we have like even before christianity uh a perfect example that i i immediately thought of

00:47:34.640 when i was i was talking to alice here ago the just just before the show is that it reminds me

00:47:40.700 a lot too of the great and grand escapades of pythagoras you know pythagoras was spoken of

00:47:48.740 being able to raise storms and a lot of the miracles of jesus were actually taken by greek 0.97

00:47:55.700 jews who were trying to synthesize christianity to the greeks and they wanted it to be more 0.94

00:48:04.180 accepting or accepted acceptable so they added a lot from from bacchus and they added a lot from

00:48:11.700 pythagoras the story of him making many fish uh is straight from pythagoras so cool stuff to look at

00:48:20.660 you know if you're if you're writing any of this down yeah the the black school or the scola manse

00:48:26.740 and pythagoras too are another really good rabbit holes to go down anyways simon there comes back

00:48:34.580 and um at some point in uh he comprises the codex regius like in its proto form uh the the the the

00:48:48.100 book of of the norwegian kings and also he gathers all of the lore all of the the poems um and

00:49:00.580 and does some editing and does some unifying there but not a lot and then he he slips from

00:49:10.940 history um but the other thing that's worth noting is he most likely wrote in latin um because that

00:49:18.740 was at the time the latin alphabet was being adopted and there had not been a conversion

00:49:25.120 over to the native language yet.

00:49:28.300 That's why we find a lot of mapping

00:49:32.220 of the way that things are written.

00:49:35.420 The preferences of certain Latin letters

00:49:38.600 to describe sounds in Icelandic

00:49:41.520 can be visually dated,

00:49:45.200 where they fall out of usage

00:49:47.340 after a certain point in time.

00:49:49.560 So this gives us almost kind of a layering effect

00:49:53.560 when we look at some of these stories so when we see these the the stories again being uh written

00:50:03.120 down it shows that a lot of them go farther back they go into the 800s 900s 10 uh or you know or

00:50:12.520 just before the 10 hundreds and even probably during the 10 hundreds um so that's the first

00:50:20.880 part of our journey into lore and an understanding of where it comes from and how it kind of funnels

00:50:32.200 through the wizard, the wise man, the scholar, Simon. But those works are lost. And then what

00:50:43.560 ends up happening is is that snorri takes those those works and uh recompiles them um puts them

00:50:55.960 together and i think there there was a reason why he was editing and it's not for a lot of the

00:51:02.980 reasons that people think it is i think a lot of people really want it to be about the church

00:51:09.840 And I think certainly the church has a huge effect on the mainland of Scandinavia.

00:51:17.180 I think the church has a huge effect on place names and areas and getting rid of Hoffs, changing their names.

00:51:27.360 But in Iceland, that was not such a prevalent motivation because Iceland was softly turned over to Christianity.

00:51:41.540 I think that his main reason for editing was a market.

00:51:48.460 And we'll go into Snorri, I guess, in a little bit.

00:51:54.760 But that's just kind of Simender and the story of him.

00:52:02.320 There's a lot more, too.

00:52:03.880 I did not.

00:52:05.480 I gave the footnotes version.

00:52:09.480 So I think at this point, it is important to.

00:52:21.140 I'm sorry, guys.

00:52:22.420 during this i've been trying to run down a uh quote for you guys so that i'm still authentic

00:52:30.100 no but i found it the trouble is translated it comes out differently in different people's

00:52:34.660 translation but i found where it comes from um so you want me to go kind of into snorty

00:52:45.540 We will in just a second. I just kind of want to talk briefly about what the point is of what, like the motivations and the purpose behind Simender's scholarship and what he's doing.

00:53:05.560 um it is really important to keep in mind

00:53:13.300 his efforts weren't to synchronize they weren't to

00:53:23.740 syncretize I think is the the right usage of it in this case his points weren't to like somehow

00:53:33.320 reconcile the Alcitru religion to Christianity his point wasn't to you know some kind of bridge

00:53:46.640 a gap or whatever Alcitru was bad and of the devil and Christianity is good but he wanted

00:53:58.820 to preserve the stories of his people.

00:54:01.580 He wanted to preserve the histories of his people.

00:54:04.720 And his entire point was to preserve it

00:54:07.220 and have preservation, not to alter it,

00:54:10.400 to like make it okay or to like massage it

00:54:13.680 to fit what's acceptable.

00:54:15.600 The massaging to fit is this stuff's bad. 0.83

00:54:18.380 Don't believe this pagan stuff, but this is cool.

00:54:23.300 And this gives rise to our kennings

00:54:26.100 and our, our vernacular that we have currently, and this is why. So these are the stories that

00:54:32.320 our ancestors, these are those, you know, heretical devil stories that our, that our

00:54:37.680 ancestors told. And at this point, he's about a hundred years. I mean, during the,

00:54:48.300 yeah, he's about a hundred years removed from when the official religion of Iceland was Ausatru.

00:54:56.100 Um, so he's looking at his great grandfather's time when this was the belief of the land.

00:55:03.680 And so just like I talked about the zealotry of the fringe, something happens to where

00:55:09.300 when you're surrounded by certain things, okay, as a side note, when I grew up in the

00:55:16.560 eighties and the nineties, there are so many pictures of that time.

00:55:21.120 because we all had cameras and you took pictures and you got them developed and you had stacks of

00:55:27.560 these pictures. A lot of people don't have good pictures of things that happened from like 2005

00:55:36.100 until now, because we take endless pictures on our phones, but we very seldom print out pictures.

00:55:43.680 They have to be really special or we're doing a project or whatever. So we save all our stuff

00:55:50.380 electronically and we don't like keep it away in a box somewhere, those things get lost and

00:55:56.340 disappear. Well, when your culture is used to expressing itself verbally and through storytelling

00:56:07.540 and you're surrounded by these things that you take for granted, it's really easy for that

00:56:16.340 information to disappear when it's no longer fashionable because when it's everywhere

00:56:21.460 so often people don't think to write it down one thing that did come into european consciousness

00:56:30.340 with the movement of the catholic church was like transcribing and writing and

00:56:38.020 collating and putting things together catholic church with their transcription and record keeping

00:56:46.020 built on a very advanced administrative system of the roman empire and they learned through that

00:56:53.300 context about keeping records and writing things down and translating and saving all of this

00:57:00.740 knowledge so in this kind of early days where there is a priest and a man of learning and of

00:57:09.780 education that goes to the continent and learns that you know the information on exactly where

00:57:17.620 he learned is kind of sketchy um i what is it front mark or something so they refer to france

00:57:30.340 but not like fourth republic france now but like the frankish empire the carolingian empire

00:57:39.220 of the day and the like split kingdoms um that were its its uh progeny so somewhere in the

00:57:49.220 continent in germany and france he studies at these courts where they have a lot of written

00:57:54.020 tradition and written material and he realizes that his countrymen don't have that same access

00:58:00.580 to stuff so you know when he dismounts off the seal and cracks it in the head with the bible

00:58:06.500 and gets back on land and and is at home he turns his parish and his property at audi into a

00:58:15.700 repository for all of the collected knowledge that he can get of his ancestors and their stories

00:58:23.860 icelanders are fundamentally you know

00:58:27.620 know, Norwegians that left Norway. So included in that is a, is historical texts on the kings

00:58:41.300 of Norway and the chronicling of these kings and their stories and their traditions, both

00:58:46.320 historical and in the mythic period. There's countless other things that we'll never know

00:58:52.300 that were there. Um, and that's another point that I want to make. So he went around at a time that

00:58:58.240 was, like I said, a hundred years removed from the official conversion of Iceland to Christianity.

00:59:07.540 The contacts between other Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, and Icelanders that still practiced

00:59:16.800 house a true there's probably still quite a bit of that going around or well my parents used to do

00:59:22.940 this or my grandparents used to do this all of their great-grandparents did this and so you have

00:59:30.520 access to all of these stories and all of this collected information and he rounded up as much

00:59:35.440 of that as he could and stored it there in this library to teach his countrymen and to teach

00:59:43.480 those of his family that came after him so they have this and so Iceland has

00:59:49.200 they have their stuff recorded and this is a really cool thing that he decided to do and

00:59:57.200 something that we're very you know a thousand years later we cherish the fact that he did this

01:00:06.540 And it's also interesting for our purposes to look at, in the medieval period, there wasn't a lot of choice in religiosity.

01:00:26.500 We like to, there's a word for this, and I came across it recently, and I can't recall what it was called.

01:00:33.380 Anybody in the chat room that knows what the word is, let me know.

01:00:36.540 there is a tendency to project our modern context on past periods of time and we do it erroneously

01:00:47.740 there wasn't a smorgasbord of faith you were a catholic or you were put to the flames

01:00:54.940 so everybody was catholic but there were catholics that are zealously in league with

01:01:01.900 rome and there are catholics that were to varying degrees heretical i think it's interesting that

01:01:12.700 we hear of simon dur he was you know very well respected but we get all these stories about him

01:01:19.020 you know kind of being in league with the devil not really like he clubs him in the head with

01:01:23.420 the bible but he learns a lot of stuff from the devil and I think that speaks to his collection

01:01:31.980 of Ausatru stuff and his knowledge and studying in Ausatru presentism there's the word whoever

01:01:39.340 got that if that was you Nick thank you if it was somebody else appreciate that that's my job well

01:01:45.660 done Nick so that happened and he collected all of this stuff and his you know his parish his farm

01:02:00.060 became the go-to spot to reference these things to study these things and to learn the Icelandic

01:02:09.980 and preserved old norse material and tradition and i think his motivations about that are really

01:02:18.140 important if he was a good catholic and he was some kind of you know zealous inquisitor no you

01:02:26.140 get all that stuff and you burn it and you want to consign the memory of it to the flames because

01:02:32.220 all of that stuff is the devil the only stuff you should have is approved literature by the holy

01:02:40.700 see which it's funny i wonder when the tale of the bible came around because at this time i don't

01:02:46.460 think he would have access to a bible um because even even having access and reading the bible was

01:02:52.860 highly sus as the kids would say so gotta gotta keep it keep it fresh for the youth

01:03:04.620 but at the same time something you just said too um is that the and and i had referenced earlier is

01:03:11.020 that the outlook what you know i honestly believe that the whole burning of the heretical was

01:03:19.340 something that was developed more in the uh late middle ages um and that there were tendencies all

01:03:27.980 over to um write down because uh one of the um one of the people who was also influenced by simon

01:03:39.180 was a Benedictine monk who lived in Iceland, and his name was Otter, O-D-D-R, Otter Soroson,

01:03:50.000 and he wrote down much of Simender's accounts of Olof Trigverson and the conversion of Norway,

01:04:01.420 and he was in the church. He wasn't a slave.

01:04:05.020 So was Simender. He was a priest, and I think you find some different stuff.

01:04:08.960 I want to get to that, but I have been remiss. You saw at the beginning of the show, I was playing

01:04:13.920 with my camera and I was trying to track down this quote. According to my wife, we have a leak

01:04:19.840 under our sink that just started as I sat down to try to do the program.

01:04:26.400 Variety of things. I was late in doing this, but GW Farnsworth was not. He started out our program

01:04:34.880 once again, as he always does. With generous donation, he donated $30 to VNS and $20 to our

01:04:42.860 folk services. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. Yeah, we deeply appreciate it. And we

01:04:50.920 appreciate the consistency of it. Thank you. Also, not too long ago, 10 minutes ago or so,

01:04:58.560 So Austin in Wisconsin donated $25 to the, okay, so I should mention, all right, getting

01:05:10.500 ahead of myself, donated $25 to our Frazehoff War Chest, donated $25 to Baldershoff Steeple,

01:05:18.540 and $25 to our general fund.

01:05:20.940 Thank you very much, Austin.

01:05:22.120 We appreciate that a lot.

01:05:24.920 I should mention this.

01:05:26.620 We, you know, you guys heard me on here fundraising to get Njortzhoff paid off, which we were able to do.

01:05:36.180 And again, victory never sleeps.

01:05:38.240 So the second we paid off Njortzhoff, we begin building the war chest to put a down payment on Frazhoff.

01:05:46.160 As it stands now.

01:05:48.740 Plus 25.

01:05:50.800 Cool. I was just trying to do the math in my head.

01:05:53.120 So $1,541 stacking up towards a down payment towards Frazehoff.

01:06:02.620 We'd like to see that fund get to $45,000.

01:06:10.740 We are currently looking.

01:06:16.200 Witten Erickson and his wife, Githya Katie Erickson, are scouting properties.

01:06:21.240 um so we're diligently at work behind the scenes getting things in place to make that happen

01:06:27.180 but just letting you guys know where we're at anybody wants to donate uh runestone.org

01:06:33.840 slash donate we'll get you the link to get there and uh yeah thank you everyone who's donated so

01:06:40.060 far um you don't get what you don't ask for so I come on here with my handout a lot

01:06:47.120 please know that's probably never going to stop because our ambition to build the afa to be as

01:06:59.060 worthy as possible for our ancestors and for our holy gods there is no end to that so there is

01:07:06.620 always more to do always more we want to do and we have a big mission ahead of us but we are well

01:07:13.260 on our way and we're able to do it because y'all's generosity and participation. So thank you guys

01:07:17.540 for that. So another thing I was going to say before we, and I'm kind of getting to this here.

01:07:24.440 So the Poetic Edda is a collection of these things that are put together, organized,

01:07:34.560 collected for us by Simender and his associates at this institute at Adi. And I think I'm

01:07:45.600 pronouncing Adi right. I'm not sure. Those of you who may not know, I am trying really hard

01:07:52.940 to learn Old Norse through the lens of learning Icelandic. It's something I chip away at every 1.00

01:08:00.440 day it's something that does not come at all easy for me but i do feel like i'm making progress on

01:08:05.720 it i would encourage anybody who is interested or wants to to attempt to make progress on it

01:08:13.320 themselves i have found you know my preschool level of progress so far really beneficial

01:08:23.720 in looking at original lore sources and how they're translated I'm surprised that as far

01:08:32.960 away from having mastery of the language as I am I'll look at the old things and I'll read them

01:08:39.340 out loud and stuff will click and stuff will make sense in a way it hasn't before and points of

01:08:45.980 connectivity will show up. And it's really a neat thing. And I want all of our go-thar to do this.

01:08:55.320 And I would encourage any of our folk to do this as well, if they would like to reach out. We'd

01:09:01.360 be happy to help with resources and stuff on getting that going. Because the more of us do it,

01:09:07.780 more of us are doing it together, the closer and more likely we're going to be successful at it.

01:09:12.520 So, one kind of interesting note, Svahn mentioned that detractors thumb their nose that we've,

01:09:27.980 you know, we trot out our Icelander to do these things.

01:09:32.760 Anytime that you hear me say that, I hope you hear the joke that is involved in it. 0.99

01:09:40.660 is here because he is he has been also true for 30 years he is eminently qualified as a gothe of our

01:09:54.900 faith um he is one of the most spiritually well-suited men that i've ever known for this

01:10:03.540 position and he is the colleague that i place the most trust in when it comes to talking about our

01:10:12.340 lore talking about our theology and talking about our faith he's here because of his qualifications

01:10:18.500 it's just a fun uh synchronism that he happens to have been born in iceland but i do want to address

01:10:24.980 that as well. One thing that we encounter, and if you don't have haters, and you're not doing

01:10:34.460 something right, you're either so insignificant that nobody knows, so nobody cares, or you don't,

01:10:43.060 you're inauthentic, so you try to please everybody, and as a result, don't stand for anything.

01:10:50.220 We're always going to have detractors. If anything, detractors are often a testament to

01:10:54.820 success and that you're on the right track. But it's funny because when those things come up,

01:11:01.040 they do warrant being addressed because for everybody that's, you know, a jerk about it, 0.96

01:11:06.840 there's also people that are just curious. We get Europeans that don't understand our approach to 1.00

01:11:20.580 house they criticize it as being too American they criticize it as being too churchy and

01:11:28.060 to reflect too much you know Protestant American churchiness and they criticize it because

01:11:38.360 we don't live in Europe therefore how can we possibly know what we're doing and I don't

01:11:44.920 usually find that from educated sources i find that from randos that don't know the lore that

01:11:53.560 don't know any of house of truth things wait that's scandinavian stuff you guys are in america

01:12:01.880 yeah why are you larping yeah and it's and it's it's silly so one thing that there's a couple of

01:12:11.240 things that need to inform us in this process part of what we're doing tonight is examining

01:12:16.600 how information comes to us why we trust it or why we don't and what some of those

01:12:23.880 implications are and it's a big topic and we have a lot to discuss but

01:12:27.160 when the boat leaves Norway, the people don't magically become some different race of people

01:12:41.860 that's unconnected. You know, different people have children at different ages in their life,

01:12:47.900 but roughly, Svon and I are exactly as many generations removed from the practice of

01:12:55.740 as anyone listening to this in Norway or Sweden or Iceland or Denmark or anywhere else for

01:13:02.740 that matter. As white men, we have the same heritage as our currently residing in Europe

01:13:15.080 racial counterparts. Our ancestors go back to a shared faith and a shared tradition that

01:13:24.120 goes back to the dawn of our race. Again, when the first, you know, white people happened on 0.73

01:13:32.840 the shores of Norway, they didn't stop having relation with their ancestors that migrated

01:13:40.020 throughout the continent and throughout the steppe. Our people have migrated. One stop along

01:13:46.800 the way was Norway. A further stop along the way was England and was Iceland. And a yet further

01:13:54.020 stop along the way was the United States of America. But we are one race of people that

01:14:02.140 goes back to our most distant ancestor. When I say we, I mean white people. So the claim is kind

01:14:09.980 of silly. If anything, the claim could be leveled like, why aren't they leading the field in Ausatru

01:14:17.820 and the practice of our ancestral faith? They're surrounded by ancient holy sites. They're immersed

01:14:24.480 in the landscape that our ancestors wrote about, yet they didn't take up the charge to do this

01:14:31.600 in the same way. Now, some of them did. A couple of Icelanders, a handful of Icelanders did at the

01:14:38.340 same time, but not knowing one another as the founders of the Asa True Folk Assembly did in

01:14:44.360 the United States in the, you know, in the 1960s. And it's interesting that that happened at the

01:14:54.960 same time, separated by so much space. I think it's more than interesting. I think it's divine

01:15:01.640 will taking form. And that's what we see with a lot of these things. So when we're examining this,

01:15:08.920 we need to utilize our good common sense and our logic and our understanding of the continuity of

01:15:18.380 things. When you cross a border, things don't reset. They continue. When you travel over distance

01:15:26.380 or when your group of people decides to adjust their language

01:15:30.460 or their spelling, you're not

01:15:34.420 starting fresh. You're continuing something on into the future.

