When people ask me what Heathen women are like, I never know what to say, because the women in our hearth circles have so little in common except their religion. So I asked five of them the same six questions and wrote down what they said.
At their request I have used first names only. Sunniva is a fisheries biologist in Norway. Dagny is a retired bus driver in the United States. Carmen teaches elementary school in Chile. Asha is a software tester in England. Ruth farms sheep in New Zealand.
How did you come to Heathenry?
Dagny
Slowly, and then all at once. I was raised in a church and left it at nineteen, and for nearly forty years I was nothing. Then my mother died, and I found I wanted somewhere to put her. I did not want heaven. I wanted her to still be my mother. A friend lent me a book about ancestor veneration and I read the chapter on the Disir standing up in my kitchen. That was eleven years ago.
Asha
Through mythology, like half of us, I think. I loved the stories as a child. What I did not know was that anybody still practiced, or that somebody who looks like me would be welcome if they did. The first Heathen website I found made it very clear that I would not be. It took me two more years to find out that those people do not speak for the rest.
Ruth
I am not sure I came to it. I think I was doing it already. I talked to the land and left out the first of the milk long before I had a word for why.
Do you practice alone or with others?
Carmen
Alone, for the first six years. There was nobody. Now I have my hearth circle, which meets online in Spanish, and twice a year four of us travel to be together in person. I would not give up either. Alone, I am with the gods. With the others, I am with my people.
Sunniva
With a kindred, and I am lucky in it. But I will say that I joined a hearth circle as well, because in my kindred I am the only woman under sixty and there are things I wanted to say to women.
Ruth
The nearest Heathen is three hours away. The circle is how I found out I was not a crank.
Which of the powers are you closest to?
Sunniva
Ran, and I know that sounds grim. But I work on the sea, and I have lost colleagues to it. You do not ignore her. I make an offering every time I go out, and another when I come home.
Dagny
Thor. People expect me to say a goddess. But I drove a city bus for twenty-six years and he is the god of people who get everybody home safe in bad weather. After him, my own Disir.
Asha
Frigg. I think she is badly underrated. She knows everything and says only what is useful. In my line of work that is the highest virtue there is.
Carmen
The wights of the place where I live. They are not Norse, and I do not pretend they are. But the way of treating them, with gifts and respect and asking leave, I learned from Heathenry.
Has Heathenry changed how you live from day to day?
Ruth
It made me keep my word. I was always a bit careless with promises. Once you have stood up with a horn in your hand and said a thing before the gods, you start hearing all the other things you say.
Dagny
It gave me my dead back. I talk to my mother every morning. I am less afraid of dying than I was, because I know someone will set a place for me.
Asha
I stopped waiting to be rescued. Heathenry does not promise you that everything happens for a reason or that it will all be put right. You are given a thread and you are expected to weave. I found that a relief.
As a woman, have you felt heard in Heathen spaces?
Sunniva
In my kindred, yes, now. It was not always so. For the first two years I noticed that I would say a thing and nothing would happen, and then a man would say it and it would be a good idea. I pointed it out, once, quite calmly, at a meeting. To their credit they were horrified, and it stopped.
Carmen
I have not had the bad experiences some have. But I notice that when I say I am a Heathen, other pagans assume that my husband must be the real one and I came along.
Dagny
I am sixty-eight and I was a union steward. I am heard. What worries me is the young ones, who hang back at the edge of the fire and go home without having said a word. I make a point of going and sitting by them.
Asha
In the first group I tried, no. I was a curiosity. In the hearth circle, on my first evening, the host turned to me in the round and said, "And what do you think?" and then everyone waited. I nearly cried. That is such a small thing to have been missing.
What do you hope for in the next ten years?
Ruth
A circle in every region, so that no one drives three hours.
Carmen
More of the lore in Spanish. Good translations, made by people who love it.
Sunniva
That it becomes ordinary. That a girl can say at school that her family is Heathen, and the teacher just nods.
Dagny
That the women who come after us never have to wonder whether there is room for them. That it does not even cross their minds.
I have nothing to add to that, except my thanks to all five. If you would like to sit in a round like the one Asha describes, you can read about our hearth circles here.