Asatru Folk Assembly - June 04, 2025


Asatru Holidays - June 2025 - King Athanaric ｜ Miðsumar

Topics
midsummer celebrations
Hosted by
Steve McNallen
Mentioned
Sigur Bloat Athanaric Midsummer Aetheric Christian Visigoths Celebrate Freyr King Athaneric Fritigern Freyfaxi Alcatru Blots Isil
5⧸28⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 151 - Marriage and Relationships 6⧸4⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 152 - Völsunga Saga, Part VI

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

131.13

Word count

1,453

Sentence count

69

Harmful content

Hate speech

18

sentences flagged


Summary

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

On June 9th we remember King Athanaric of the Visigoths, on June 20th we celebrate Midsommar, and on June 21st we celebrate the Summer Solstice, which marks the longest day of the year.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
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, it's
00:00:26.040 the beginning of june we got a new month so we got new days of remembrance and new holidays to
00:00:31.360 go over all righty then we're going to go right into it on june the 9th we have the day of
00:00:39.600 remembrance for king of thanaric of the visigoths and we follow that up on june 20th is the official
00:00:47.960 day for midsummer now we'll observe that on the 21st because that's the third saturday of the
00:00:54.120 month but 20th 21st and the 21st is oftentimes the solstice as well we're gonna be good to go there
00:01:01.460 all righty y'all let's not beat around the bush get down to it and go into some details on these
00:01:08.260 holy days on the 9th as i said is the day of the remembrance for king athanaric of the visigoths
00:01:16.780 born sometime in the mid 4th century common era athanaric led the visigoths as their king
00:01:24.060 from 369 until his death in 381.
00:01:29.560 We know next to nothing about his early life
00:01:32.060 or about his life outside of his deeds
00:01:34.220 defending Alcatru and his people.
00:01:36.940 His 12 years as king were mired by conflict,
00:01:41.120 both with the Christian Romans as well as Visigoths,
00:01:44.300 who wanted to see the Aesir forgotten among their folk.
00:01:49.000 The early years of Aetheric's reign
00:01:50.980 was spent preserving the Gothic culture 0.99
00:01:53.400 and folk soul by stepping out the foreign faith of Christianity wherever it took root
00:01:59.960 amongst his people. 0.95
00:02:01.980 He correctly surmised that the advent of Christianity would be detrimental to his people as well 0.99
00:02:07.360 as an insult to the Aesir. 1.00
00:02:10.140 He was resolute in his opposition to the foreign faith and the soul sickness it would carry 0.83
00:02:15.980 for his people, going so far as to punish those who willingly severed their troth with 0.99
00:02:21.260 the Aesir.
00:02:21.880 Initially during this time, Athanaric was allied with another Visigothic ruler named
00:02:28.340 Fritigern, and they fought bravely against the Roman Empire together.
00:02:34.060 After converting to Christianity, however, Fritigern turned on King Athanaric and started
00:02:38.880 the Gothic Civil War. 0.85
00:02:41.280 Athanaric won every battle he had with Fritigern and his army of traitorous Christian Visigoths.
00:02:48.660 after Fritigern received aid from the Emperor Valens of Rome. 0.98
00:02:54.580 Once the Visigoths, who remained true to the Aesir, had won the unfortunate war against 0.84
00:02:59.100 their kin, however, the infamous Huns invaded from the east. 0.58
00:03:05.780 Upon this invasion, Fritigern and his fellow Christians were allowed to take refuge with
00:03:11.020 the Romans, while the also true Visigoths were left to fend for themselves. 0.95
00:03:16.720 They were outmanned and weakened in the aftermath of their war with Fritigern and the Christian 0.55
00:03:20.940 Goths, leaving them no means of standing a chance against the relentless Huns.
00:03:26.000 Aetheric and his folk were forced out of their lands and into the Carpathians.
00:03:31.420 He and his people were received by Theodosius I in Constantinople and signed a treaty of
00:03:37.520 friendship with the Eastern Roman Empire.
00:03:40.680 King Ethanaric was an energetic and dauntless sovereign of the Visigoths, loyal to his gods
00:03:48.260 and his folk until his very end.
00:03:52.200 Not only did he hold his own loyalty to the Aesir, but he strove with all his might to
00:03:57.360 keep his whole folk in troth with the gods.
00:04:02.580 Let us honor King Ethanaric not only by raising a glass or horn in his name, but also by living
00:04:08.760 us stand tall, walk proudly, and remain resolute in the face of all that would seek to separate 0.89
00:04:17.020 us from the holy Iser. Hail, King Thaneric. And later on in the month, as I said, is 1.00
00:04:28.080 Midsummer. Now, it falls on the solstice, the summer solstice. This year, that is the
00:04:36.080 20th oftentimes it is the 21st I think more often than not but thankfully we
00:04:43.400 kind of get best of both worlds because the 20th happens to be a Friday and the
00:04:47.660 21st is the third Saturday of the month so that's the day we'll observe it of
00:04:52.040 course for most of our Hoffs for us midsummer is considered the official