01:15:39.280 And we also need to, so we need to be informed by logic. We need to

01:15:42.460 trace these things back logically. We also need to be informed by faith.

01:15:48.080 This isn't, you know, and again, different people

01:15:50.460 watching this program may approach it from a different angle. But

01:15:53.780 But this is produced by the Aus True Folk Assembly. Svan and I are Gothar, or priests. So we believe that these gods are very real. They are with us. They are the same gods that were with our Viking ancestors. They are the same gods that shaped our folk and have been with us, you know, since Hyperborea.

01:16:15.200 and they're the same gods that will be there for our children and our great-grandchildren

01:16:20.760 we also believe that they communicate to us in different ways at different times and that they

01:16:30.220 weave or shape destiny in a way to help things that they approve of come about

01:16:39.240 And so looking at our transmission of lore with logic, but also with the eye of faith and of, you know, belief is really important as well.

01:16:54.180 That said, can you take us from Simondor to Snorri?

01:17:00.240 snoring okay so the kind of the missing link is is exactly what alzheimer godi said is is adi or

01:17:09.880 otti otti is a church or uh again it's it's a church a town and more importantly it's a it's

01:17:20.080 a center in which historical and poetic traditions pass down. So it was founded by Simon. And then

01:17:32.800 his grandson, there were other notable historical scholars that went to this church to learn. And

01:17:45.520 And one of them is, of course, Snorri Studlersson. And he was educated there. And that's where we kind of make that connection. There's the jump.

01:18:03.500 even though there was maybe one generation

01:18:08.640 in between Simon and Snorri

01:18:10.700 but this is again

01:18:14.620 not something that was just given to anyone

01:18:16.660 so he had a great aptitude

01:18:18.660 and a drive

01:18:20.720 so he was very much dedicated

01:18:23.680 to preserving

01:18:27.860 the pure poetics

01:18:30.820 of his people

01:18:33.220 So I think that when we shift into Snorri, it's worth noting that he comes from a prominent family.

01:18:45.500 And a lot of times you'll hear people talk about him being a politician.

01:18:51.960 Well, one, he was a convincing politician.

01:18:54.480 He was brought into as law speaker of Iceland twice.

01:18:59.360 he was voted in and he was very well known on top of that say on the other side is that

01:19:11.900 he had many children he had many children from different women at the time so

01:19:19.480 that's an interesting point from a religious perspective perspective when people claim that

01:19:27.500 he's uh you know he added all this religious stuff in he's or that he was hyper religious

01:19:33.740 but in iceland one christianity never fully just locked in on it and uh the old faith had to be

01:19:46.400 slowly eroded away was the other point was that they're they're on an island um there is a lot of

01:19:54.680 marriage, divorce, it becomes very, very, very dramatic when it comes to clans and

01:20:07.220 love and war and fighting. And that doesn't change after Christianity at all, because again, 0.79

01:20:16.180 that soft um turnover so some people have leveled that he was uh promiscuous and that somehow

01:20:28.900 lent to his character but i argue that that actually wasn't breaking some of the norm

01:20:37.220 especially after they left Norway.

01:20:41.000 So he ended up becoming friends with King Haakon,

01:20:52.200 who at the time was a teenager,

01:20:54.800 and he was advising him, teaching him,

01:20:58.520 showing him some of the old things.

01:21:00.160 Having an Icelander in your court to teach you about the old kings

01:21:06.360 in particular he was able to to recite the stories of the kings he was able to to show you lineage

01:21:13.880 and to tell you the grandiose stories of of the kings before you that was huge and in doing so

01:21:22.780 he made this this friendship um with the king of norway and i think he was trying to protect his

01:21:32.340 people as well. There was a general understanding that the, uh, the kingdom of Norway was looking

01:21:39.980 to expand its borders, was looking to take in more places, including Iceland. And he was trying

01:21:48.620 to avoid bloodshed and bear in mind, this is only 200 years after, um, the, uh, the Viking age,

01:22:00.480 if you will and the icelanders still have fight in them and and and unfortunately he's trying i

01:22:08.480 think to avoid a fight and he ends up creating one and and again that's just the tragic nature

01:22:17.120 of a lot of these stories but his political nature is that he's trying to um get the king

01:22:28.320 of Norway to not attack Iceland, but that he would go there and then he would unite Iceland

01:22:35.980 and agree to go under Norway's crown and he would be the vassal for the king. Pretty straightforward,

01:22:45.660 but without the king having to go over there and do any war. Well, it ended up causing a civil war

01:22:52.280 because not everyone agreed at all with Snorri, and a lot of them did not want to join under the

01:23:01.640 crown of Norway, and it was split all over the place. Some of Snorri's sons were against him.

01:23:09.660 Some of his sons were with him, whole families, and bear in mind, you know, this isn't a great

01:23:18.580 scaled war but 2 000 people on iceland is a lot of people if they're all fighting each other um

01:23:28.900 and killing each other so it was again very very very bloody and then the the irony of that of

01:23:38.960 course too is that later on the king of norway um as snorty starts to talk to uh dang it i forgot

01:23:48.320 his name i will get it in a moment he um snorri ends up talking to him and king halkan who is now

01:23:58.320 an adult he's no longer a teenager he sees that as a huge stab in the back and he ends up sending

01:24:10.000 assassins to to dispatch of snorri in his home in iceland so there's a lot of that as well

01:24:17.520 But I think it's that's almost kind of side running to the fact that Simon Döter sets up this school and Snorri Stuttersson is one of the students there.

01:24:32.820 And I think that adds to his acumen as a not only is he a statesman and a politician and a well-spoken keeper of the law is that he's so he's well-versed and wants to keep the traditions of that or not only just keep the traditions.

01:24:54.020 This is what I was talking about or hinting about earlier. I think that ultimately he saw something that was going to bring Icelanders and Icelandic poetry into a highly valuable market.

01:25:11.460 And that was one of his main reasons why he wanted Iceland to join the Norwegian crown.

01:25:18.480 The idea of an Icelander kind of keeping chronological history of your deeds or knowing the history of the Danes, knowing the history of the Norwegians, knowing the history of the Swedes, all of that was time capsuled in them.

01:25:41.460 So they were already popular.

01:25:44.260 So Snorri, I think, was thinking that if the Icelandic people were brought into the crown of Norway,

01:25:53.480 there would be courts in which Icelandic poets would be absorbed into immediately.

01:26:03.260 And that's what was his main motivation outside of obviously the authenticity.

01:26:09.140 I think that's why he kept the authenticity.

01:26:11.460 but his leaning towards making the pros aid us and why he's teaching poets how to speak is kind

01:26:22.080 of like hey we're gonna be needed here and you can make a life again with poetics and and make

01:26:32.080 a good reputation for yourself just like in days of yore but you've got to know your stuff otherwise

01:26:40.540 Otherwise people are going to know you're, you're faking it. And so I think that was the big move, um, that ultimately led to the recompilation of the, um, prosatas and also the poetic atas.

01:27:00.580 So for those who don't know, the prosatas are the collection of stories, historical, also about the holy divine gods that he, again, is pulling from Saimander.

01:27:17.000 Saimander had gathered them all.

01:27:19.400 He starts to connect them and link them in order to have more peace.

01:27:28.740 It's important to note that Snorri was raised surrounded by all of this stuff.

01:27:37.140 He was raised at Audie by Simender's grandson.

01:27:44.800 And just as kind of folks tracking this so everybody knows,

01:27:47.660 and Nick, if you could throw up the statue of Snorri, that would be cool.

01:27:51.500 you know simender was born 10 56 passed away 10 33. um so

01:28:05.660 snorri on the other hand was born in 1179 and passed away in 1241. that math doesn't check out

01:28:16.460 you said born 1066 died 1033 was it died 1133 i apologize gotcha okay 1179 was when snorri was

01:28:28.860 born and he passed away in uh or he was killed by assassins in 1241. but in the meantime he was uh

01:28:39.980 through through mishandling of things by his parents and some other stuff

01:28:48.060 he ended up being raised by uh simeter's grandson and pulling up too many things here i'm trying to

01:28:57.420 figure out uh jones last name just a second oh it's um uh loftson yeah

01:29:09.260 There we go.

01:29:10.100 L-O-F-T.

01:29:12.700 Jan Lofsson, who was presiding and maintaining all of the materials that were collected and codified by Simender.

01:29:26.360 And I assume we're still coming in and collected.

01:29:28.860 But there's a wealth of things there, not just what we have as the poetic etta these days,

01:29:35.320 But countless other pieces that are quoted.

01:29:41.540 So first, countless other pieces that existed, but other little things that we're tantalizingly, you know, know about through their quotations and use in other works that don't exist anymore and that we don't have access to currently.

01:29:58.400 So it's important to know that Snorri had access to all of the things that we have access to as far as Old Norse literature is concerned.

01:30:09.360 But he also had access to a lot of materials, an incalculable amount of material that we don't have access to any longer.

01:30:17.700 so when reading Snorri's Edda there's going to be things that are very familiar because you

01:30:25.720 recognize them from the poetic Edda but there's also a lot of knowledge that Snorri has that he

01:30:36.160 he's able to provide that's from other sources and additional materials collected there which

01:30:42.980 is really interesting. I was just going to say, remember Simon writes in Latin, and this is for

01:30:51.800 the folks at home. One of the students before Snorri was a guy named Ari Thorkilsson, and he

01:30:59.380 was the first one to translate the Latin into Old Norse. So huge point to him in the sense that

01:31:09.200 the reason why Snorri's works are in Old Norse is because of Ari, who is also at Akhti, the church.

01:31:25.940 Yeah, so I want to emphasize kind of the connectivity between the two and how we get

01:31:33.780 the stuff that we have you know it's uh simoners edda is referred to as the elder edda

01:31:39.700 but don't imagine that means you know over the span of centuries or it's of some great antiquity

01:31:46.100 it's you know in his in stories grandfather's day so it's you know older by

01:31:55.780 several decades not by hundreds of years

01:31:58.340 another thing i wanted to kind of point out and i don't think this gets emphasized enough one of

01:32:08.480 the reasons i bring it up is i was talking to swan before the broadcast today there's this

01:32:14.500 trope out there that you know we rely too heavily on the eddas and they're they've been christianized

01:32:26.820 And they were written down by Christians and, you know, altered and messed up because Snorri was a Christian, so he wrote Christian stuff in there.

01:32:36.380 But without a lot of thought to like, okay, like what?

01:32:39.980 Okay, what things do you think that he wrote that were Christian and why do you think he put Christian things in there?

01:32:45.720 And I think there's a couple of points that I want to make about that.

01:32:49.380 first one is when you read his prologue to his etta which is off-putting to all of us who read it

01:32:58.500 but he makes the point of you him rising the gods and all right guys don't you know don't get it

01:33:07.600 twisted here's here's what happened and adam and eve and noah and stuff and then eventually there

01:33:15.300 was these really great and powerful kings and magicians and heroes in Troy. And then they

01:33:25.940 traveled across the world and eventually they wound up in Scandinavia. And, you know, our

01:33:31.380 ancestors were so, you know, dumbfounded and confused by the machinations of the devil that

01:33:37.740 they didn't know about the true God. And they accepted these, you know, Trojan adventurers as 0.62

01:33:43.860 their gods anyways this is what they believed but i think that's what i think that's really important

01:33:53.620 though that wasn't woven into the story because that's uh you find that right before the poem

01:34:02.260 the guilt beginning which is very important to how the house true folk assembly approach

01:34:08.020 Ausatru. Snorri is for the first time writing down a

01:34:22.740 explanatory, this is what Ausatru is, this is what those who practiced Ausatru believed.

01:34:32.820 he writes it with the intention as a scholar to record these old things and you'll see in the next

01:34:42.840 portion so all right to break it down further in his edda he wrote two three sections two of which

01:34:54.960 are translated the third one isn't translated into English but the ones that we commonly read

01:35:04.700 and are and refer to when we're talking about his etta are the gilfagining the diluting of gilfi

01:35:12.560 and the uh skald skapermau which is a treatise on like here's how our ancestors referred to

01:35:23.200 all the different mythological things in terms of kennings and poetic reference

01:35:29.440 and it's the second part of it is intentionally instructive to

01:35:35.040 uh scalds on how to be poets and how to use the language use the meter use the terminology make

01:35:44.560 the references on how to carry on the linguistic and poetic tradition of the icelanders and so

01:35:53.120 he's really meticulous to get it right none of this is intended to synchronize the two or to

01:36:00.880 bring the ausitru material in line with christianity no he says this there's real christianity

01:36:09.280 and our ancestors were wrong and they believed these men were gods

01:36:15.280 but here is what they believed the fact that he adds a prologue is instead of inserting that

01:36:25.560 into the text he's like hey guys this next stuff i'm about to tell you this is some nonsense our

01:36:31.080 ancestors believed we all know the true god we all know adam and eve we was jews but this is what

01:36:41.140 our ancestors believed. And then he presents it. And something that, and I had to, I had to round

01:36:47.120 up where it was. That's one of the reasons that I was less present with you guys at the beginning

01:36:52.460 of the broadcast than I wanted to be. Apologize for that. So what I was going to say is,

01:36:59.960 I got to pull it back up because it was quotation and I want to get it right. In the, in the

01:37:07.500 Skald Skapermal, he writes this. And this is advice that he is giving, again, because this

01:37:17.200 poem is all about, hey, young Skalds who are studying this, listen up. This is how you do

01:37:24.520 this right. This is informative. I'm teaching you something. He says, but now one thing must be said

01:37:30.000 to young scalds um actually let me let me find something a little bit clearer here

01:37:40.140 anyways so he says do not lose sight of these splendid tales of our fathers

01:37:48.360 um but remember always that these old legends are to be used to point a moral or to adorn a tale

01:37:58.480 and not to be believed or to be altered without the authority of the ancient scholars who knew

01:38:05.180 them. Belief is sin. Tampering with tradition is a crime against scholarship.

01:38:12.220 And I think that's really important.

01:38:18.280 It shows that he has a commitment to getting it right and not adding things and not

01:38:27.980 altering the material that's come to him and he's telling the skulls who are undoubtedly be inspired

01:38:35.420 by the beauty of their ancestral faith now keep in mind guys don't get carried away this is the

01:38:42.620 devil's work here don't don't buy into it but you need to know it and you need to know it in its

01:38:50.140 authentic form so you can pass down authentic information, but don't be tricked. And he makes

01:38:58.180 the separation. If he tried to merge the two, if he tried to rationalize the one to the other,

01:39:05.100 if his point was to try to convert the heathen to Christianity, then I might look at the material

01:39:12.660 very differently but it's made very clear that he's trying to be a diligent scholar in maintaining

01:39:21.440 and recording this material fully acknowledging that this is not the word of god this is you know

01:39:30.780 false belief but this is what our ancestors believed and i that's important to note that

01:39:39.700 Simender, Snorri, and the entire school at Audie was about collecting and preserving, importantly, preserving authentic lore of our ancestors.

01:39:57.660 These weren't, you know, it wasn't a mission for conversion or for disinformation or propaganda.

01:40:06.260 It was to preserve these old, you know, devil, heathen materials so that they were preserved and could be learned from and that they could make these references and continue this ancient school of poetry.

