Validation or What other religions do, and why it doesn’t necessarily matter.

*This article was originally written by Erich, the founder of our Hall. It has been reposted here in an effort to collect all our resources on our new site.

While paging through Olof Sundqvist’s Freyr’s Offspring, I came upon his method for validating historiographic and sagaic sources that describe possible practices and views of the ancient Svea society. Seeing as Ásatrú is constantly deciding exactly how much credence to lend to sources in “the Lore” the method he applies struck me as something worthy of discussion, especially as this led me to some observations about modern heathens and our search for validity.

Sundkvist falls between two scholarly camps on the aforementioned medieval texts. One camp would throw out all of the aforementioned textual references as biased or inherently flawed due to the gap in time and practice between heathens and the period and the saga authors, while the other camp does little more than a review of like secondary source literature to validate the information found in the sagas. Seeing that Sundkvist, like us, is interested in heathen religious practices and concepts, I think his ideas apply somewhat to the ways in which we seek to validate sources. When evaluating a possible pre-Chrisitan attitude or practice in said sources, he essentially surveys extant literature and finds and evaluates the validity of said attitude or practice by comparison to what are considered more valid sources. They appear on page 41 of Freyr’s Offspring as follows:

Eddic and Skaldic Poetry

runic inscriptions

toponomastic material (place names)

archaeological finds

prohibitions in normative Christian texts directed against pagan customs and ideas

comparative material from other Indo-European traditions

He continues to say that where there is no like practice or idea in Christianity at the time, he lends more validity to that idea as a legitimately heathen practice. Though I’m not a fan of comparative mythology as it comes to Ásatrú, and thus find his Indo-European comparison the most suspect channel of those above, I thought his methods were admirable.

All of that said, reading this dry, though valuable, bit of text on validation of sources led me to think about the way modern heathens talk about their beliefs and practices. When many describe their new religious practices or pet religious practices that don’t have much or any support in primary or secondary sources, they feel the need to legitimize their claims against something, whether or not they have any sources germane to heathenry. This is certainly true whenever one of the much-debated and long dead horses is dragged out of the barn, i.e. the wearing of historical costume during ritual, the first thing I usually hear is, “Well, the Christian clergy has archaic/specific ritual clothing that they wear, so why shouldn’t we?” Not that I’m taking specific issue on this debate, but that is a pretty weak argument. If one is seriously trying to make a go an reconstruction with Ásatrú, or as in my case, starting from reconstruction and innovating only where necessary and with historical basis as the litmus test, this reasoning is pretty useless. Just because a religion is one of the “majors” doesn’t make it the guide for Ásatrú. The same reasoning could have us in pews on Sunday passing a collection plate, and I for one have no desire to see that.

If we start from the best information we have, build up an understanding of the worldviews of “snapshots” in time and place form different heathen cultures, and work from there we may have a more accurate vector when bringing in or creating new practices. Validation should come from a mixture of historical basis and the reaction of the community itself, not from a comparison to established mainstream religion.

I find myself looking back to the last element I described from Sundkvist’s method with a glimmer of approval in my eye. I’m more likely to approve of a new practice when it is absent from religions in the mainstream from which someone may have consciously or subconsciously ripped it. I know I’m not beyond reproach, and some things I learned form heathens on my way in were borrowed goods. Admitting that, a more solidly founded innovation is something to which we can aspire and which I find as admirable as Sundkvist’s method.

–Erich Campbell

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