00:04:57.600 beginning of summer but for our ancestors who only recognized two seasons winter
00:05:02.840 and summer. Midsummer was also the middle of the season. The common factor between our
00:05:10.020 ancestors' celebration and ours is the summer solstice. On Midsummer, we celebrate the longest
00:05:16.980 day of the year and the shortest night. The dark and cold of winter is firmly past, and
00:05:24.020 the days are full of vitality and life. But first, we celebrate. The best-known symbol
00:05:32.440 of Midsummer is the bonfire. In Europe, bonfires are still lit and burn the whole night through.
00:05:40.200 Men and women gather to celebrate the warm days of the successful planting season by
00:05:44.620 dancing around the bonfire. Many people focused on love and fertility during the summer solstice,
00:05:51.800 with folk traditions that include picking wildflowers and putting them under one's
00:05:55.680 pillow to dream of the person they will marry.
00:06:00.440 Couples often jump over the fire during Midsummer to be blessed by the Isil and the ancestors.
00:06:06.960 The planting season is finished.
00:06:09.300 The hard work that began with the blessing of the tools of disething and the planting
00:06:13.260 of the seeds after Austra has been finished.
00:06:17.220 Now we tend to the growing crops and revel in the beauty of life.
00:06:21.700 We can take a momentary break from the difficulties of life to embrace that which makes the hard
00:06:26.060 work worth the effort.
00:06:28.980 As the revelry comes to an end, however, we must take the time to remember that the days
00:06:33.060 will now begin to shorten once again.
00:06:36.400 Winter will come and our hard work is not yet done.
00:06:40.380 Hail Balder!
00:06:44.020 And that's the holidays and holy days we have for this year for the month of June.
00:06:49.880 Now, I do want to let you all know, of course, about all of our upcoming fantastic national events that we have on the schedule.
00:07:00.280 The first one, of course, is Midsummer at Odin's Hof.
00:07:06.860 Now, this is a fabulous day.
00:07:09.220 I was so lucky to get out there last year, and you do not want to miss it.
00:07:13.960 As with all of our national events, it is the fourth weekend of the month.
00:07:21.260 So for this year, for June, that's going to be the 27th, 28th, and 29th.
00:07:26.860 If you can make it out to Brownsville, California, you definitely should.
00:07:32.800 You can get your tickets, as with all of our national events as well, runestone.org.
00:07:39.000 I'll make sure that the link for that is in the description.
00:07:43.960 And then in July, because we're going to go through all our national events that we've got coming up,
00:07:49.040 I want you to come see me.
00:07:50.700 Come out to Tennessee.
00:07:52.120 Come to Sigurheim. 1.00
00:07:53.740 Come to Sigur Blot.
00:07:55.560 Our third national Sigur Blot at the home of Victory.
00:07:59.380 Come on out.
00:08:00.140 We're going to have a great time camping and plenty of food and Blots and all of the good stuff.
00:08:06.900 Come see Relentless, the sword of Victory, the sword of the AFA.
00:08:10.700 and hang out with the rest of us here
00:08:13.540 in Appalachia
00:08:15.060 and we'd love to see you out.
00:08:17.100 That is going to be July 25th, 26th
00:08:19.800 and 27th.
00:08:22.280 And then in August
00:08:23.700 is Freyfaxi
00:08:25.740 at Baldershof.
00:08:27.780 Celebrate Freyr
00:08:29.280 and Baldr
00:08:30.640 and the harvest season
00:08:32.820 at Baldershof in Murdoch, Minnesota.
00:08:36.240 That's going to be the 22nd,
00:08:37.600 23rd and 24th
00:08:39.440 of August.
00:08:41.680 And then we'll skip a month in September as far as national events go.
00:08:46.840 We do have a regional event, Frayer's Harvest Feast up in Montana.
00:08:52.140 I'm sure that's going to go on this year, but we don't have any more details about that one.
00:08:55.780 We'll skip a month and go to October where we have Winter Nights.
00:09:01.860 That's going to be in the New England area at present.
00:09:05.300 It's going to be in New Hampshire on the schedule.
00:09:07.580 you can get your tickets as all of these
00:09:10.040 national events, runestone.org
00:09:12.540 come celebrate
00:09:14.100 winter nights and the Decire
00:09:16.080 this is going to be a great 1.00
00:09:18.320 time as always
00:09:20.120 and that is
00:09:22.600 on the
00:09:24.820 schedule as
00:09:25.780 October 10th, 11th
00:09:28.080 and 12th
00:09:30.280 since that's not at a Hoth or
00:09:31.980 Sigelheim, I think they're skipping the
00:09:34.080 fourth weekend rule
00:09:35.500 but you guys
00:09:37.600 can reach out to any of your
00:09:39.240 folk builders if you have any
00:09:41.260 questions about any of these national
00:09:43.340 events we'll get you filled in
00:09:45.340 on all the good details
00:09:46.680 runestone.org slash store for tickets
00:09:49.240 alrighty y'all
00:09:51.600 thank you so much for joining me
00:09:53.560 for the month
00:09:55.420 of June as we do our
00:09:57.220 recap I'll see y'all
00:09:59.440 next month and in the
00:10:01.480 meantime
00:10:02.140 hail King of Thanrik
00:10:04.880 Hail Balder 0.99
00:10:06.720 Hail the Folk 1.00
00:10:09.700 Hail the ASEER
00:10:11.200 Hail the AFA
00:10:12.260 And Hail Victory, y'all
00:10:13.500 Good night
00:10:34.880 Thank you.