01:40:27.660 in the present and into the future um you know in a way not intentionally so we can do this

01:40:37.020 but they're doing this at this time is the reason that we have the materials that we have today

01:40:44.220 you know undoubtedly in the form that they have but certainly in the depth and the writ

01:40:48.700 and the richness that we have and i think that we are very fortunate that we know what we do

01:40:56.300 about the sourcing of this material, that we have so much of it recorded, that we haven't recorded

01:41:03.560 much of it in a couple of different places to reference and see that they match up and that

01:41:09.720 they work well together. It's not to say that it's perfect. It's not. And there's errors here

01:41:15.420 and there, and you find them. What's important to note is we find errors, part of the learning

01:41:21.920 the Old Norse a little bit. We find errors in translation of, you know, scholars from the early

01:41:29.440 1900s that translated it. And again, they're scholars. These aren't translated by monks or

01:41:35.880 priests at that point. They're, you know, loosely Christian, perhaps atheistic scholars that are

01:41:43.000 just trying to record these things. And the translation will be, you know, slightly askew

01:41:49.120 to give a slightly different meaning so you know there's errors in copying or errors in translating

01:41:55.920 but there's not a effort to christianize our our lore that's very contrary to their purpose

01:42:05.520 what makes it valuable and interesting is its exoticness the more they normalize it or bring

01:42:12.800 it into line with what's currently in vogue you lose the ooh and the ah and the spectacle of these

01:42:21.040 really interesting ancient icelandic traditions that they have recorded that's kind of what their

01:42:27.840 coin of the realm is is their claim to authenticity and their meticulous scholarship of this very

01:42:34.480 detailed poetry. And as Fawn said earlier, you're writing it in rhyme and in meter and stuff. So

01:42:44.900 if you play with that, it becomes obvious when you're, you know, when your lyrics are out of

01:42:51.620 sync, when stuff doesn't match up, those things are more easily noticed. Yeah, I think that was

01:42:59.200 Adi that really set that bridge. Simon was trying to collect it and get it all, but it was Adi who

01:43:08.000 was like, okay, now I'm reading the Latin and we're going to bring it over into Old Norse.

01:43:17.160 And then eventually that goes down to Snorri. Yeah, I think that the concepts that people

01:43:27.140 need to think about when we talk about the lore is that there are certain tropes that

01:43:36.380 Snorty clearly does, whether they were done before him by others, and so maybe, you know,

01:43:44.540 but the prologue. The prologue is a concept called Translatio Imperiae, in which medieval

01:43:51.800 chroniclers wanted to establish their kingdoms as having an unbroken tradition all the way back

01:44:00.800 to before Rome. So in this case, Snorri writes the prologue about the Aesir, and he uses really,

01:44:13.840 they're not true. Like etymological connections, he says, oh, the Aesir are from Asia. And

01:44:24.300 there is no etymological connection to, or the origins of those words are not the same.

01:44:32.700 He tries to say that Hector is Thor and that Sif is Sibyl.

01:44:42.500 But this happened throughout a lot of medieval texts.

01:44:48.500 The Welsh, the Irish, the French.

01:44:53.380 So I said Welsh and Irish, and I know some people were probably like, well, they're on the other sides of the wall to like the Anglosphere.

01:45:00.980 But no, the French did it too. There was a lot of people. And the idea of it really was not about, it was about national identity. The idea was to make and to foster a national identity amongst your people, again, was to have this correlation.

01:45:22.860 And the correlation of, you know, like Troia Nova, the new Troy, was a popular trope. So he put that in the prologue and it wasn't any different. But instead of applying it to a people or to the foundations of these kings, other than perhaps, you know, again, through lineage, the idea was upon the gods themselves.

01:45:48.860 themselves. And after that, he moves on and he does bring the stories forward. And I think that

01:45:59.520 really the only things we have to super look at when we look at the stories is when are they

01:46:08.560 you hemorrhizing the divine um that i think is something when we see snorri or any of the

01:46:18.260 scholars before them not quite knowing of the divinity and or defaulting to humanization

01:46:27.240 that's what uh you hemorrhization means and so you see one of the things i think is

01:46:32.700 It's a stark difference is when you see Simonder and Snorri and the information they present.

01:46:44.140 It's also worth noting Snorri wrote the Heimskringle and also most, there is a common belief that

01:46:58.260 he also wrote a saga um when you compare what they wrote as far as lore goes i'm using the air quotes

01:47:09.860 sorry we got the narrow screen screen um and compare that with saxo grammaticus who

01:47:17.860 is overtly a christian and he is trying to write a history that is cohesive

01:47:25.220 with the sincere belief that our gods you know aren't real and that's nonsense but we have to

01:47:37.160 connect all of these pieces so he blatantly humorizes and tries to make all of the pieces

01:47:45.260 fit throughout the entirety of his work yeah you have for him was like the least of his

01:47:52.040 that he's he doesn't care about preserving authenticity right what he wants to do is make a

01:47:57.480 cohesive adam and eve up to the current monarch of denmark and make that all fit in a very fluid way

01:48:06.680 that makes sense but that incorporates local legends and histories and stories and it's cool

01:48:12.420 in its own right like if you know that going into it there's threads that you can pull out of it

01:48:18.380 that are very interesting, but it's challenging. The big difference, I think, and again, we look

01:48:25.320 at the ad that Snorri's ad ad as like one thing, and it's not. It's a couple of different pieces.

01:48:32.160 The prologue is, I guess, in a way what Saxo did. It's like a, you know, okay, here's the setting.

01:48:41.080 These were our ancestors. They were confused. They, you know, misunderstood these

01:48:45.660 trojan adventurers but here's what they believed and then it is laid out very clearly

01:48:54.580 establishing what the elder belief was he already said hey this is wrong but this is the nonsense

01:49:01.600 our ancestors believed and it's important that we keep it written down and he presents that to us in

01:49:08.500 the most clean way under the idea of Gilfie asking, cool, so how's the earth made? Who are

01:49:18.660 the gods? How did this happen? What's this? What's that? He answers that. And if you read it, he

01:49:25.120 answers that exclusively in Ausitru. There's no little asides. There's no trying to reconcile it

01:49:31.640 with the Bible, that's not done there. What you see in the Skald Skapermal is different. You see

01:49:42.200 a lot of asides there because he is presenting that as instructions to Skalds on how to compose

01:49:48.200 things. So he makes little notes like, hey guys, this is what's related to this. This is Thor being,

01:49:55.640 you know related to hector this is this is this piece hey guys remember to always do this remember

01:50:03.080 to not do that he inserts a lot of editorial into that because the purpose of that piece is very

01:50:10.040 different that's to instruct skulls on how to compose their poetry the first one is preserving

01:50:18.040 what the corpus of that belief was here here is a here is a complete retelling of what our

01:50:28.440 ancestors believed so you have that stage to work from and to draw from for all of these other

01:50:34.680 things and that was done in the that's the only way that's come down to us that is a complete

01:50:44.520 with the intent of presenting to an audience that didn't already know all of these things

01:50:51.640 this is how this is our ancestral cosmology this is the belief of our ancestors

01:50:59.240 and we don't see that presented in a chunk like that start to finish here is the complete like

01:51:06.280 Like, let me tell you what Ausatru is.

01:51:08.360 You do see that there.

01:51:11.180 And that's why it's so particularly useful and appealing now for us to learn from and to benefit from the collected wisdom of these of our ancestors.

01:51:26.640 Well, there's another part that people don't.

01:51:30.820 Because, again, I'm trying to point out that it's very easy to say, ah, this is Christian stuff.

01:51:35.540 But they're never actually looking at, like, viable things. 1.00

01:51:40.920 And these things aren't bad.

01:51:43.260 They're just, again, the absence of pointing them out shows that they're just kind of using a straw man.

01:51:48.980 One of the other things that I think is really important to consider is Simon Durr or all of the scholars up to Snorri, including Snorri himself.

01:51:58.500 There seems to be interpolated verses from other poems as linking and connecting points because he's trying to prepare this to be spoken and sung in the courts.

01:52:16.980 And there's gaps and there's problems with connectivity. So then there's this editing of bringing in poetics from scalds from other pieces and even just as old and brought in.

01:52:34.380 A perfect example of that is the Dvergatal. The listing of the dwarves is generally believed by scholars that that's an early or a younger work brought into and interpolated.

01:52:52.080 And some argue the Runetal is its own poem, but was added into the Hauvamau.

01:53:00.100 And again, it's not completely and fully, not everyone agrees on this, but the overarching point of it is that there is this connecting factor to hone the stories down for the best presentation in the courts.

01:53:25.700 and that involves not editing out it it involves pulling in more sources in order to bridge gaps

01:53:35.840 between uh large corpuses of lore and i think that's a really interesting thing too because

01:53:41.360 when we think of editing we think of like cutting out and no instead they were adding in and pulling

01:53:48.440 from other places um so we get to see the evolution of poetics from old to new in one piece

01:53:59.440 sometimes um the other thing that i wanted to bring up we would talked about the you hemorrhization

01:54:08.260 But also, too, I think there was certainly Snorri was closer to the understanding of the faith. But I do think that the scholars themselves in certain concepts, like as we here in the Austro-Folk Assembly speak about post-ascension, their explaining of that is not very clear at all.

01:54:36.860 And we've spoken about that with Skirner. So some of the concepts of of the religion itself versus the poetics start to kind of drift a little bit and get fuzzy in the relation of religion.

01:54:53.480 The other two is the concepts of the soul and the afterlife. There is a perfect example is in the Ingetal when Snorri writes that there is King Njordr who is running Sweden.

01:55:15.980 And then King Odin comes in after him. And as he is dying, he says, please stab me with a weapon so that I may go forth to meet my god. And then after he dies, King Freyr comes in.

01:55:35.980 Now, an understanding that, and I don't know if Snorri was hiding it, but this, I think, is, of course, the cults of those gods, that the Swedes were heavily Vanic, and then there was an influx of Odinic worship, and then it was followed by more Vanic worship.

01:56:02.780 Obviously, Lord Odin is euhemerized there because he's saying, please stab me so I can go forth to my god.

01:56:11.520 And that's another concept that I think all of those scholars were trying to understand.

01:56:19.400 One of the big ones was, oh, you have to die in battle in order to get into Valhall.

01:56:25.900 and it was such a blanket sweep that it's never really super delved into um

01:56:34.740 i think this is a concept that they couldn't understand because they weren't alive at the

01:56:43.040 present moment of understanding the warrior ethos of no this great king has lived he has fought in

01:56:51.020 many battles. Now he dies and Lord Odin wants him now, not on the battlefield simply because

01:57:00.040 he caught an arrow to the face. No, it's more nuanced than that. And I think that a lot of

01:57:09.340 times they didn't understand that. So they were very like, no, our ancestors believed that if

01:57:15.940 You died in battle. You were chosen. But if you didn't die in battle, you know, you went down into this place.

01:57:24.160 And, you know, then they get very fuzzy about the distinctions of that place.

01:57:30.980 I definitely do believe actually that the language that's utilized, the darkness, the mistiness, the coldness, the house with snakes, a lot of people read that and they're like, ah, what is that about?

01:57:49.700 Our ancestors definitely viewed death as a dark and cold and scary or sad thing.

01:58:00.680 And that's because they valued life so much.

01:58:04.180 Life was meant to be lived.

01:58:06.900 It was meant, goals were meant to be attained.

01:58:09.400 On top of that, it was supposed to represent the opposite of the gods, but not in a Christian sense.

01:58:16.940 It's the place that's hard to define, the mist, the place far away from the gods, the edges are blurred, the rules are kind of shifting.

01:58:30.540 None of the gods really go down there except for Lord Odin.

01:58:35.140 He's the only one that's brave enough to kind of test the undefined.

01:58:40.300 defined. So you see this separation is, I think, very ousted through. And a lot of people are like,

01:58:54.940 no, that's Christian. And I think that's very wrong. I also heard another argument that kind

01:59:01.020 of shocked me recently in the last couple of years. It was Snorri is a Christian, so Yggdrasil 0.99

01:59:09.300 having its roots in the upper middle and lower world is significant of him seeing the tree on its 0.70

01:59:18.660 side and that one really kind of shocked me um i think that people messing with

01:59:28.900 the cosmology that is clearly stated in based solely on a hunch like that is really bad form

01:59:39.300 well so i talked earlier about things that should guide us

01:59:48.260 and i think logic and impiety should should guide us in a lot of these ways there's a certain amount

01:59:54.020 of respect if you're going to mess with stuff you need to have a really good reason to do so

02:00:16.900 otherwise you take what's presented and that's your place to start from doesn't mean

02:00:23.700 everything has to stay there and it doesn't mean that the lore as it comes to us is perfect

02:00:30.900 but it was curated by people that were trying to do a good job

02:00:36.340 we have to it's one of the heroic aspects of aussitrew is

02:00:43.780 is you have the challenge to live life in an imperfect world and to exert wisdom and judgment

02:00:55.940 to guide you through it and to live heroically part of

02:01:01.700 so the word Aryan means noble part of being a noble person is having the ability to make choices

02:01:12.020 and to discern things and our gods and our ancestors have put many things in place to help

02:01:21.880 guide us and if we continue with the gift cycle they guide us still today and will guide us into

02:01:27.640 the future is my hope um one of the things they have provided for us is the preservation of the

02:01:35.960 material that we have into the time period that we exist in. The works of Snorri and Simonder

02:01:44.660 and the other scholars at the school at Audie is why we are able to build Ausitru to the

02:01:57.840 level that we are able to. Now, I think that we could all start fresh, start fresh with none of

02:02:05.360 this material and reforge again our relationship to the gods but we would be greatly at a disadvantage

02:02:15.460 having to do so having to start fresh and to regain at the point where this was all written

02:02:22.500 down regain you know thousands of years worth of collected understanding and relationship to our

02:02:31.360 gods. We are very blessed in the fact that we have the Lord that comes to us.

02:02:41.220 It's interesting because people that complain of over-Christianization of the Lord or whatever

02:02:49.440 else, I think a lot of people do that because you hear it and you repeat it and the people

02:02:58.880 you heard it from have heard it and repeated it and very few people have critically analyzed it

02:03:03.840 most of the people you guys now it may not be the same but when swan and i came into

02:03:12.000 alsatru there are all these tropes that people would just repeat all of the time

02:03:17.760 and they start becoming cringy and this is kind of one of those that people would say all the time

02:03:23.440 And often the source for it was a couple of things. So there is a cynical view on my part,

02:03:34.000 and there is an optimistic view. So cynical view. And both of these things are true, by the way.

02:03:40.660 The cynical view, there are a lot of people that just wanted to do pagan stuff because they thought

02:03:49.680 it was a license to be a degenerate and to not to be a degenerate nonconformist some of these

02:04:01.100 people just wanted to be hyper libertarian and like vikings didn't have any rules they're

02:04:07.120 rugged individualists and that's what i'm gonna do hell i even fell in that for a while that kind

02:04:13.400 of mindset many many people do well and so i'll get into that in my optimistic view here in a

02:04:19.520 second but you had people that wanted to utilize the lore for their own to justify their own

02:04:26.180 inclinations one of you know i don't want to follow any rules rules are bad you have other

02:04:34.160 people that want to i don't know larp barbarism and i think that gets emphasized when you have

02:04:45.760 shows like the vikings and you have stuff where they're all wearing the the shoulder pelts and

02:04:50.960 you know black face and just running around filthy and whatever you have a bunch of people 0.91

02:04:59.360 And this still goes on to this day with some strange folks that try to use it as an excuse for like being swingers and you get the upside down pineapple folk like to somehow glom onto our ancestors and anything that talks about, you know, decorum or dignity or fidelity or any of these things. 0.98

02:05:25.220 oh that's just christian stuff that's just that's just christian garbage that somebody put in there 0.97

02:05:31.060 because they want to justify their like fatty orgies and wife swapping and stuff um 0.99

02:05:39.140 i mean you chuckle and i'm presenting it funny but these things are true 0.96

02:05:43.060 swan and i have both seen these things okay i've not seen the fatty orgy i've heard tell

02:05:48.580 of it happening from multiple people i've not sat and observed such a thing uh but that is a

02:05:55.300 frequent thing in 1980s and 90s alsatru and you know in central parts of the country

02:06:06.100 to this day some of that ends up going on um but yes you have people that want to

02:06:13.700 escape from any kind of rules any kind of piety any kind of propriety

02:06:20.660 and revert to barbarism and every time anything in our lore counter signals that

02:06:26.340 that must be some kind of christian nonsense that's in there um but another uh

02:06:32.580 another segment of our people came to Ausatru as a reaction to Christianity so

02:06:50.460 their initial conception and so here's another thing to remember a lot of our people when they

02:06:56.640 to alsatru in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s and 70s and 80s did not have access to the material

02:07:04.320 that we have today they didn't know about as much of our lore as we know about and

02:07:12.320 so they were genuinely ignorant to a lot of things and they wanted to present alsatru as the

02:07:20.560 anti-christianity and so in their rebellion for christianity anything that christians did they 0.99

02:07:30.080 need to do the opposite oh christians dress nice we need to dress filthy christians you know are 0.98

02:07:38.640 sexually reserved we need to be hedonistic christians practice moderation we need to 0.99

02:07:47.360 just go to extremes. All of these things, and that's a very reasonable thought process or place

02:07:56.440 to be. And it's a useful and maybe even a necessary phase to go through to break clean

02:08:05.100 with what you've had and to start a new life and redefine yourself.

