What Is Heathenry? An Introduction to Asatru and Norse Paganism

A living religion with old roots

Heathenry is a modern religion that revives and reconstructs the pre-Christian beliefs and practices of the Germanic-speaking peoples of northern Europe: the Norse, the Anglo-Saxons, the continental Germans, the Goths, and their neighbors.

Heathens honor many gods and goddesses, the spirits of land and home, and their own ancestors. They do so through offerings, shared feasts, and the way they conduct themselves from day to day. There is no founder, no scripture, no central authority, and no single required belief. There is a body of lore, a set of shared values, and a great many people doing their honest best with both.

What it is called

You will meet several names. Heathenry is the broadest and is the one we use. Asatru, a modern Icelandic word meaning roughly "trust in the Aesir," is common in Scandinavia and North America and usually points to practice built on the Norse sources. Others speak of Germanic paganism, Norse paganism, the Northern Tradition, or the Old Way. Some name their practice for a particular people, as Anglo-Saxon Heathens do.

The word "heathen" was first used by Christians for those who kept the old religion. Modern Heathens have taken it back. It has nothing to do with the casual sense of someone godless or uncivilized.

Where our knowledge comes from

The old religion was not written down by the people who practiced it. What we have comes from four kinds of evidence:

Roman and Greek writers, above all Tacitus, whose Germania (about 98 CE) describes the peoples beyond the Rhine.
Medieval literature, especially the Icelandic Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, the sagas, and Old English poems such as Beowulf. Nearly all of it was written by Christians, generations after conversion.
Archaeology: graves, hoards, ships, amulets, temples, and thousands of runic inscriptions.
Language, law, place names, and folklore, which preserve old ideas in altered forms.

How we handle the sources

Throughout this site we try to keep three things separate: what a source actually says, what scholars reasonably infer from it, and what modern Heathens have built for themselves. All three have a place in a living religion. They should not be mistaken for one another.

Gods, goddesses, and other powers

Heathenry is polytheistic. The gods are understood as many, distinct, and real, each with a character of their own. Best known are those of the Norse sources: Odin, Frigg, Thor, Sif, Freyja, Freyr, Tyr, Idunn, Skadi, and others. They were honored under related names across the Germanic world; the English weekdays Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday still carry the names of Tiw, Woden, Thunor, and Frige.

Alongside the gods stand other powers. The Disir are female ancestral spirits who watch over a family line. The Norns shape fate. Land spirits, often called wights, dwell in particular hills, stones, groves, and waters, and house spirits share the home. Ancestors, both of blood and of the heart, are remembered and thanked.

Popular retellings tend to shrink this crowded world down to a few male gods with weapons. The sources are far richer, and a great deal of that richness is female. Our page on the goddesses is a good place to see how much is there.

What Heathens do

Practice matters more than creed. The central rite is the blot, in which a gift, usually drink or food, is offered to the gods, ancestors, or wights and then shared. The symbel is a formal round of toasts, boasts, and oaths spoken over a horn or cup. Around these two rites Heathens keep seasonal festivals, mark births, marriages, and deaths, and tend small daily observances at home. See Rites and Holy Tides.

How Heathens are organized

Most Heathens practice alone or within a household. Many belong to a small local group, usually called a kindred or hearth, which meets for rites, study, and fellowship. Some kindreds have a recognized priest or priestess, a godi or gydja; others share every role. No kindred answers to any higher body, and no organization, including ours, speaks for all Heathens.

Who Heathenry is for

Heathenry is open to anyone who is drawn to it. You do not need northern European ancestry, and you never did: the peoples who first honored these gods traded, married, and settled from Greenland to the Black Sea. A small minority of groups claim the religion belongs to one ancestry alone. We reject that claim completely, and so do most Heathens. Our Statement on Inclusion explains why.

Women in Heathenry

Women held real religious authority in the old North, as seeresses, as priestesses, and as the keepers of household rites. Today women lead kindreds, write much of the best teaching, and do a great share of the work of every community. That history and that present are the reason Heathen Women United exists, and they are the thread that runs through every page of this section.