Asatru Folk Assembly - June 05, 2024


Asatru Holidays - June 2024 - King Athanaric ｜ Midsummer

Hosted by
Steve McNallen
Mentioned
King Athaneric Athanaric King Aetheric Fridegger Midsommar Midsummer Balder Goths
5⧸29⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 99 - Hárbarðsljóð, Part 1 6⧸5⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 100 - 100th Episode Special

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

108.31

Word count

973

Sentence count

54

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On June 9th, we celebrate the Day of Remembrance for King Athanaric of the Visigoths, and on June 20th we celebrate Midsommar, which is the longest day of the year.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and folk of all ages, you know what time it is.
00:00:27.720 It's a new month, it's June, so let's talk about the holidays, holy days, and days of remembrance for our people.
00:00:38.660 As I said, it is June, and in June we have two very special days.
00:00:45.060 As always, on the 9th of the month we have our Day of Remembrance, and this month it is for King Thanarek of the Visigoths.
00:00:53.860 and then we'll follow that up officially on june 20th is midsummer and as always we observe these
00:01:04.800 holidays if they fall on a specific day we observe them on the third saturday of the month so that
00:01:11.860 would be the 15th all righty ladies and gents let's get down to it and learn a little bit about
00:01:20.000 our holidays and Days of Remembrance, and we'll start with King Ithanaric.
00:01:29.260 On June 9th, we celebrate the Day of Remembrance for King Ithanaric of the Visigoths.
00:01:36.920 King Ithanaric, King of the Visigoths, ruled his people from 369 Common Era until he died
00:01:45.000 in 381 Common Era.
00:01:48.520 Sometimes called the first and greatest king of his people,
00:01:53.000 Ithanaric was a staunch Gothic pagan.
00:01:57.200 Viewing it as his responsibility to foster and promote the faith of his people,
00:02:02.580 he went so far as to execute over 300 Visigoths 0.86
00:02:08.180 that had converted to the Christian faith.
00:02:11.260 Their Gothic culture was paramount, and he feared that the advent of Christianity would destroy it.
00:02:21.380 During his twelve-year reign, Athanaric fiercely defended his culture against the advance of the Roman Christian conversion.
00:02:31.100 In the early years, he allied with his fellow Visigoth king, Fridegger, to stop the encroachment of the Roman legions into their lands.
00:02:41.260 While the two were allied, the Goths managed to stave off the Roman armies.
00:02:47.640 For unknown reasons, however, Fritigern turned his army against Thanaric, causing the Gothic Civil War.
00:02:56.660 In the early stages, Thanaric won every encounter he had with his one-time ally.
00:03:02.200 This prompted Fritigern to turn and request aid from his former Roman enemy, Emperor Valens.
00:03:11.260 Even so, despite some advances, Fritigern lost the war.
00:03:18.300 The Gothic Civil War took a toll on the land and the Visigoths, however, and when the Huns
00:03:25.420 began to invade shortly after the end of the Civil War, Fritigern appealed to Emperor
00:03:31.100 Valen to allow him and his people to cross Indo-Roman land.
00:03:36.260 The appeal was answered, but only for Fridegger, who had since converted to Christianity, and
00:03:43.460 his followers. 1.00
00:03:45.740 The rest of the Visigoths were left to fend for themselves.
00:03:50.100 Despite his best efforts, King Athaneric was unable to hold his ground against the ruthless
00:03:55.260 and better-provisioned Huns.
00:03:56.980 In the face of starvation, Athaneric led his people into the Alutis Valley, modern-day
00:04:04.080 Transylvania, where they settled. In 380 Common Era, Athanaric was deposed and removed himself
00:04:12.860 to none other than Constantinople and the lands of his once upon time enemy, the Roman Empire.
00:04:22.200 The new emperor, Theodosius I, accepted Athanaric to the empire graciously.
00:04:28.840 Upon his death, some two weeks later, Aetheric was buried in state to show Theodosius' respect for the Gothic culture.
00:04:40.500 So, what can we learn from this story?
00:04:44.640 King Aetheric stood his ground in the face of all that would have torn him down.
00:04:50.040 He recognized the importance of maintaining the culture of his people and saw the dangers of conversion for what they were.
00:04:58.100 In these modern times, it is even more important to view authentic struggles for what they were,
00:05:04.600 and to remember that the preservation of our people and our culture is so very paramount.
00:05:12.680 It's about roots. It's about connections. It's about coming home.
00:05:19.520 Let us always strive to make sure we have a home for our folk to come back to.
00:05:28.100 Again, we follow that up, officially on June 20th, but more often honored on June 15th, the third Saturday of the month.
00:05:41.100 We have Midsommar.
00:05:44.200 For us, Midsommar is considered the official beginning of summer.
00:05:49.000 But for our ancestors, who only recognized two seasons, winter and summer,
00:05:56.740 Midsummer was the middle of the season.
00:05:59.640 The common factor between our ancestors' celebration and ours is the summer solstice.
00:06:07.080 On Midsummer, we celebrate the longest day of the year and the shortest night.
00:06:13.200 The dark and cold of winter is firmly past, and the days are full of vitality and life.
00:06:24.080 But first, we celebrate.
00:06:28.180 The best-known symbol of midsummer is the bonfire.
00:06:33.060 In Europe, bonfires are still lit and burned the whole night through.
00:06:38.520 Men and women gather to celebrate the warm days and the successful planting season by dancing around the bonfire.
00:06:49.880 Many people focus on love and fertility during the summer solstice,
00:06:55.100 with folk traditions that include picking wildflowers and putting them under one's pillow to dream of the person they will marry.
00:07:03.140 Couples often jump over the fire during midsummer to be blessed by the gods and the ancestors.
00:07:12.140 The planting season is finished.
00:07:15.140 The hard work that began with the blessing of the tools of the charming of the plow,
00:07:20.140 and the planting of the seeds after Avstara has been finished.
00:07:26.140 Now we tend to the growing crops and revel in the beauty of life.
00:07:31.140 we could take a momentary break from the difficulties of life
00:07:34.380 to embrace that which makes the hard work worth the effort.
00:07:39.820 As the reverie comes to an end, however,
00:07:42.760 we must take the time to remember that the days will now begin to shorten once again.
00:07:48.340 Winter will come, and our hard work is not yet done.
00:07:52.400 Well, everyone, that's it for June.
00:07:56.920 Next month will be a bit of a longer episode
00:07:59.040 Because we have an extra day of remembrance
00:08:01.500 But until then
00:08:03.840 Hail the gods
00:08:05.840 Hail the folk
00:08:07.560 Hail the AFA
00:08:09.880 Hail King Thaneric
00:08:12.960 And hail Balder
00:08:15.520 It's midsummer
00:08:16.580 Good night everyone
00:08:19.000 Good day
00:08:29.040 Thank you.