02:08:11.800 it's very very tempting to define yourself in opposition to the things you don't like or the things you left

02:08:19.780 but those both of those avenues of approaching it are very wrong-headed

02:08:26.240 there are certain things that are just going to be in common by dignified people that exist on the earth

02:08:34.140 there are things that go into

02:08:38.940 white people's practice of religion that aren't Christian things or even also true things

02:08:47.880 they're just things that our folk recognize as appropriate ways to behave

02:08:56.380 it should come as no surprise that you would notice things in

02:09:02.220 medieval European Christianity that are similar to things in the pagan practice of Mediterranean

02:09:14.080 antiquity and in Ausatru. There are certain things that are just how our folk do things

02:09:23.000 and approach religious practice or nobility or dignified behavior in general. Those things

02:09:31.060 are going to be found in common in a lot of places it's also important to realize that

02:09:36.900 christianity in the way that we are familiar with it is informed very very heavily by

02:09:45.220 the culture of our ancestors the culture of people who were practicing ausitrim

02:09:54.260 the and we've mentioned it many times on here but the germanization of early medieval christianity

02:10:00.340 is very informative so what would happen in contrast to what i mentioned snorri doing

02:10:06.420 earlier with like trying to faithfully preserve material a tactic to sell christianity to our

02:10:13.700 ancestors was to increasingly put a familiar um germanic coat of paint onto this very jewish

02:10:24.980 hebrew religion and they would add a lot of elements that our ancestors were familiar with 0.98

02:10:32.100 and saw as noble and valuable in order to make something that is otherwise very unappealing

02:10:39.700 taste better so you know they put the pill inside of some some some ground beef to get the dog to

02:10:46.580 eat it and that's what was going on with a lot of these things so when you read bits of lore

02:10:52.340 and something strikes you as, wait, that's not what I thought the Lord would say. 0.56

02:10:56.800 That sounds like a Christian thing.

02:10:58.720 It's important to think about that critically.

02:11:01.740 Is that Christianity in there?

02:11:04.260 Or is it a practice of our ancestors that maybe you were unfamiliar with?

02:11:09.700 Or maybe doesn't meet your preconceptions?

02:11:12.520 If we want to practice Ausitru correctly, we need to practice it the way the gods want us to.

02:11:20.380 Not the way that we've conceived in our head is the way we think we should or the way that is politically most congruent with whatever Spurgy thing somebody's doing at the moment or whatever's fashionable or whatever, you know, meets all of our desires.

02:11:40.220 We need to be concerned with the piety of is this what the gods want or they don't?

02:11:45.580 is this authentically what our ancestors believed the gods want, or is it not?

02:11:54.440 Something having similarity, our brain is built to recognize patterns.

02:11:59.840 Just because something is similar doesn't mean the one was informed by the other.

02:12:03.820 Often, people come to a similar conclusion because it's just the right thing to do,

02:12:08.820 or it's just logical, or it just makes sense.

02:12:11.140 It's not always an interloping of something different over something.

02:12:16.640 People can come to the same conclusion through different means, and it doesn't mean those things have to be connected.

02:12:22.860 So it's important to realize that.

02:12:25.640 What's also cool is to recognize, does this contradict other pieces of our lore?

02:12:34.540 It may not always seem in harmony to you, but does it contradict?

02:12:39.780 does this piece of lore negate this other piece of lore? Those things force us to make some logical

02:12:46.660 choices on which way we're going to go or how we're going to navigate that. It's interesting

02:12:51.800 when those things don't contradict. It's also interesting within the body of a work if it

02:12:57.780 references other things that are attested to other places. That should add an amount of credibility

02:13:03.440 to it so just out of hand dismissing stuff because you don't understand is really arrogant

02:13:12.700 and we need to all guard against doing that and thinking that we know better one of the things

02:13:17.700 that now is a true that we need to get back to that the modern world has taken from us

02:13:24.160 is an inborn respect and appreciation of elders

02:13:28.900 we should be respectful of those who've come before us those who've put in the work to build

02:13:38.020 things to codify things to do that labor for us we should appreciate that we should respect those

02:13:48.240 things as our default position it doesn't mean that we can't learn new things or that we can't

02:13:55.760 discern you know errors in previous things but that should be done because we know it's the case

02:14:04.880 not because we have some new cool theory and this goes back to another theme that

02:14:10.680 gets talked about on this program all of the time but we approach ausitru through

02:14:18.520 piety and the desire to be respectful of very real gods who exist and judge us.

02:14:28.000 Others often approach Alcetru in terms of scholastics or, you know, academia. And in doing

02:14:38.680 that, there is a inherent value in innovation or finding some new hot take on a subject that other

02:14:47.240 people haven't thought of. That doesn't exist through the lens of piety. That's arrogant and

02:14:53.640 making it about you and not about the gods. But in academic circles, if none of these things are

02:15:00.280 real, and we're just talking about obscure bits of archaeology or sociology, it's fun to take a

02:15:07.760 new hot take on something and build, you know, unique theories around shreds of stuff. That's

02:15:17.080 really tempting to do if you're not coming from a place of piety, if you're coming from a place

02:15:22.360 of academia. So it's important to use those things to factor and to factor into your processing of

02:15:30.500 our lore and your discerning truth um it's also all right so something else that i think is really

02:15:42.680 important that relates to this our gods have always been gods of order they are in opposition

02:15:55.460 to forces of chaos and when they interact with chaos they bring chaos into order they break

02:16:04.040 down chaos and reshape it into order or they otherwise harness it and make it ordered

02:16:12.740 but the idea of order versus chaos is really important the idea of respect for elders of

02:16:24.920 understanding hierarchy and authority and tradition is really important. And that's

02:16:32.100 reinforced throughout our lore, throughout our society, and throughout our very blood and bones.

02:16:39.700 Getting back to that as a fundamental is really important. There's a time for, you know,

02:16:46.400 rebelliousness and breaking free of something that was oppressive. But that time has come and

02:16:52.840 gone largely and the time to come back to order and structure our own order and structure in line

02:17:01.160 with our gods that's what we're building we're shaping and we're doing together and that can

02:17:08.580 look really different if to this point in your life perhaps you've defined yourself by opposition

02:17:14.660 to an order that you found oppressive or that you found to be wrong i get that if you raised your

02:17:22.400 whole life Catholic and you are breaking free from that, then it may seem counterintuitive to

02:17:30.960 embrace a different religious hierarchy. Just because the hierarchy of the religion you were

02:17:37.560 raised in was not good doesn't mean that the hierarchy of every other faith isn't good.

02:17:44.480 Those are hard things when we've become conditioned, but what I think is more important

02:17:50.020 than critically analyzing the works of Snorri is critically analyzing the preconceptions that you

02:17:56.920 come to ausiture with. And I think all of us have different ones that are shaped in different

02:18:02.460 things. Maybe we come from an atheist background. Many of us come from a variety of different

02:18:09.100 Christian sects or backgrounds. We all come from a different place, but analyzing how much of your

02:18:18.380 own baggage you're projecting upon our lore and projecting upon our faith is really important

02:18:25.000 because you know spoiler alert the answer is not zero all of us are shaped by the experiences we've

02:18:34.840 had good or bad and by the knowledge that we come to this with you shouldn't discard that but you

02:18:42.720 do need to recognize and make sure it's in its place and is it helping or is it hindering your

02:18:48.780 ability to absorb new information and to reshape your life in the way that it ought to be and in

02:18:56.620 way that's in loyalty or trough to our ISEAR. So we have some questions lined up. Tyler asked this,

02:19:13.580 and this is worth noting, this is from an email. Everybody, if you are listening to this later,

02:19:20.620 we try to, in doing this, I've tried to figure out when I can do it reliably

02:19:25.820 and when a good time to do it is to reach the majority of our membership but a good problem

02:19:33.180 to have the sun never sets on the house true folk assembly we have members in 12 different countries

02:19:40.060 at present there is no time that everyone's going to be able to make so many of you listen to this

02:19:47.020 the next day or after as a podcast or watch this down the road at any time you can submit a

02:19:56.080 question to vns at runestone.org and we will answer it on the next show this one was sent to

02:20:04.720 us on that email address so Tyler asks hey there if you had to choose what's your personal favorite

02:20:11.680 piece of our lore, and why? Thanks. Svan, what's your favorite piece of our lore, and why?

02:20:21.340 I'm gonna have to say the Halvamal, but I am re-delving into the Gilvahginning, and it's

02:20:29.580 becoming, it's overshadowing that. I also, I have three. It's the Gilvahginning, the Halvamal, 0.57

02:20:41.560 and Grimnismal. Those are my favorites just because they're so rich with lore and I can't

02:20:48.340 quite figure out which one I like more. It was originally the Halvamal because I remember my

02:20:56.300 mother printed out a really old copy from a scholar by the name of, or translator and scholar,

02:21:07.060 Boog, B-U-G-G-E. And I had that even while I was in boot camp. And when my drill instructor

02:21:19.000 asked me, what is this nonsense? I told him, it's part of my religion, sir. And he was like,

02:21:26.120 all right, you can have your respective weirdo religion. And he just told me to go on.

02:21:31.780 But it was kind of a testament then that I was in a hostile kind of or not hostile against Ausatru, but just actually that came later from another drill instructor, but that I was in the world carving my own way.

02:21:53.680 and I had brought the gods of my people with me.

02:21:57.800 It was given to me by my mother

02:21:59.360 and I stood up and said,

02:22:00.800 I don't want this taken away.

02:22:03.300 And he just, strangely enough,

02:22:06.180 he was like, well, here, take it.

02:22:07.740 I'm not gonna mess with that.

02:22:09.660 I mean, he flipped through it.

02:22:11.180 And so that was for 13 weeks.

02:22:15.780 Well, roughly 12 weeks.

02:22:19.060 All right, truthfully, 11 weeks

02:22:21.380 cutting off the front and the ends there uh where i focused heavily on reading that uh when i was

02:22:28.860 able so it it was definitive in kind of becoming my favorite but the the the gil beginning uh is

02:22:40.620 such a cornerstone to the house of true folk assembly that as i'm reading it it just is uh

02:22:48.220 such a great and rich lore, but also to the grimness model because of, um, some, uh, personal,

02:22:59.960 um, stratification of things that I, I believe that, and, and I know that else everybody was

02:23:09.480 saying like, and I'm very, very careful about this. I feel like I have found information

02:23:15.660 that is unique, but I'm trying to make sure that I'm presenting it through a point of observation

02:23:23.740 and ultimately I know that it's not some sort of, oh, look at me, I'm a scholar and I've come

02:23:31.260 across and made some new thing. Instead, I present it and I present it to the Gothar for

02:23:38.460 them to discuss to argue to do whatever they need to do or i want it to be tested but that because

02:23:47.340 of that um i also like that one as well because i feel like there's like a bit of lore in there

02:23:54.700 that for the longest time i i think we've been kind of observing it wrong and when we reserve

02:24:03.500 observe it through a different lens um then suddenly there's a lot of things that make

02:24:09.900 more sense and i'm speaking about the waterways that the the river the list of the rivers in

02:24:15.500 heaven the the rivers in the middle world and the rivers in the underworld um a lot of folks

02:24:22.700 know of the alvear in the lower worlds but everything else just becomes kind of

02:24:28.300 of dross. And, you know, through interpretations in Old Norse, I feel like I've kind of mapped

02:24:36.700 out an understanding, even though the poem just kind of mashes everything together.

02:24:42.660 So. So first, that's awesome. You're having all stories really cool. I will share my favorites

02:24:52.300 here in a sec, but I want to address something going on in the chat room before it develops more

02:24:57.260 or whatever um j doc uh mentions that the noranus society has done some good research

02:25:05.340 into pre-christian law codes and things that really um what does he say noranus society has

02:25:13.100 good research into pre-christian laws that totally blows up the hedonistic heathen world

02:25:17.500 heathenry worldview they absolutely do that is there is a number of times that you may run into

02:25:25.140 on this program where we take issue with where the norena society comes down on certain things

02:25:30.500 i don't always like a lot of their conclusions in my last question when i talked about coming

02:25:35.860 from a place of faith as opposed to scholasticism i think the norena society without bad intent

02:25:44.340 comes to it very much from a scholastic angle and they're very lacking in the religion of it

02:25:48.980 but something that Mark Puryear and myself have always agreed on and they absolutely do a wonderful

02:25:54.860 job of is dispelling the myth of the like ooga booga barbarism thing they're very good at that

02:26:05.220 and at pointing that out and one of the things that they are very good at with their um with

02:26:11.180 their academics is finding these little obscure pieces of like law code and stuff that you're

02:26:17.780 referencing that really do make the point that our ancestors were pious and they were civilized,

02:26:24.120 remarkably so, notably so, and that's really important. I'm glad you bring that up, and

02:26:31.100 that's always a point that myself and Mark Puryear agreed upon and have talked about before.

02:26:37.200 um as far as my favorite piece of lore goes 0.93

02:26:41.660 as far as its value and usefulness and as the all's here you go if you have the astro folk 0.81

02:26:53.740 assembly the gilfaginning that's one of the reasons that i wanted to do this show tonight

02:26:59.040 it's really important i think it is you know maybe maybe the most again i even feel bad saying that

02:27:06.740 But if I had to choose one that was most important, that's certainly top of the list or, you know, top three. 0.73

02:27:14.980 The Have-Em-All always should get – the Have-Em-All and the Velozbao would be the other two rounding out the top three that I think are most important, I guess.

02:27:25.860 Me personally, Gratir the Strong's saga.

02:27:31.380 I was the first piece of our lore that I read intentionally

02:27:41.340 like I'd read Beowulf before I did not realize it was connected to this I read it in high school 0.84

02:27:49.100 and I really liked it and that's another amazing piece of our lore but when I broke with Christianity

02:27:56.120 and decided to come home to House of True, I didn't know where to start.

02:28:02.260 And we weren't as well connected then as far as figuring out, like, where do I start?

02:28:09.240 I got advice from a number of people that jumping right into the Edda's was not a good idea

02:28:15.900 because if you lack the context, it can be hard to figure out.

02:28:24.040 There's some truth to that.

02:28:26.120 And so I thought I would read a bunch of the sagas first, and that would be my first taste, is I would read the sagas, literally knowing zero else coming in fresh.

02:28:37.600 I'm like, what saga looks cool?

02:28:40.360 That saga, because he was the strong, sounded really cool to me, so I'm like, all right, I'm going to read that one.

02:28:46.940 And I did.

02:28:48.240 And it was neat.

02:28:49.800 it was a it was a you know i wouldn't say it's the best of the sagas by any means

02:28:55.560 but it's the one that started my journey into reading our lore and i remember you know the time

02:29:03.640 and the place and where i was when i was reading it and so that was a really special time for me

02:29:10.200 and my coming home to house a true so that's you know in a way that's that's my favorite piece of

02:29:18.440 lore in that sense for that memory um also another email from gabe has the afa ever thought of

02:29:29.160 selling artwork of the heroes slash icier like whitman spawns beautiful pieces for example so

02:29:35.640 vibrant and full of color would be nice to have piously done artwork for the altar or around the

02:29:41.000 homestead yes the afa has absolutely thought of doing that

02:29:48.760 some people that might be sharing this broadcast with me

02:29:53.080 move slowly on producing said materials in the format that we could do that with

02:29:58.920 but some of that is underway there's some pieces that spawns done that um

02:30:04.200 Okay, apparently my ad blocker is up to date and that just popped on my screen and messed

02:30:15.380 me up there.

02:30:16.380 Apologize about that.

02:30:17.380 All right. 0.95

02:30:18.380 That being said, so Goethe Trent East's lovely wife Madison has been helping our heterosexual

02:30:30.260 michelangelo here who has produced so many really good works um we would like to do that i think

02:30:38.980 that because you mentioned it it's on the forefront nick if you could maybe make a note to bother me

02:30:43.620 about that we can try to get some of those up i know that she's taken some of spawn's pieces and

02:30:50.340 created prints out of it spawn has also made some other pieces that haven't really been

02:30:56.980 advertised or shown that he's done that lend themselves really well to uh to prints that we

02:31:04.180 have access to um he's supposed to be doing one on some of our gothic heroes that has kind of

02:31:10.900 stagnated and i'm giving him a little bit of a little bit of uh encouragement now to get back

02:31:16.980 from that but yes there is a demand for that we would love to see that we would love to get those

02:31:22.100 out there for people to celebrate, to be inspired by. And yeah, we will get on that. But that's,

02:31:29.580 that is something that we've been thinking about. We've just a little bit slow in producing it.

02:31:33.740 Yeah. And bear in mind too, when it comes to the holy gods, we have the pictures or the

02:31:41.760 godsteads at the Hoffs, but the pictures that will be coming out and have come out,

02:31:47.540 uh some of them are uh of the gods is highly active i i really got inspired with uh my youngest son

02:31:59.560 um saying that he was smashing things with with with the hammer like thor and um i wanted to

02:32:08.400 create heavily action-based um so uh there's a picture of lord odin that that uh we've kind of

02:32:18.800 set up where and it's very operatic in his positioning whereas lord thor is very uh

02:32:27.600 active it's very very action-based but you'll notice that the the heroes are more kind of

02:32:34.320 snapshots of, or they're just standing more statically. Um, we just recently completed one

02:32:43.500 for, of, of Herman of the Cherusky. So, but the other thing is, and you, you pointed it out. Yes.

