Inclusive vs Folkish Heathenry

The question of who belongs in Heathenry has been one of the most consequential and sometimes painful discussions in the modern Norse Pagan revival. On one side are those who describe their position as folkish, holding that the Norse and Germanic religious tradition is most appropriately practiced by people of Germanic or northern European descent. On the other are inclusive Heathens, who hold that the gods and practices of the tradition are open to any sincere practitioner regardless of ancestry. This is not merely a debate about politics but about the fundamental nature of the religion: what it is, who it is for, and whether ancestry can or should determine spiritual access.

The majority of active Heathen organizations take an explicitly inclusive position. National bodies including the Troth in the United States, Asatru UK, and most Scandinavian organizations have issued statements affirming that Heathenry is open to all. The most dramatic expression of this was Declaration 127, signed by hundreds of Heathen groups worldwide in 2016 as a public repudiation of positions associated with the Asatru Folk Assembly’s folkish stance.

History and origins

The folkish current in Heathenry has roots in 19th century German Romantic nationalism, which entangled Norse mythology with theories of racial and national identity. Figures like Guido von List developed occult interpretations of Germanic mythology explicitly tied to racial ideology. The National Socialist movement in Germany adopted Norse imagery extensively, loading runes, the Mjolnir, and other symbols with ideological freight. This history means that any contemporary Heathenry that grounds religious identity in Germanic ancestry is working in the shadow of this earlier entanglement, whether its practitioners acknowledge this or not.

When modern Heathenry revived in the 1970s, both inclusive and folkish tendencies were present from the beginning. Stephen McNallen, a founding figure of American Asatru, developed a position he called “metagenetics,” arguing that spiritual connection to the Norse gods is transmitted through genetic ancestry and that people of Germanic descent have a deeper natural resonance with these gods. The Asatru Folk Assembly, which McNallen leads, has consistently held this position.

Other early revivalists took an explicitly inclusive stance. The Troth (originally known as Ring of Troth) was founded partly as a response to folkish tendencies in the AFA, with an explicit commitment to welcoming practitioners of all backgrounds. The broader European Heathen organizations that developed independently were generally less preoccupied with the ancestry question, as they operated in contexts where the local population was predominantly of northern European descent anyway.

The arguments

Folkish Heathens argue that religion is inseparable from the people who created it and that ancestral connection creates a genuine spiritual resonance. They point to the Norse concept of the “folk soul” and argue that gods and people are kin in a meaningful sense that involves descent. Some draw on Carl Jung’s concept of the racial unconscious.

Inclusive Heathens respond on multiple grounds. Historically, the Norse and Germanic peoples themselves had no single racial identity; they traded with, fought with, intermarried with, enslaved, and were enslaved by people of many backgrounds across a vast geographic range. The Viking Age was a period of significant cultural exchange, not racial isolation. Theologically, inclusive Heathens argue that the gods choose their devotees based on character and sincere practice, not ancestry. Ethically, the ancestry-based position shades into racial essentialism, and many inclusive Heathens consider this not just wrong but dangerous in light of the historical record of Norse symbolism’s appropriation by racist movements.

The far-right problem

The adoption of Heathen imagery by white nationalist groups is a genuine and ongoing concern for the Heathen community. The Algiz rune, the valknut, Thor’s hammer (Mjolnir), and other symbols have been used as coded signals by racist groups. This has created a situation where some practitioners outside Heathenry, seeing someone wearing a Mjolnir pendant, may wonder about their political affiliations, and where Heathens of color navigate additional complexity in claiming their practice.

The Heathen community’s response has been largely to assert clearly and publicly its inclusive majority position, to work on internal education about the history of Norse symbolism’s appropriation, and to create welcoming communities that actively counter the association between Heathenry and racism. Many kindreds explicitly state in their founding documents that folkish and racist positions are unwelcome.

The conversation is ongoing, sometimes difficult, and genuinely important. Practitioners entering Heathenry today are well served by knowing this history, understanding which organizations hold which positions, and choosing their communities accordingly.

In myth and popular culture

The Norse sagas themselves provide little support for ethnic exclusivism in religious practice. The sagas describe trading networks, marriages, and military alliances across ethnic and cultural lines, and the Norse pantheon was adopted and adapted by various Germanic and non-Germanic peoples. The god Thor was venerated across a wide geographic range, and Odin’s mythological connections to sorcery, wisdom, and the dead gave him a universal rather than ethnically specific character in the literature.

J.R.R. Tolkien, whose scholarly work on Old English and Old Norse literature deeply informed his fiction, drew on Norse mythological sources in creating the cosmology and divine figures of Middle-earth. His Valar bear resemblance to Norse gods, and the Norse concept of Ragnarok influenced his treatment of apocalyptic time. Tolkien was not himself a pagan, but his work introduced millions of readers to the imaginative world of Norse mythology. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods (2001) placed Norse deities in a contemporary American setting, and his Norse Mythology (2017) retold the Eddic stories for a general audience, significantly expanding popular engagement with Heathen myth beyond the Heathen community itself.

The use of Norse and Germanic symbols by white nationalist groups has been documented extensively by organizations including the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Odalrune and the Black Sun, both repurposed by the National Socialist movement in Germany, continue to be used by far-right groups, creating ongoing challenges for Heathen practitioners who encounter these symbols in contexts outside their religious community.

Myths and facts

Several misunderstandings shape popular perception of the inclusive-versus-folkish debate.

• A common assumption holds that the folkish position represents the original or traditional Heathenry and that inclusivity is a modern political imposition. The evidence does not support this; the Norse and Germanic peoples were ethnically diverse, historically expansive through trade and migration, and the religion itself was adopted by peoples of varied backgrounds. Ethnic exclusivism in religious terms is a nineteenth-century ideological development rather than an ancient one.
• Wearing a Mjolnir pendant is sometimes assumed to signal far-right affiliation. The Mjolnir is a widely used religious symbol for Heathen practitioners of all political backgrounds, and the vast majority of people wearing it are simply expressing Heathen devotion. Assuming political meaning from the symbol alone misreads the community.
• Some outside observers assume that all Asatru organizations are folkish. The Asatru Folk Assembly is the most prominent explicitly folkish organization in the United States, but the majority of Asatru and Heathen organizations, including the Troth and most European bodies, hold explicitly inclusive positions.
• The Declaration 127 is sometimes described as a definitive resolution of the debate. It was a significant public statement that clarified the inclusive majority position, but it has not caused folkish organizations to change their positions or dissolved the ongoing internal conversation within Heathenry.
• Folkish Heathenry is sometimes equated entirely with explicit white supremacy. The position exists on a spectrum from a cultural preference for practitioners of northern European descent to outright ethnonationalism; not every folkish practitioner holds overtly supremacist views, though the logical entailments of ancestry-based religious exclusion are viewed by inclusive Heathens as moving in that direction regardless of the holder’s intent.