02:32:51.380 Lots of color. Our ancestors were celebratory of bright, uh, clothing and wearing gold and silver

02:33:03.400 And they didn't have this whole, like, hot topic Viking motif.

02:33:11.660 And so we are certainly moving away from that.

02:33:16.300 And, you know, I'm currently working on some artwork at Thorshof, adding in addition to Lord Thor, but also to the Holy Lady Sif.

02:33:27.480 and the the the lady of the good drink uh through there his daughter so i'm i'm working on those

02:33:35.840 right now um but yes i do need to step it up put hit the hit the long pedal on the right so

02:33:46.720 some of it some of it we will attribute to uh madison just giving birth to her first child

02:33:54.980 and them getting used to being new parents so certainly uh you know no no shade towards that

02:34:01.700 that's awesome um but yeah the ones that they that spawns made so far and that madison's helped

02:34:06.980 him uh produce are really really nice um yeah i think we really like those and we'll try to get

02:34:16.740 some of those prints figured out so we can sell some of those and a lot of it too is you know

02:34:21.380 inspiration and historical correctedness um trying to find the right helmet that would have

02:34:28.260 been worn by herman of the cheruski in the wearing a roman helmet but a germanic

02:34:35.940 uh coloring scheme it's just things like that um but those are minor compared you know again

02:34:46.100 or just doing things all over but having those and putting them on as godsteads on your um harrow at

02:34:54.660 home your altar it would be amazing i think we should absolutely um get that going it's just

02:35:03.060 absolutely yeah um the anti-ai it's a i would and i'm not we're not against i'm not against ai but

02:35:11.460 But it's just this is coming from the heart, not a kind of a descriptor.

02:35:19.860 And I think that's important to note, too, that the attempt is that this is coming from belief, a believer.

02:35:31.780 No, that's awesome.

02:35:33.320 I'm looking forward to getting those, like I said, getting those up and sold.

02:35:36.420 um ought to just to share and because i'm sitting here talking with you guys um

02:35:44.660 just making a note today is the eighth anniversary of my wife and i getting married

02:35:53.160 oh time flies now we're going to celebrate tomorrow we're going to do stuff but the way

02:36:01.140 schedule worked out but uh yeah just want to kind of make a note it was really special in 2017 we

02:36:08.260 got married at Odenshof our law speaker Alan Turnage performed our ceremony um

02:36:19.220 we now have a five-year-old beautiful and amazing daughter

02:36:23.700 I am very, very blessed. But yeah, just wanted to make note.

02:36:34.380 So Sarah asks, good evening. I'll hear you go. Theon Whitten's fun. I have another question.

02:36:40.320 Is it possible that Vohr is related to Mimir? Svon, what say you?

02:36:48.840 Okay, so you're speaking about the goddess Vor. 1.00

02:36:55.680 She is one of the Al-Senior.

02:36:58.100 She's mentioned in the Gilbeginning.

02:37:00.260 And the Alistair Folk Assembly looks at this list told to King Alfie.

02:37:08.360 Who should folk pray to?

02:37:11.520 She is on that list.

02:37:14.320 And the list is, again, it's very concise.

02:37:18.840 um but the problem is is that you have say there are many scholars who think that the

02:37:27.840 our senior are simply and this ties into what we're talking about tonight that it is simply

02:37:36.300 some sort of snorty interpolation creation uh he basically they're i think the the scholar rudolph

02:37:48.020 Simic is of the belief or was of the belief that they were completely made up by Snorty for

02:37:58.360 reasons. And, um, I actually don't, um, believe that. And I think that there are actually a

02:38:07.500 testaments that go into the, um, uh, continental with like the Merceberg charm and the, uh,

02:38:16.660 Aless, I always butcher this, the votive altar at Hadrian's Wall speaks of two goddesses,

02:38:28.860 and they give them a proto-Celtic name, and they give them the Germanic name, and

02:38:33.540 I'm of a belief that they are also of the Alcimur, that they are older names for them.

02:38:41.580 Anyways, the problem is, is that the origin of the Ausenior is left completely to speculation.

02:38:55.940 Our holy lady, the mother, Frigg, she comes from the earth.

02:39:02.280 That's mentioned.

02:39:03.780 But it is not fully mentioned as to where the Ausenior rise from.

02:39:11.020 It is speculated they rise from the Vanir, some possibly from the Jotans either of the middle or of Nivelheim, but it's never fully known.

02:39:25.380 So if it, is it possible? So we have that. We have this, these kind of three sources that we see repetitively and observe in the stories that the, the ausenir come from either the vanir, i.e. the earth, the water, the, the land, or we see, and they, they rise up and join the lords of order.

02:39:55.380 and cosmic order we see them come from the jotens um and we don't really see any mention of it in

02:40:04.740 relation to uh the jotnar of niflheim of the of the ancient and the proto um other than of course

02:40:15.140 of course, Bor, Bestla, and Odenvillienve. Mimir comes from Nivelheim. He's part of Bestla and

02:40:29.460 Bolthorn's son. I don't want to say that that isn't a possibility, simply because it does

02:40:43.000 happen but it doesn't seem to be a consistent point um amongst the goddesses and we are left

02:40:52.400 with not knowing not knowing exactly where the our senior um come from but there is a point that

02:41:03.360 you make that i think is super important lord ovin's loss of his uncle in the stories has

02:41:12.220 caustic effects. When the Aesir, the lords of cosmic order, and the Vanir, the gods of natural

02:41:24.080 law, they fight, and they fight for supremacy, and what ends up happening is that leads to a 0.91

02:41:34.180 a joint, a union, but ultimately the loss of Mimir is a result. And what we find is the 0.66

02:41:42.880 Ausimir end up becoming, they fulfill the function of Mimir after he's gone. 0.93

02:41:53.440 Mimir is placed at the well of memory where all time flows. And from the well of Ur to the well 0.95

02:42:02.580 of memory. But then you find that Lord Odin speaks to Sauga. He speaks to the prominent

02:42:12.640 our senior, or at least it's just mentioned that he, again, goes out of his way to gain

02:42:19.820 information. And what I kind of see is a stratification of a purpose job amongst Lord

02:42:31.380 odin as he reaches in and um with with uh the our senior sawa or saga he's she's witnessing

02:42:42.740 everything that's happening at the well and he goes through and takes or kind of like a database

02:42:50.820 is pulling um information from her and then var is seen as the the our senior that sees beyond

02:42:59.940 what is just plainly there and even notably to the to the gods themselves so you kind of see the

02:43:08.260 not the job but you see the replacement because of their power in the al senior when lord othen goes

02:43:18.660 to them but relation i honestly can't confirm or deny and um that was a great that's a great question

02:43:28.900 I never thought of that specifically in relation to Mimir, but again, in relation to Lord Odin sought counsel with Mimir, and after natural law slays his uncle of memory,

02:43:49.240 he then opens up to council in Sockwebeck with Sauga and with Vor and with all the maidens of Fensaler.

02:44:02.760 All right.

02:44:04.280 so angela asks with our wedding uh coming shortly what elements would either of you include in a

02:44:19.740 ceremony we will not be able to have an afa clergy perform it but the friend doing it just hasn't

02:44:27.620 joined the afa yet so it's hard to like what would i what elements would i include

02:44:50.100 because the element i would include is have it be an afa wedding performed by a gothi

02:44:54.740 um as far as you know i don't know all the contexts or why that's y'all's choice and

02:45:03.300 how you're doing it what i think is fundamentally important is that you

02:45:09.380 invite the gods in at that at that stage and from that stage on invite them into your marriage

02:45:19.040 be married in front of them invite them to bear witness to your oaths and to your coming together

02:45:25.800 as man and wife and you know do that in their in their seeing and you know with a

02:45:37.000 invitation for them to be part of that union and be part of you all's life together

02:45:48.800 as you move forward as a, as a married couple. And I think there's a lot of, you know, little

02:45:55.920 fun elements you can add. But that I think is the most important thing that should be in there

02:46:07.700 as far as, you know, outs of truth things to add to it. Svan, what, what, what ideas do you have

02:46:17.080 in that vein. Yeah. I, I, I like the fact that you cut straight to the true core because

02:46:24.100 I was immediately thinking of the minutia. I was thinking of the traditions, the culture,

02:46:29.200 and it's like, yeah, you're doing all of this stuff, but why? And the reason is, yes,

02:46:35.060 is how I was here to go. He says to bring the gods into your life, into your house,

02:46:41.680 just as great-grandmother and great-grandfather did with Rieg, that's the point of that story,

02:46:50.160 is bringing in the divine into the coupling. And they are not individuals, they are, of course,

02:46:57.560 a generation, but it's macro and micro. Bringing in the divine is important, and I think that

02:47:07.300 represents because we do culturally we do three oaths at a wedding the first is the the oath of

02:47:14.540 the horn and that oath is inviting the gods asking them to come forth and to bear witness and to um

02:47:23.040 hold the oath and and in specifics to vow the the the our senior of oaths and vows

02:47:32.620 to listen and to place the hamina of your soul, uh, on, on your words. It's balanced on your

02:47:42.780 words. Um, and then the second oath is the oath of course, of the sword and the, and the, uh, key

02:47:49.800 and those are transferred, but that's, that's again, a worldly part of our culture in which

02:47:54.940 the man oaths to protect the family and the woman oaths to like run the run the home and

02:48:04.880 understand that everything coming in and going out and that's her that's her dominion is is in 0.53

02:48:11.560 um making the home a loving place making the home a place of um happiness or or learning and and and

02:48:21.620 all of these things. And lastly, of course, is the Oath of the Ring, which I'm absolutely sure

02:48:29.560 you're familiar with. So as Al-Syri Ergothi said, I think one of the big things would be to

02:48:35.700 start a gift cycle at that moment together. This might be the first time you have given gift to

02:48:44.040 the holy gods. And in doing so, it can be as simple as loading the horn and asking the holy

02:48:52.700 gods and goddesses or just the Aesir to come into your life, come into your home to guide you and

02:49:01.100 that you in turn will also be giving to them. That there is this, I often say, you know, again,

02:49:12.360 when I'm gifting is, as much as I drink of you, so shall you be able to drink of me? I am

02:49:20.260 reciprocating. And that is important to guidance, is allowing the Holy Divine to know that you are

02:49:31.060 opening up and you are seeking that guidance. You're trying to reconnect and you want to be

02:49:37.840 of piety and and service to your people and service to the gods of your people and um i

02:49:44.720 think that goes a long way so even if you just add the horn element um and just expounding on

02:49:52.720 what i was here ago they said that's why you're adding the horn element um and then from there

02:49:58.480 if you move to the oath of the rings and you say your vows before each other um and and

02:50:04.240 and place your your the rings upon your fingers um and then everything else is

02:50:11.600 icing on the cake or personal uh flair but i mean i i would encourage of course to

02:50:19.120 for every person out there to try to seek to get gothar to um come and you know adjudicate your

02:50:29.780 weddings or come to the Hoffs if you can. I've driven very, very far to preside over weddings 0.54

02:50:40.820 that were not at the Hoffs simply because there were folks in the family that couldn't travel to

02:50:48.220 the Hoff. So the Gothar came to them and ensured that that was met. And that's just something that

02:50:59.520 needs to be reiterated and said, first, Angela, congratulations. I'm excited for you guys.

02:51:06.800 There's a lot of bells and whistles. And I know that, you know, you guys know about the fun bells

02:51:12.400 and whistles when it comes to that kind of stuff. You know, the sword, the exchange of keys,

02:51:19.860 that's a thing you may want to do, you know, have some kind of braided rope or something you want

02:51:26.340 to do for hand fasting. I've had to learn how to, officiating weddings, I've had to learn how to

02:51:31.060 tie, do the hand fasting and tie the infinity knot in it to where it comes out right. So that's

02:51:37.780 kind of a thing that you may want to do on that. We've also done the tartan wraps for some folks

02:51:47.540 who have a heavy gaulish tradition and taking a tartan and wrapping that around the hand.

02:51:54.140 that's that was yeah there's there's fun stuff to do depending on the particulars

02:51:58.860 but i do want to put out there um

02:52:06.380 don't think if you're an afa member do not think that um

02:52:13.580 you know just because you are not close to a gothy or a githya geographically that that can't be

02:52:18.860 arranged or accommodated. Our Gothar travel great distances. Many of us have traveled great distances. 1.00

02:52:27.900 I hiked up a mountain one time, or I hiked up a mountain twice now, actually, to perform weddings.

02:52:34.060 So there are... 1.00

02:52:39.580 It's very likely that we can arrange something if you'd like a Gothier to officiate your wedding. 0.71

02:52:48.860 Next question, are Iranians considered white? The follow-up, so Iranians could join the 0.96

02:52:59.220 AFA? If they're white. Yeah, there we go. That answers all. Sure, if they're white, 1.00

02:53:09.940 we'll leave it at that. So that's an interesting question, and that's something people just

02:53:18.040 would love to jump on and it's one of these strange what-ifs

02:53:21.880 and the question got asked earlier when i mentioned the zealotry of the fringe and the

02:53:33.020 fact that iran means land of the arians and the current monarchy of iran that's in exile

02:53:41.460 that's like their um reginal title is you know king of the arians that's since persian you know

02:53:50.580 antiquity that was their defining thing is because yes at that time so and this is this is kind of

02:53:58.340 of the key. 1000 BC, Iranians are, the tribes moving into Iran, calling themselves Iranian 0.83

02:54:10.860 are white, absolutely. What happens is old Europeans are white, migrating Aryans are 0.98

02:54:22.880 white, the whiteness redoubles. Like when Signy does the secret incest to make the double 0.94

02:54:34.060 Wilson. So you have two groups, you have an invading group of white people invading a 0.83

02:54:43.600 place of indigenous white people. So the intermixture over the years just makes more white 0.88

02:54:49.260 What you see in Iran and the same migration time in India, those groups get intermixed with local populations over the intervening millennia. 0.80

02:55:04.260 millennia, instead of largely displacing them, like in the United States, there was an indigenous

02:55:10.360 native population, but due to disease and other factors and just the sheer mass of land in North

02:55:17.760 America, a lot of that was displaced. But what you see as far as Spaniards that conquered and set up

02:55:26.900 shop in Mexico. And that's just over the course of a few hundred years. You see a very significant

02:55:35.800 mixture of races there. And there are still people that are, you know, in the higher classes

02:55:42.280 of that society that are clearly white. But you see a lot more of them that are very heavily 0.91

02:55:49.200 mixed with um aztec indigenous population you see in india a very heavy mixture of

02:56:00.720 aryan indian with dravidian peoples there and so in india you don't really see that anymore

02:56:09.680 that's just a how dravidian are they in iran it's a little bit different i think that their ruling

02:56:17.520 class has maintained much more of their ethnic identity i have seen iranians that are very white

02:56:28.640 that yes we probably would let into the astro folk assembly if they applied

02:56:34.000 and that was their picture and they told us that that was their lineage

02:56:37.680 um there's a lot more that are obviously mixed with surrounding um demographics over time and

02:56:48.160 that certainly aren't but what i do think is interesting to note is you can still see that

02:56:52.400 distinction when you look at like the iranian royal family and you compare that with the nations

02:56:58.560 that surround them there is a there is a big distinction there so i think that it's a broadly

02:57:05.440 to suggest iranians are white but i think there are some white iranians

02:57:17.360 will the afa start requesting dna for membership no that's intrusive

02:57:23.120 and spurgey and no we wouldn't do that dang it i don't get to use my skull calipers

02:57:28.800 so

02:57:32.720 i'm a little box and everything

02:57:37.460 i get it and i'm not faulting the person who asked the question

02:57:43.540 there are a number of people that suggest that they want that um

02:57:49.900 i think that's you know a step or several too far i think the idea of having to submit your dna

02:58:01.580 to join our church is intrusive and just off the cuff offensive to a lot of people that would want

02:58:12.920 to join. And I don't think that's necessary. I think we all collectively understand people who

02:58:21.440 are us and people who are not us. The times that that has been confusing to people, I don't think

02:58:27.600 the confusion is honest. I think the confusion is wishful thinking. In my long experience, again,

02:58:34.220 we could get everybody spun up about the possibility of Iranians, but Iranians aren't

02:58:39.200 joining the AFA. That's not a real thing. People just get spun up about the what-ifs.

02:58:45.100 We could require everybody to do an extensive DNA test and, you know, go into fractions of

02:58:53.600 percentages and whatever else. That's not going to affect the vast majority of people other than

02:59:00.480 to make them offended and to make them feel uncomfortable with that as a requirement.

02:59:05.980 it. I don't think it's necessary. I think what's also an interesting thing genetically,

02:59:14.300 the test results don't always match the person that's looking at me.

02:59:22.220 And in the AFA, we have seen that before where someone very obviously is not a white person,

02:59:30.080 But they apply and show us their, you know, and I have to believe them that they're showing us an honest DNA test. 0.59

02:59:40.620 And they're very obviously not what you would think that DNA test would indicate.

02:59:47.880 Honestly, it's ironic, but I think in some ways, a visual smell test is a more stringent requirement than the DNA test.

03:00:03.780 we had one we had one person who wanted to present himself to us as suitable for membership

03:00:13.380 and he was I believe 93 percent European but that other seven percent was completely defined his

03:00:26.020 appearance um and that wouldn't be acceptable it's not a people it's very 0.54

03:00:38.420 it is very compelling in the world that we live in today with the forced diversity that many of us

03:00:45.700 face to be hypersensitive to minutiae of DNA and things because it's ever-present and it's a

03:00:57.100 consistent in-your-face thing today. I think in a different time in a different place that is less

03:01:04.820 of an obsession because it was a less immediate concern and a less problematic thing. So I think

03:01:11.800 sometimes now we obsess to a level that might not be healthy on that instinctively we all are able

03:01:20.340 to recognize us and not us and i think leaning into that very organic process of these are our

03:01:28.040 folk these other guys are not our folk is a much better much more authentic authentic and much more

03:01:38.040 useful way to do that. Now, I know a lot of our people are very analytically minded and they want

03:01:44.880 to see a number on a piece of paper. And the world just doesn't work that way. It's not that clean.

03:01:52.480 I've seen, you know, that has not been my experience that it works that way in a way that

03:01:58.360 I think we'd all like the result of. I wanted to say something on that too. Just

03:02:05.660 One thing that I noticed is the not understanding, too, that we are pan-Aryan when we talk about, let's say, the vestiges of there is an Iranian person who is or of that stock or has, again, he looks like us or she looks like us.

03:02:31.240 Um, they're, they're, you know, the redheads in Afghanistan and they have pale skin and light eyes and so on and so forth. Um, but I think a big thing is that there is a consistent concept that Germanic Aryans have.

03:02:48.340 And I'm speaking as like a Nordic Germanic is that anything outside of the Germanics is not. And that kind of ends up again, that's a fracturing purity spiral that I think is one, it goes too far. And two, it has been proven wrong. 0.79

03:03:10.660 I mean, we know when we start talking about the linguistics and migration, you know, so people saying, oh, the Irish aren't or the Slavs aren't.

03:03:22.480 And it just that becomes so burdensome. And that's why a huge part of this is about does this look like a stranger amongst my people or does it does does it not is a huge thing.

03:03:38.040 And then, you know, again, it's, it's, it's beyond simply, um, Hollywood has told me that Aryans are this way. So if they're not like that, then they're not, you know, they're not Aryans.

03:03:55.940 But again, that's not a good way to go around is having that be defined by others.

03:04:04.140 Instead, what we have to do is look at the truth of things.

03:04:08.480 You know, are the Slavic folk that look like us?

03:04:13.040 Yes. 0.99

03:04:13.520 If they look Asiatic, no. 1.00

03:04:16.540 It's really that kind of stuff. 1.00

03:04:19.300 And it really is.

03:04:20.980 And I think that's the way it's intended to be.

03:04:24.240 we perceive with our senses we don't scan a barcode that's not that's not human and that's

03:04:32.060 not how I want us to process information um and I think uh this raises another interesting point

03:04:41.220 and it goes kind of to tonight's theme as far as tracing back logic and stuff one of the other

03:04:47.820 criticisms that we get from spectators sometimes that don't have a, that either haven't asked or

03:04:55.120 don't lend this level of thought to it. Oh, Odin and Thor, that's Viking stuff. You guys aren't

03:05:03.300 Vikings. Why are you worshiping Viking gods? How come you're, you know, you're, people are from

03:05:08.960 Scotland or England or, you know, wherever. Why don't you worship those gods? What, you're from

03:05:14.940 spain why don't they don't do the logic if our gods are a product of the nation state then yeah

03:05:29.580 that makes sense but they're not they're gods they're creative gods that shaped our people

03:05:36.780 And as I mentioned earlier, and it's just worth reforming, they don't transform into something different when you cross a national boundary or when you start speaking a different language.

03:05:55.440 It seems preposterous to us to talk about Odin and Wotan being two separate gods because they're not.

03:06:03.120 but that's often not extended all the way back it's like oh those look the same and sound similar

03:06:13.000 clearly that well cool but what was he called before he was called voton well what was he

03:06:21.520 called before that well how did our folk know him before that if you trace the migration of our folk

03:06:27.260 it goes in a lot of different directions over thousands of years and as we've talked about

03:06:34.960 before yes we focus on the norse nomenclature and presentation of lore because that is what

03:06:43.540 has been preserved for us safeguarded for us and gifted to us by the gods that's what

03:06:51.240 we are doing

03:06:53.320 was reforged by

03:06:56.040 in the middle of the last century

03:06:58.300 the All-Father

03:07:01.700 reached out to our founder Stephen

03:07:03.620 MacNallan under the name

03:07:05.360 Odin and under the conception

03:07:07.760 of the Norse

03:07:09.700 understanding of our faith

03:07:11.220 it could have

03:07:12.740 and this is another theme that I wanted to touch on

03:07:15.480 tonight, we could have done

03:07:17.600 this any number of other ways

03:07:19.260 and it would have been good and okay to do we could use all the german names or we could use

03:07:25.500 the anglo-saxon names or you know we could manifest aryan divinity in a lot of different

03:07:34.140 ways this could be a celtic thing or a slavic thing but it's not that's not the spark that

03:07:42.380 caught fire and worked. This is. So that's why we're aligning ourselves, bringing ourselves

03:07:49.980 into order that way, synchronizing around that, and that's our route to worship Arian divinity.

03:07:58.540 But these are the common gods of all of our ancestors. If they are the gods that shaped us

03:08:05.320 as a race of people then they existed at the earliest version of us the earliest that we

03:08:12.600 know about that we can trace that back to linguistically is the word i use arian what's

03:08:17.880 become popular post-world war ii in scholastic circles is indo-european but that's the farthest

03:08:26.760 like proto-indo-european is the farthest linguistically that we can trace

03:08:32.200 the verbal expression of our divinity to. And that's come down to us in a variety of different

03:08:40.480 ways and shapes and forms. But clearly, the same gods that we are worshiping this evening

03:08:50.260 are the gods that formed our folk as far back as the Ice Age and perhaps beyond.

03:08:57.660 And that's important for us to keep in mind, we are just as connected to those gods as is someone who lives in, you know, Stavanger in Norway or somebody who lives in Reykjavik or somebody who lives in Verona or in or white people that live in Paris.

03:09:27.660 I know that doesn't go without saying these days, or any of our other people in different

03:09:34.700 parts of Europe that go back to that route.

03:09:38.460 So do keep that in mind to understand why the AstroFolk Assembly is Pan-Aryan in our

03:09:45.980 membership and in our approach to divinity. 0.97

03:09:51.760 This one's for you, Svon. Sierra wants to talk about the tripartite in the Prose Edda.

03:09:59.600 Yes.

03:10:02.400 Who do you think they are?

03:10:04.240 I told her she wanted us to have a 17-hour stream tonight.

03:10:08.240 Try to come in under the 17-hour mark, Svon.

03:10:12.000 Okay.

03:10:12.800 Like I said, we're planning on celebrating our anniversary tomorrow. We got stuff to do.

03:10:16.880 right no i would say uh for everyone watching some people might be like what the tripartite 0.90

03:10:24.520 what is that like a trinity thing and um yes aryan faiths have trinities and so much so

03:10:32.780 that christianity which is pseudo-judaic comes into europe and it gets a trinity and 0.53

03:10:41.720 modern christians especially protestants today are like oh it's always had it it's like no 0.70

03:10:47.240 no it's pretty clear it was about just yahweh being the one um and then there is the mashiach

03:10:56.040 who kind of harbingers the power of the one um but you look at every arian branch whether it's

03:11:07.560 it's Indra, Agni, and Varuna, whether it's Asus, Teratatis, and Teranis, whether it's

03:11:16.940 Deus Pater, and Hadis, and Poseidon, there's always a trinity, and it always goes like

03:11:29.380 this by watching, so we have to observe, and I really like, because me and Sierra have

03:11:34.580 been talking via text about some of the stuff. And I kind of felt this question coming, just

03:11:43.840 not on this, but one of the more interesting things about our triad, tripartite trinity

03:11:55.300 is that looking through it in observation, we see function.

03:12:04.180 The way that we reach out to the gods, they fulfill a function

03:12:08.300 because they are keeping promise to us in the gift cycle.

03:12:13.820 We ask for this and they give this, which is good.

03:12:18.880 So when I speak about the thrones of the tripartite,

03:12:23.180 What I'm really saying is, is we reach out to the divine God forms and ask them for this. And they show us in their purpose and how they answer our prayers.

03:12:39.040 So most people don't even know that we have a tripartite, that we have a trinity. They try desperately to just create a singular Godhead without observing that there's always a masculine and a feminine God that changes.

03:13:00.320 they pass not pass away sometimes they do in the stories there is this this overarching masculine

03:13:07.340 overarching feminine that pass away and then in the stead there is one who leads and then there

03:13:14.400 are two that are in assisting now for most people the the closest place I can point you at

03:13:23.320 is the days of our week. And bear in mind, the middle is the high point. So we have Tuesday,

03:13:31.840 Wednesday, and Thursday. We have Tyr, Odin, and Thor. And then Tacitus' Germania

03:13:40.840 substantiates this tripartite, that they worship Mars, Mercury, and Hercules, he says. But again,

03:13:52.540 he's utilizing comparatives uh the the the bunk if you will so we have um stasis nation war we have

03:14:06.300 dynamic uh magic death and also war but again all of them are war and then lastly we have catalytic

03:14:14.620 uh breaking down barriers uh a combination between the earth and the heavens that's why

03:14:22.080 tacitus said hercules he was thinking of the earth and of the sky uh and on just at that time

03:14:30.500 or over evolution the greco-romanics were they had made the mortal and godhood um but we are of

03:14:43.300 The Vanir and the Aesir is how Thor is made. 0.86

03:14:50.080 Though, I did speak about Snorri labeling Yard as a Jotun. 0.85

03:15:00.020 But remember, Jotuns that aid and give birth to the gods are in their realm of dominion.

03:15:09.100 They're not antithetical.

03:15:10.140 Thor's mother is not trying to kill him

03:15:13.980 He is the son of heaven and earth

03:15:16.000 But I digress

03:15:20.500 The other tripartite that we see of course is

03:15:25.680 Odin, Vili, and Ve

03:15:27.460 So most Ausatruer immediately go to that

03:15:30.540 The three who is one

03:15:33.600 The one who is three

03:15:34.860 And so

03:15:36.180 So, to be honest, with just those two, I am of the mindset that it is the tripartite of Tyr, Odin, and Thor.

03:15:53.100 Could it be Lord Odin himself in his triplicate?

03:15:58.740 Yes, that could be, and I'm not going to say one way or the other.

03:16:02.180 I'm just kind of more inclined.

03:16:03.180 But bear in mind, too, I believe that the tripartite changed based on needs, function, and prayer. Our ancestors that were in Sweden, when in the Temple of Uppsala, Adam of Bremen, though he might not have actually been there physically in person, that's a whole other thing.

03:16:27.580 He states in the center of the temple, there is three platforms and in the center is the thunderer. And to one side is the furious one, which Odin, Odr means fury. And to the other side is the fruitful one.

03:16:47.900 And now we have this introduction of Lord Freyr. And so I don't believe that this is some sort of locked in thing. And I think it would be really stupid for us to assume this. Hence the reason why I say the thrones.

03:17:05.280 because thrones can be sat in and stood up from and that the gods are gods and they can do that

03:17:12.080 they can do that when when when they want and uh for us to try to pigeonhole

03:17:18.920 every aryan branch as being the same and or even within our own people i think it has changed and

03:17:28.160 this is only through observation that I'm bringing this about. Um, so I am lending towards 0.68

03:17:37.360 the, the, the, the tripartite that even Tacitus kind of refers to as being the kind of the

03:17:46.120 primogen of Germanic tripartite. Um, but it could be Lord Ovin. And I just don't know,

03:17:56.380 i'm reading it again actually because of sierra and i'm looking for it for anything from that

03:18:02.920 perspective um but the trinity or the tripartite is so important in our faith even gunungagap

03:18:11.200 is filled with stasis catalyst and dynamic adunla moves emir uh is a catalyst he's asleep and when

03:18:22.920 wakes up everything's going to come down and yggdrasil is stasis it's the center that it is a

03:18:30.760 it is so repetitively seen and if you read the stories if you tell the stories um you begin to

03:18:39.000 see the patterning and uh i i think that's again it's observation it's not just to to make things

03:18:47.880 up if you will um and i also think that there there is a reason why the the holy gods of the

03:18:54.440 upper world are pulling in dominion power from the vanir and from the yachtins there's a again

03:19:02.200 a movement a triplication um so real quick i was gonna say i think as you mentioned an extra three

03:19:10.520 aside from odin and all them i think our brains work really well in threes i could think of a

03:19:16.760 half a dozen different trios you could think of finner haiti and uh score you could think of

03:19:27.640 and hell you could think of madney modi and through there you could think of balder thor and

03:19:37.160 And the god we don't talk about, you could think of, I don't know, Thor or Balder and Vali and Vita.

03:19:49.700 There's all kinds of different ways you could think of threes.

03:19:53.660 Yeah, and again, that's a number of dynamicism.

03:19:56.200 I think that's why Lord Odin is the triplicate.

03:20:00.660 He is the lord of dynamicism.

03:20:03.100 He moves throughout the realms, which, again, is no big deal if all the other gods can do it, but they can't.

03:20:11.740 It specifically says they it's not easy for them in the sense or I'm not going to say they can't.

03:20:19.000 What I mean is in the stories, it's presented as these are great feats in which Lord Odin does and then bestows this upon others.

03:20:32.160 like her mother um and then you know when we speak about like magni and modhi um i so i've

03:20:42.600 always tried to kind of i get some of the um the the i guess it could be a tripartite of the family

03:20:49.880 and the farm if you have sif as the uh of of the land the orchard and the harvest you have lord

03:20:58.080 ullr of the hunt and of the winter tiding and and gaining uh flesh for your family to eat over the

03:21:05.200 and then you have through there who takes the leftover wheat and makes the brew uh you have

03:21:12.800 this kind of triplication there um but magni and modi are mentioned coming up after ragnarok um to

03:21:21.040 to carry forth Mjolnir, but also it's worth remembering that Lord Thor has another weapon.

03:21:29.680 It's called Gríðavl. It's the rod of conflict. And Magni and Móði, Móði means wrathfulness.

03:21:40.940 so i don't think that was accidental but um again there is this interesting point of

03:21:49.600 the divinities of the holy gods as they produce that or extensions and and create more of

03:21:58.200 and interline themselves with other divine beings and create progeny the progeny end up fulfilling

03:22:06.000 uh these active forces some of them are long-standing some of them are immediate

03:22:13.440 and others are destined for after ragnarok and i i speak specifically of magni and movi in that in

03:22:20.960 that regards but vauly vidar um are all in the pre and i and and they're listed in the guild

03:22:31.200 beginning by the tripartite saying these are the gods good for men to to worship now i've seen again

03:22:38.160 a lot of people just discount snorty and say oh he was just trying to fill it and and hopefully

03:22:45.040 tonight after everyone's watched this they understand no snorty was not just whipping things

03:22:53.120 out from his pocket this is a long-standing tradition going farther back towards our ancestors

03:23:01.760 than people you know give credit for and i think there's that worth of understanding

03:23:10.000 the problem is that a lot of aussitruer have never uh looked at hierarchy um

03:23:18.560 They don't poise hierarchy or they'll just say Odin's king. That's it. But they never conceptualize the ideas of why the gods of cosmic order would pull in Jotnar from the middle and thus produce more Aesir.

03:23:38.820 They produce valli. They produce vidar because of rindur and grither. So they don't, a lot of folks, they don't know who rindur or grither are.

03:23:53.480 So these points could be looked at. They are certainly worthy of giving piety and prayer, or also, too, some folks look at it more as these are the machinations of the gods as they are bringing in dominion, the middle world, and the gods that are listed in the guild beginning are the ones that we should focus on.

03:24:20.500 But everything happening in the stories are purposeful. The gods are, they go, they bring in powers from Jotunheim, they bring in powers of Anaheim, and then in the primordial ocean of the material world, they lock it down in oath.

03:24:40.520 ayur and raun and the cauldron the centering of the primordial ocean the blood of emir is brought

03:24:49.960 into dominion not through marriage and not through children but through oath bound hosting

03:24:57.720 and i i don't think any of that is uh coincidental so

03:25:05.240 that's me trying to rein it in as you're going i appreciate your sacrifice

03:25:14.920 it hurt me

03:25:19.040 so i'm looking at some stuff for an upcoming question all right i can keep

03:25:32.600 Oh, what are your thoughts on classical liberalism and people who identify as such?

03:25:42.200 Svon, do you have thoughts on that?

03:25:45.540 I mean, I think classical liberalism is a really broad thing to say.

03:25:51.720 I am not particularly a fan of minarchist or minimalist government to the point where, you know, your neighbor can buy a Taiwanese girl off of the Internet because there's, you know, no victim in the whole situation. 0.90

03:26:16.880 like that no they're that's not good um i don't believe that's good and again i have gotten to

03:26:24.480 points where i've met classic liberals that are oh borders don't mean anything if the government is

03:26:31.760 nothing so i generally look at constitutionalists anyone who believes and this kind of harkens back

03:26:40.800 to iceland anyone who believes that there is a law or laws that are given to them by the gods

03:26:52.480 um that at at just a basic level outside of that uh i think that's that's good in the lower sense

03:27:02.800 that uh that there's basic laws and and things that a nation should give to its people and have

03:27:11.520 for its people or at least afford it even if it's just the freedom to have a business and free

03:27:18.800 market and what have you but when you get up higher there needs to be some other things or

03:27:23.760 there needs to be a nominative sense of of uh direction um you know you end up finding out that 0.60

03:27:30.320 There's, you know, giant buildings of corporate sense that would absolutely sell off their company and go to a foreign country for slave labor and just destroy, you know, the working folk of their nation simply because it's going to save them a buck.

03:27:54.060 So there's some sort of line. I think that there's the constitutional sense of law that is afforded to the citizens of a nation. And then I think also, too, there's a freedom sense that they need to have in order to build their lives and pursue their will.

03:28:10.620 And then there's a point where there needs to be someone there saying like, no, you're not going to move your factory to Malaysia because you can pay them pennies and you're going to lay off thousands and thousands of your folk.

03:28:31.480 So I'm kind of like an upper tier, lower tier version of classical liberalism in the low sense, and then perhaps more of a authoritarian presence in the upper sense.

03:28:51.960 And I say that, and I know people are going to be like, oh, but government is authority. Executive branch is authority. The idea of having a principled upper tier that makes sure that you don't have people coming in, hiring all your people, giving them jobs, and then running to another country and firing them all simply to make a buck or other things, tariffs and what have you.

03:29:21.660 I'm a believer that in that upper relationship with other nations, we need to have strong presence.

03:29:30.220 The other thing, too, is, you know, disabling and dismantling that upper presence of authority is just inviting other groups in the strong centralized governments of, you know, communist China or or what have you.

03:29:52.360 and I'm just using them as an example, is that you might as well just invite them in.

03:29:56.820 There's no sense of an ability to defend against outside threats if everyone's so free

03:30:05.660 that they can't define themselves and they don't care about who they are as a people

03:30:11.360 or a language or a culture, et cetera.

03:30:14.420 um

03:30:17.840 I don't have strong thoughts on that I think it's

03:30:28.420 I think it's confusing um

03:30:34.480 people hear the word liberal now and it has a very particular meaning and it you know we have

03:30:44.400 of certainly in the West a conservative and liberal right and left dichotomy that this is

03:30:56.400 odd about I think it's very

03:31:00.480 i don't know like i said i think it's confusing i think when people claim that they

03:31:13.040 hearken back to like a enlightenment era freedom of inquiry thing and i think when we compare

03:31:30.480 The modern, like, complete revolt against anything traditional or anything normal or wholesome, looking back at a Thomas Jefferson or something is very appealing. 0.78

03:31:51.860 And certainly, you know, I'm on Team Thomas Jefferson as opposed to Team Tranny or whatever. 0.92

03:32:01.540 Absolutely.

03:32:02.940 But I don't think that's the case.

03:32:08.400 You know, I think it's misleading because I think we look at it being very traditional because I think we would consider a lot of America's founding fathers as being classically liberal.

03:32:20.580 in that like John Locke enlightenment era sense but when I think about that and I think about

03:32:36.820 enlightenment era stuff I don't think about the yeoman Virginian farmer I think about the French 0.94

03:32:48.360 revolution i think about the people out there in the streets let's behead royalty let's behead 0.99

03:32:55.880 nobility let's behead everybody that even sort of sounds like a sane human being let's turn all the 0.99

03:33:04.040 churches into churches of reason and redo our calendar and let's completely destroy tradition 0.99

03:33:12.600 robespierre yeah we're looking at you robespierre yeah exactly when so when when

03:33:21.800 i don't know when ted cruz wants to talk about classical liberalism i think he thinks of

03:33:28.440 jefferson when i think of classical liberalism i think of robespierre and i think of the terror

03:33:35.320 that's why i like that caveat of of the constitutional uh classical liberalism where

03:33:45.400 there's this kind of and that's that doesn't always work that's the thing about some of

03:33:51.400 these things i think that and this okay we all label stuff it makes things it categorizes things

03:34:00.360 in our head it sorts information i do it too we all do that but i think when we want to internalize

03:34:10.840 it in a meaningful way in our life it comes down to name calling like

03:34:20.840 how many times in my life am i called a racist what do those people mean when they call me a racist

03:34:27.720 there's a variety of meanings that they ascribe to the word they use to describe someone else

03:34:33.960 and so it's like you know communism is shea guevara communism or is lenin

03:34:45.320 communism is carl marx communism or is joseph stalin communism they're all very different

03:34:52.760 forms of communism they're all under the communist umbrella but in between them they

03:34:58.200 wouldn't get along and they have a tremendous amount of difference between them on how they

03:35:02.440 apply some of those things it's like enlightenment era classic liberalism

03:35:10.520 again you have a whole bunch of people around that time in england and america that you know

03:35:17.080 might not be upsetting to us would be very familiar to us in our current system of united

03:35:25.400 states democratic republic or whatever their contemporaries in france would look real different

03:35:34.360 to us people following the same ideas in you know haiti would look real different to us

03:35:43.560 So I don't like to get stuck in that. That's not a term. I get it. Usually when I hear people refer to themselves as classically liberal, they want to be, as George W. Bush described it, compassionate conservatives.

03:36:11.380 I think that's kind of what they mean is like traditional American freedom minded spirit of 1776 kind of folks.

03:36:26.220 And I get that. And that's certainly better than most of the things that surround us.

03:36:32.460 But I don't think that's something that I particularly identify with or would get behind.

03:36:37.480 And again, if the ballot is classically liberal versus the stuff that's been on there, then sure, I'll be on team classically liberal if that's what we're doing.

03:36:50.860 That said, in a more recent classically liberal time, 1992 Bill Clinton is a lot better than 2024 Kamala.

03:37:06.740 So it's hard to say. And I think that, again, political things are all very relative to the issue of their day. A classically liberal person would be mortified by what the term liberal would imply today.

03:37:23.680 a classically liberal person in 1800 would be mortified by their classically liberal brothers

03:37:32.580 in France and some were so I I don't think that I think that over the course last 200 years that

03:37:40.200 word doesn't really have the same meaning that it used to have so the next question this is why I

03:37:47.260 was, you know, taking advantage of Svan's expounding upon the tripartite. So I was trying

03:37:54.180 to find. Question is, and you may have a more ready answer to this. Scott Thatcher, or Scott

03:38:00.560 asked, what's the oldest grave or tomb where Thor's hammer was found?

03:38:08.780 Ooh, I don't have to look. I don't have it right off the top of my head at all. And again,

03:38:16.400 the the the classification of hammer versus axe uh hammer axe club that's where we start to get

03:38:26.720 it starts to kind of get hard to pin down so we have an answer in the chat

03:38:36.480 but i haven't verified the information to look it up uh from eminsted in the 8th or 9th century

03:38:48.880 i'm not sure i'd have to look at that it's also you know where do you find these things often we

03:38:55.360 find jewelry in grave, you know, hordes that are interred with someone. So you'll find

03:39:06.940 a variety of jewelry or just, you know, they're collected buried treasure that gets buried

03:39:11.900 with them. I know that hammers have been found in finds that are not exclusively burial

03:39:23.200 related so i don't know the use of that in the customs it's interesting i've seen and i can't

03:39:32.820 place exactly where now um in memorial rune stones or rune stones that you know in a way

03:39:44.440 eulogize a person will also have a hammer inscribed on them in some way

03:39:49.100 this is not old but the oldest that I can think of in modern times that has a hammer on it is

03:40:01.660 Yost Turner's grave in northern California and I sent those pictures to Nick it's an obelisk and

03:40:13.500 And these are two sides of the obelisk.

03:40:16.460 But he's a very important friend and, I don't know, a guy that taught our founder, Steve

03:40:25.500 McNallan, a lot of things.

03:40:27.940 And they shared a lot of experience together and were very close.

03:40:30.940 He was kind of fundamental in the formative period of the Alstroofolk assembly.

03:40:41.120 I've been there and visited his grave in 1996 is not some time of great antiquity, but it

03:40:49.080 is the oldest one that I've seen that's directly on a grave.

03:40:53.240 I was also at the interment of an AFA member, Clark Woolenweber's remains in a cemetery

03:41:03.600 in West Virginia.

03:41:04.680 And that's where I was looking for it.

03:41:05.720 I don't have a picture of that tombstone, but it was one that had a, one of the early

03:41:09.980 ones that had a military issued um thor's hammer on his on his grave placard so i was there for

03:41:18.380 that and saw that and that's in west virginia in the moundsville area but yeah i'm not sure

03:41:25.740 as far as archaeological finds where the oldest one was i will take folks at the word and look up

03:41:31.900 the uh image that let's say you swan i just found so um the thor's hammer of nibel or neville

03:41:43.340 on the north phrygian island of ambram so off the coast of uh the netherlands uh they found the um

03:41:52.780 in a burial mound called the asin asin who they find a thor's hammer um and it was in a female

03:42:00.700 burial site and it is dated um for 800 or eight excuse me eighth or ninth century they just kind

03:42:11.100 of leave that open but then later on they go down and they say the the biggest thing is

03:42:16.700 the interpretation force hammer is very hard to um determine because of the what i said the

03:42:25.820 transition from axe and hammer uh and rod alone um and they show uh hammer pendant from uh germany

03:42:37.820 and so again that's where it is is the interpretation and generally they they the

03:42:44.220 hammer any type of research immediately is going to place it into either scandinavia or scandinavia

03:42:51.420 owned continental germany but we do see other like there are bronze um hammer axes it's it's a

03:43:01.660 just a broad square um held together and then there's also the braided rod um that are also

03:43:10.140 found throughout germany and they go further back but we see in anglo-saxon england um hammers as

03:43:18.780 well and the interesting difference in the the english hammer is it appears that the anglo-saxons

03:43:28.620 didn't have the tale of thor um of his hammer getting forged by the dwarf getting the fly on

03:43:35.500 his nose and him having to you know short change the handle in scandinavia the handle is always a

03:43:41.660 very a short like a one-handed hammer uh ham one-handed hammer in anglo-saxon england the

03:43:49.820 hammer pendants that are found are long handled as if the dwarf was able to complete it in its

03:43:55.820 entirety and you could you know two-hand it like a you know like a sledgehammer like a maul

03:44:01.900 yeah it's actually all of the pictures that they show including the one that's from phrygia is

03:44:07.900 also long handled it has a a a small head and then it looks like a two-handed kind of um handle

03:44:19.660 and i found two or three others that say eighth to ninth eighth to tenth eighth to 11th century

03:44:27.580 so the the dating's so imprecise on some of them they could be 750 750

03:44:35.020 eight or so they could be older they could be younger it's hard telling yeah and i mean we're

03:44:41.100 just trying to chase back as long as it was what we we see them come into fashion as a response to

03:44:48.140 christianity in their widespread use as a amulet in the same way that people would wear a cross

03:44:58.860 now we see them depicted differently and thor's hammer was a sacred kind of symbol in

03:45:07.260 iconography but as far as wearing one around the neck is like a hey i'm marking myself

03:45:12.380 because it made no sense before then what what do you mean rote religion i'm what are you talking

03:45:18.700 about i'm from you know uh haloga land i'm what do you mean yeah look at me that's what i do

03:45:29.820 like it's the question had no meaning until foreign cults were brought in to where there

03:45:35.740 was the possibility that you were something other than aussie true and you know rightly

03:45:41.340 people recognize that aussie true wasn't a word back then it wasn't necessary it's

03:45:46.060 clearly what you were everyone was the religion of their tribe and their people that only made sense

03:45:55.420 the need to specify only came when the foreign you know cult of christianity came into play

03:46:01.900 where you had to be like no these guys over here with the cross they're jesus people

03:46:08.620 no here i'm loyal to my gods this is a sign of sacrality to my gods

03:46:16.060 uh we have a question that i appreciate uh nick pointed out to me that i've overlooked

03:46:21.880 uh from spear of votan correct me if i am wrong but i didn't think the land vatir are meant to

03:46:30.700 be worshiped we are simply meant to be good neighbors worship is for the gods and ancestors

03:46:36.780 i think a lot of new and eager also true or have the idea that any metaphysical being mentioned

03:46:43.380 in our source material are meant to be treated and worshiped equally any thoughts i do have thoughts

03:46:50.580 so do i um i'm going to jump in on this first and then i'm going to hand it off what i'd like to say

03:46:56.420 is first what worship means i think we have ideas in our head of it being something that's

03:47:06.180 why i jumped on it first i know we have ideas in our head of it meaning or implying different things

03:47:14.580 than it than it is it literally means worth ship it means to acknowledge something as being of worth

03:47:25.860 and

03:47:26.180 and any praising the worth of something is technically worship you would find often in

03:47:36.420 medieval literature and this was kind of an interesting um issue with the church

03:47:43.780 any of there was a the idea that you don't praise anything as being worthy of any kind

03:47:52.780 of acknowledgement other than god in catholicism anything else is literally idolatry this was a

03:48:02.760 big problem but in medieval europe you would consistently see the term worship used for a

03:48:09.760 great king or a hero in the living sense not in the sense that they've departed and there's some

03:48:14.780 kind of an ancestor's cult but knights would go to tournaments to win worship you would go

03:48:21.220 Worship was synonymous with fame because in the day, fame wasn't like you're a Kardashian and you happen to be well-known because whatever.

03:48:34.080 It was you are famous because people are celebrating your great deeds and great reputation that you've done.

03:48:40.780 so acknowledge you would give worship to you know a weapon that had served its purpose really well

03:48:49.300 or something that you attest to the great worth of i understand that's not necessarily what you're

03:48:54.220 referring to the idea of getting in a devotional religious practice to something is that's

03:49:02.340 important yes that was definitely meant to be done to heroes to ancestors and for the iser

03:49:09.720 in particular um land vetir is a special category that means a bunch of different things

03:49:21.000 and that's one of the troubles with it the just spirits of place

03:49:26.520 your general idea of be good neighbors interact with them well absolutely that's i think that's a

03:49:36.120 that's that's perfect now what is the line between a river goddess of a certain locale

03:49:46.200 and the land vetir it's very sketchy and what you want to call which or what

03:49:51.400 there are divin there are beings that are appropriate to get in the gift cycle with that are

03:50:00.040 that hold dominion over places and location those things are worshipped

03:50:09.860 more often than not though you're right we recognize that we inhabit a world with

03:50:17.040 many neighbors seen and unseen and being a good neighbor and being respectful

03:50:24.580 both in the perceivable world and in the imperceptible world is something that

03:50:32.480 behooves noble people to do and will help things go well for you in your home,

03:50:39.280 in an area that you occupy. Usually when I do bloat, and

03:50:46.040 there's some people that get really into Lanveteer and whatnot that's never been a focus of

03:50:54.800 it's never been a big focus of what I do but when I give bloat I often I acknowledge them I usually

03:51:03.540 will invite the gods to witness what we're doing and to be present I will invite the ancestors

03:51:09.800 But I'll also invite the Lanvaitir to bear witness to it, or I will acknowledge, you know, that we've done something in a certain location for a certain amount of time, and they know us, they've seen our deeds, they've been kind to us, or whatever the case might be.

03:51:26.260 Maybe I will invite them to bear witness to things that we do or, you know, maybe say a positive word towards them, but it's not the same as, you know, worshipping them with bloat.

03:51:39.260 And a lot of that is an issue of scale, though.

03:51:45.020 So, and this is why I'm harping on the linguistics of it.

03:51:50.460 if you were to speak to or pray to a dead ancestor fundamental Christianity would call

03:52:03.540 that you're worshiping demons that's idolatry if you venerated a saint and gave them an offering

03:52:13.200 that's idolatry um if you were to you know overly praise a hero that's idolatry like

03:52:24.720 a sports hero or something else of yours that's idolatry the line of what they consider worship

03:52:32.400 is very particular we engage in the gift cycle in bloat and ceremony in a big way

03:52:42.880 with our gods. We sometimes do that in a more collective, you know, general sense to the

03:52:50.340 ancestors. It's not wrong to have a big ritual gift cycle exchange with the ancestors.

03:53:01.500 We also do engage in the gift cycle with the land vetir or with the house vetir or other

03:53:08.380 spirits that we wish to exchange gifts with. I think the fundamental difference is with

03:53:15.580 our devotion and our allegiance to. And it's one of the reasons that the word

03:53:23.320 also true is very important to me. People will point out that the modern usage of the word true

03:53:32.240 is about believing in. But etymologically, it tells a much deeper story to that. You believe

03:53:41.160 in it because you are loyal to it. It is trusted. You can loyally adhere to it. Troth and being

03:53:50.000 true to something is about being loyal to it. So it's not just belief that the Iser exists.

03:53:58.340 I believe that a lot of things exist that I'm not loyal to, that I'm not devoted to. 0.82

03:54:05.120 Giving our allegiance and our loyalty to something is very different.

03:54:11.140 We are in a structure and in a hierarchy where we are loyal to the Aesir.

03:54:16.500 They are our gods and we will serve them as their folk.

03:54:20.660 The All-Father is the King of the gods.

03:54:23.100 We are in line with that loyalty.

03:54:25.040 our ancestors are also you know certainly your loyalty your family and your kin and the line of

03:54:34.180 your kin and beyond the veil those things run together the ancestors and our ancestors and our

03:54:41.860 gods other gods other mythological beings other spirits that occupy places

03:54:54.120 are not in our line of hierarchy of things that we have to have a loyalty to we can enter into

03:55:02.600 some sort of agreement with them or some sort of shared arrangement but we treat with them

03:55:11.480 independently and not giving our allegiance to them in line of hierarchy to our gods

03:55:19.160 I hope that makes sense. It might be a little bit convoluted. I know Sfaan has some thoughts.

03:55:26.400 So Sfaan, share those with us. I think you hit all of them actually for me. It's just,

03:55:33.080 I wanted to hit the purpose of the word worth ship. But I think the other thing is, is we

03:55:39.480 clearly believe in hierarchy we take great um effort in laying out what we observe in the lore

03:55:51.640 as the hierarchy of the gods and uh and and make that clear for folks we we do that in the true

03:55:58.760 um but uh when you're working with with land vatier again worship is uh when we talk about

03:56:11.400 gift cycling absolutely you can just cycle with the land uh land vatier but that's a very up front

03:56:20.920 that's almost like on equivalent with like your neighbors you would want to have a good

03:56:26.680 relationship with your neighbors and also the land your ancestors you're indebted and the and

03:56:34.360 the holy gods you're indebted to by the the breath and the sacrifice of things that were made in

03:56:40.680 order for you for all of this to even start so i think it is different there is a hierarchy um and

03:56:48.440 And another big thing that we need to steer away from is when you get postmodern Marxists who come in and are like, oh, we worship the land spirits.

03:57:01.580 You can't cut down trees. You can't, you know, our Viking ancestors didn't, you know, despoil the land.

03:57:10.940 And it's like, no, they cut down trees to make boats and sail to Constantinople so they can go bonk on, you know, upstarts who were trying to go up against the king of Byzantium.

03:57:25.280 I mean, no, they cut down trees, but that's the only thing I wanted to add extra is that sometimes I think a lot of folks get into that mixing of that eco stuff versus we believe in responsibility of the land.

03:57:48.140 you you tend the land like you would a farm and you utilize the the land for your your purposes

03:57:57.180 your will it's not some uh you know tree hugging buffalo macrame um kumbaya like circle of

03:58:08.560 drumming uh and i think a lot of those people that get in there are the ones that really focus on

03:58:15.460 you know oh i worship the land vatir and again that's another thing is our hierarchy like we

03:58:22.880 don't have vana true that stuff is that's garbage the vanya joined the icier and the icier are the

03:58:32.520 prevalence even lord fray is called the the most precious of the icier so that whole separation 0.95

03:58:40.160 really again it's post-modern uh marxist trying to be like ah arian bad bronze age farmer good

03:58:48.880 uh they're just they're they're ignoring things so i do think one way i look at the

03:59:00.240 vatier is in being a good neighbor and if you're you're sharing this space with them or this land

03:59:08.140 or this house or what have you you're a good neighbor you might you know you can exchange

03:59:15.020 gifts with them but it may not be you know obviously it it's hierarchical so it's not

03:59:20.300 at the same level not the same you know amount instead of actually pouring yourself into a horn

03:59:26.060 you might just pour them out a little bit of milk but you know you exchange get you can exchange

03:59:31.260 gifts you're a good neighbor you're a good steward with them you just you pay your rent so to speak

03:59:36.940 And you see this conceptualization, the folks that leave Norway, when they go to Iceland, Iceland's nature is very, very scary and also very, very primordial.

03:59:55.340 And you will see that they do build this kind of stronger relationship with the Lanvertier than they do in Norway.

04:00:05.120 well something i'd like to point out is

04:00:09.600 some subtle differences and yes spirit vote on i would call that ooga booga fetishism um

04:00:21.200 i think spawn's right i think if you start from a new agey pretendian kind of place and then come

04:00:30.160 to alsatru some of that might carry over in nature worship or animism

04:00:40.320 and we don't believe that like rocks and trees and grass and stuff are all these kind of

04:00:48.000 spiritual beings we do believe that other spiritual beings inhabit these places and

04:00:55.920 sometimes a particular rock or a particular tree or a particular glen is inhabited by

04:01:04.080 or special to one such spirit and that's a real it might seem like a subtle difference but it's

04:01:11.840 a really important one the other thing is you know you could take that to infinity and it not make

04:01:21.920 any sense does every grain of sand have its own little spirit to it does every blade of grass or

04:01:28.000 every leaf or drive yourself insane what our ancestors noted and what you know the folks with

04:01:37.360 second sight that saw iceland noticed you have spirits that occupy the natural world

04:01:46.720 Most of us won't see these or recognize these.

04:01:52.060 But there might be a place that you're in, in nature, that you feel presence in, that you feel something special in.

04:02:01.960 Acknowledging that is a good thing to do.

04:02:05.380 um if it is a place that is important to you in your practice and stuff that you do

04:02:12.140 building some sort of a relationship with whatever spirit you feel in that presence

04:02:17.820 is something worthwhile to do um it's very intangible

04:02:24.700 a lot of that is you know that's why i talk about this as an art and not a science

04:02:32.520 there's not a perfect right answer to everything every square you know the the land veteer did not

04:02:39.960 divide up the world into acres and this one has that one and this other one has this one

04:02:44.940 it's much looser than that it's much more about a specific area or object or natural feature

04:02:53.720 and you know those with a heightened degree of perception will perceive that in a much

04:02:59.280 more tangible way than the rest of us if you do perceive that in a really specific way

04:03:09.160 applying a name and building a gifting relationship with the spirits of a place

04:03:17.620 might be very beneficial to you if you don't maybe less so

04:03:23.840 unless and until you have a particular understanding of a spirit that inhabits a place

04:03:32.940 a general mindfulness of the land vetir and nod to propriety of acknowledging them

04:03:45.020 and recognizing that they exist and that you share space with them and being a good steward of the

04:03:52.240 space is a really good and important thing for you to do to reinforce your place in the cosmos

04:04:00.720 we exist in a world surrounded by spirits that we may not be able to perceive

04:04:08.400 the world around us is thick with mystery and with

04:04:15.520 being that we have not yet begun to fully understand and fully discover

04:04:23.140 acknowledging that reinforces the awe that we should have for life around us for the world

04:04:31.600 around us and for our place in it and that's one of those moat and in a way i think this is like

04:04:38.840 meal blessings they're not big high rituals that you do that are a lot of fanfare

04:04:47.800 but they're moments of taking notice of your place in an interconnected world

04:04:54.760 and recognizing that and being appreciative or aware of the world around you and your place in

04:05:01.240 it the ways you've been blessed the impact you have on the world around you and taking note of

04:05:08.120 that and i think that's a valuable thing to do i think there is a clarification question and i'm

04:05:21.960 going to go use the restroom okay what's the clarification question where'd i miss it uh

04:05:27.800 i uh from spear vote on i'm a bit confused you mentioned earlier the arians mixing with old

04:05:33.400 europeans or wipe and i i think yeah there's just clarification i sure i'll go on that so um

04:05:43.240 trying to find it in the little questions here

04:05:47.800 it's the very last real big one uh right before my defense aha so uh

04:05:55.880 question is i'm a bit confused you mentioned the arians mixing with old europeans to create

04:06:00.520 more white people were the old europeans descended from the arians at a time long before the arian

04:06:07.720 migrations and became separated or are these two completely separate groups of white people with

04:06:15.160 different origins and what would that say about our origin as a people yeah the first one um

04:06:23.720 um we are a shared people with a shared origin

04:06:33.800 the Aryan migrations went out from Europe into Asia across the step and then back so over a long 0.80

04:06:45.860 enough time, you have groups of people that leave, go do their 0.87

04:06:50.860 thing, and then come back and reconquer other people over

04:06:57.860 time. You know, that'd be like if white Americans decided to go 0.50

04:07:04.260 back and reoccupy Europe. It's a sloshing back of our people 0.81

04:07:12.760 upon themselves. So when migration time happened in a lot of that, it's not as though all of the 0.92

04:07:20.540 people went and did that. And we see a lot of migration. Sometimes if there's an ice age or

04:07:24.820 there's an uninhabitable condition, everybody's got to pick up and move. But very often you have

04:07:31.940 the adventurers that go out and conquer and you have other people like, no, I'm good. I'm going

04:07:36.120 to stay here on my farm with what I've got. And when we picture that in a single generation or

04:07:44.480 two, it doesn't look like a big deal. But if we, you know, write that over the course of a thousand

04:07:50.560 years or more, it becomes a bigger deal. But yeah, you have a dispersal of people from the north

04:07:57.520 at the end of the ice age over a big chunk of territory. And you have a splattering of our

04:08:05.660 people all throughout europe and then you see groups of them migrate and conquer to the east

04:08:15.740 settle build kingdoms build empires build great things figure out horses and stuff and then move

04:08:23.500 back west coming back in contact with their you know ancient cousins and reintegrate and so that's

04:08:32.380 what you see they're not two completely separate things they're groups of people with a shared

04:08:37.500 shared ancestry a shared you know group of ancestry but they're separated you know by

04:08:43.740 hundreds or you know perhaps thousands of years in some cases yeah there was uh i wanted to say

04:08:49.180 one thing with that is um there was again political motivations to paint the um naya or the proto-indo

04:08:57.740 europeans whatever they they can whatever they have to say in order to not say arian um they try

04:09:04.220 really hard they were like oh they came in and annihilated the european uh of the bronze age or 0.81

04:09:11.980 the belt you know the bell beaker um of the early you know ages shifting out of stone age and uh

04:09:21.740 but then in the same breath they'll admit that the genetic difference between them is so hard

04:09:28.460 that's why one looks like it disappeared is because it more than likely just completely

04:09:35.500 absorbed into so you got to be careful of that too where they paint that oh they came in and

04:09:41.660 murdered everyone and it's like well where did where did the bodies go where did it no well they

04:09:47.020 it's because they're genetically similar

04:09:51.340 yep

04:09:53.820 it's funny how often where the bodies went becomes a question in our history

04:09:59.900 well a lot of the time you have history that's not authentic that's done with political motivation

04:10:07.740 and not not fair assessment of things that make sense so again i harken back to a theme tonight

04:10:18.060 we should approach our understanding of history and of our faith with logic

04:10:26.060 and with uh with piety and i think that serves us well with all the things we do in our life

04:10:32.620 um question again from scott is the swastika a bind room and have they been found in neolithic

04:10:42.140 burial sites what say you spawn that's an awesome question so for anyone who's thinking

04:10:49.900 about how the runes must uh they try to discredit them hey oh yeah those are actually just you know

04:10:57.500 Phoenician pictogriffs from the Middle East. And it was brought to the Greeks. And then the Germans

04:11:05.320 saw that or the Germanics saw it and were like, oh, wow, that's really neat. And they brought it

04:11:11.280 up. I would like everyone to, or I would encourage everyone to go look up the Vinka or Vinsa

04:11:20.700 symbols which predate all of that uh they're at um in europe 3 500 uh bc it goes all the way back

04:11:33.460 but the interesting thing about those is that both symbols the the the sowillo rune and the

04:11:42.120 the swastika are there together um present in their inscriptions and um

04:11:49.260 so it it goes so far back that

04:11:57.060 the idea of whether or not it's a it's a totality symbol and then it's pulled apart

04:12:07.140 with purpose so that the individual symbol is has meaning significance it's reduced

04:12:14.040 or the other thought is that again it is a bind rune of a symbol and i don't know it going that

04:12:24.000 far back um the vince's symbols go back oh excuse me uh even further back uh possibly 5300 bc

04:12:34.580 you can find them even older than that too uh mazine ukraine has a swastika on a mammoth ivory

04:12:42.340 bird figure from 10 000 bc some scholars say right 17 000 bc well yeah and that's the thing that you

04:12:49.940 see the swastika or the fee thought um placed around it goes all the way back so i'm i'm of

04:12:58.980 the mindset that the symbol um is the total symbol and that the sowillo or sigil or soul rune is a

04:13:09.940 actually a dissecting of the symbol so in the reverse um and we see the reason why i brought

04:13:18.500 up the uh the v the vinca um is because we see a bunch of other um runic symbols written out

04:13:31.460 as well and i thought that that was very interesting to kind of look at because we

04:13:35.460 start to see this separation of the symbol but the so the swastika the sun wheel

04:13:45.460 predates even that into you know again hunting mammoths so my argument would be the reversal

04:13:52.100 yeah and i think that you know some sober reflection is due as well um

04:14:10.340 runes aren't the stick drawings now yes we all commonly refer to the stick drawings as the runes

04:14:20.660 but the rune is the mystery that the stick drawing represents and i think that's really important to

04:14:29.300 formulate there's only so many patterns you can make with some straight lines connected with one

04:14:34.100 another what makes a bind rune is when a vitki intentionally connects rune runes magically

04:14:48.100 through the drawing of a symbol that amalgamates the two runes.

04:14:57.280 Any complex connection of straight lines,

04:15:01.460 you can find bind runes within it.

04:15:04.660 But if they're not intentional and they're not done with intention,

04:15:09.340 it's not really a bind rune.

04:15:14.340 So no, in no way do I think swastika is a bind rune.

04:15:17.520 I do think that I, and this isn't like AFA doctrine, but I am of the same mind with Spahn that the Sowilo rune is like, you know, you put two of them together, they make a swastika or you break them apart and they're individually Sowilo runes.

04:15:41.040 uh so i see that i think there is connection to that swastika is one of the most ancient

04:15:48.160 symbols of our people and our

04:15:51.600 connection to the solar cycle of things connecting dynamism with solar might and i think that's

04:16:03.440 It's been a holy symbol to our people since the dawn of our people.

04:16:09.940 So I think the swastika predates the runes as we know them drawing-wise and is kind of a standalone that informs later runic development, but predates it.

04:16:27.200 And the directionality of whether it's a vine rune or not is the opposite of that.

04:16:32.940 So, yeah, just the fact that European symbols of that are runic, they just, you know, in variation, they're a thousand year, they predate a thousand years before the Sumerian pictographs of Iraq.

04:16:52.760 and it was so much a thing for modern you know historians to say that oh no the germanics picked

04:17:01.240 it up from the romans who picked it up from the greeks and the greeks picked it up from the

04:17:04.340 phoenicians and it goes all the way back to the cradle of civilization in the mediterranean and

04:17:10.180 then this discovery was like nope thousand years before that these symbols were there in europe

04:17:17.120 which you know i think a lot of people are trying to take away from the origins of the idea that

04:17:26.660 the runes come from our holy gods oh no no those are just left out you stole those from people who

04:17:33.600 stole those from people who were in the middle east and that that the the vinca uh find proves

04:17:41.200 that that's, that's not the case. So that's one reason why I brought that up too.

04:17:48.920 All right. Well, I think it has been a good night. I hope that it has been

04:17:54.740 informative to folks. I hope that we're all, I don't know, have a better understanding and

04:18:07.820 a better appreciation of the materials that Simondur and Snorri put together for us

04:18:16.520 that became the Etta's that we all benefit so greatly from.

04:18:21.500 And I hope it kind of added a context or a lens to, you know,

04:18:29.220 judge their contents and their integrity.

04:18:33.980 Appreciate everybody's questions tonight.

04:18:36.420 I appreciate you guys always being here and showing up and being a part of the program.

04:18:42.020 So much of it is drawn from your questions and your active participation in the chat.

04:18:48.180 So thank you guys very much.

04:18:51.240 Next week, our law speaker and I will talk to you guys about mental health,

04:18:58.380 which is a monumental challenge for our folk in our days and times that we live in.

04:19:07.140 So I look forward to that. 1.00

04:19:09.900 Until then, I hope everybody has an amazing Midsommar.

04:19:15.380 And remember, you've got a little over a week to get set up for Midsommar in California.

04:19:23.840 I would love to see you guys at Odinshoff for that.

04:19:26.740 It's going to be a spectacular event.

04:19:29.120 I will bother you guys one more time about it next week,

04:19:31.720 but there's not going to be a lot of time to react at that point.

04:19:37.300 Notwithstanding that, midsummer at the other three Hoffs is this weekend.

04:19:42.480 This is true.

04:19:43.640 So if you are anywhere near Murdoch, Minnesota, Linden, North Carolina,

04:19:47.980 or White Springs, Florida, show up to your local Hoff

04:19:52.240 and celebrate midsummer this Saturday.

04:19:56.600 yeah get together with one another and make it happen uh but with that until then until next

04:20:07.100 time hail the isere hail the folk hail the afa and remember the victory never sleeps

04:20:13.880 get it everyone

04:20:26.600 We'll be right back.

04:20:56.600 Thank you.

04:21:26.600 We'll be right back.

04:21:56.600 Thank you.

04:22:26.600 Thank you.

04:22:56.600 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - June 19, 2025

6⧸18⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 154 - Sæmundr and Snorri

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