What is Norse Paganism? | An Introduction into Northern Spirituality

hello my name is jacob and i am a norse pagan and today i'm sharing this video with you from the beautiful cave run lake here in kentucky and this video is for people getting into the faith for the first time i've made videos like this in the past and every now and then i like to create another one with the things that i've kind of picked up along the way so today we're going to be answering some very basic questions i mean really basic questions we're going to be answering the questions of who what why where when and how today of norse paganism it might seem deceptively simple but i found that compressing the face into this is actually a really good starting point so without further ado let's go ahead and head down the lake and discuss what is norse paganism [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so what is norse paganism exactly obviously this is a question i'm going to be trying to answer throughout this video um but i know a lot of people getting into this for the first time i i know i was this way looked up vikings viking religion viking gods i mean we can't deny that's how a lot of people get into this practice and obviously this is going to evolve over time as it has evolved for me but there's so many different things that people call this faith and i'm not big on labels i mean there's norse paganism which is what i say northern spirituality is something else i've come to say a lot northern traditions but of course you have your heathens and i might even say heathen a couple times throughout this video because it's a good thing a fun thing to call your fellow brothers and sisters your heathens but then you know of course there's just pagan and then other people go by also true and there's so many different terms that people use and there's terms i'm not even giving you here now but again that's not important to me what's important to me and what this is what we're all trying to do is we're looking at the pre-christian scandinavian and germanic traditions of the people that lived in the iron age and the bronze age and prior to that when we start having artifacts of what the gods were we start having stories of what the gods did and we have a little bit of evidence to go off of what the people did during that time to venerate these deities i think it's really easy to forget how much history we already have as a species i mean we look at even the era of the vikings i mean this is an era of about 300 to 400 years roughly and that's longer than the united states has been around and so this is an era that a lot of people know of but then you look at bronze age like neolithic paganism is thousands of years so that is thousands of years of pagan practices that we really don't know about and i think that mystery is what attracts a lot of people to this faith but ultimately this is a historical revival that is going into the modern era where we're kind of piecing together all the things we know of the past and then of course we're also bringing things in from the modern era as well a lot of things that wicca has kind of brought up of course get kind of put in together here and we really have made this kind of like patchwork quilt of what paganism is now and especially norse paganism so there's no one right way to do it but i'm really going to try to answer as many questions as possible in this video for how you can start practicing today but once again i'm not really big on labels at its core norse paganism or whatever you want to call it is the veneration of gods of folk and of spirits that are all around us and that's kind of it but of course there is much more you can dive into but at its core that's really what it is [Music] so now let's talk about the who with this faith who are these gods these folk and these spirits that you venerate so i'm not gonna be able to list all the gods that are within this polytheistic religion because there are quite a few and then there's the question of what is a god that gets really messy but for the most part you know it seems to be fair game if you want to work with somebody go for it see what happens but i'm going to give you the core deities here now of course i can't go very much further without mentioning that our main sources of material are the poetic and prose edda and then the sagas that were recorded during this time you have other novels such as germania by tacitus and there's a lot here there's a lot of books you can look into but the pros and poetic editor are probably the ones you want to start with so in the prose edda written by snorri sterlson which i have a whole video on him and the prose edda it's kind of a messy tale but he lists the 12 acer deities which some of my norse pagan friends might kind of scratch their head at one of these but this is what snorri list odin thor tyr loki njord um braggy heimdall hodd vidar volley uhler and forsetti freyr is not listed with the acer um even though new york is which is the father of freyr which is interesting honestly this is something new and this is something you're going to learn in this faith if you continue down this path is even after you've been practicing for you know me it's about five years at this point getting on close to six you're gonna find new and interesting things that are gonna make you scratch your head i always knew freyr as a vonnick deity and yord is a veronic deity and then also and i read through the prose eddie and i'm like wait why was neward listened with one of the acer gods that's interesting so there's always something new and then of course you do have the vonic deity so you have your typically listed as one of the veronic deities um and then you have freyr and freya and then possibly nerthus but nerthus is kind of an interesting topic in itself again you're catching on to a theme here um but there's so many different deities and now let me get to the goddesses there's so many different goddesses too which they weren't even in that list um snorri list them as the asinier a senior another note i'm not very good at pronouncing these things if your first time in the channel and that's okay i'm a filthy american and i personally don't think too hard on it because i don't think the gods really care if you're getting the pronunciation just right but again that's my own personal gnosis so to speak but the asenia are listed as frigg saga ear gefion fula freya uh si ciofin lofen var vor sin helen snorta and gna and then you have scottie who's not on this list of goddesses because she's a yotnar which then brings in a whole different equation of can you venerate and worship the yotenar and many people build a whole practice on this um but scotty is definitely the one that's interesting because we know historically that skadi did have a cult of scholarly that worshipped her historically so we do know that yotanar had some form of veneration we just don't know what to what extent so not only do you have the yotanar but you also have the alves the sfart elves which are the dwarves trolls valkyries d seer lambeteer ancestor spirits and many other small groupings of beings and deities and i think this is one of the things that really scares people when they get into this faith for the first time is they don't really know who to venerate and my recommendation to you is you know yes you can look up this list easily online but really focus on one or two things it's kind of the beauty of polytheism is that there's many different options there it but also that's kind of a curse in the same time because you're like i don't know what to do for me personally as my faith progressed i started working more with thor and then freya and now i'm working with braggy and i've even had an extra small experience with tyr recently and i'm going to be doing an offering to heimdall here very soon and actually while i'm out here i'm going to be giving an offering to yord but this is not something that came overnight again i've been doing this for about five or six years now and it's something that has slowly progressed and something that i always tell people getting into this space for the first time is take your time there's so much here and at first you might scratch that surface level and you're like oh there's not that much you only have the poetic and prose edda but once you start digging deeper you're going to find that there's a lot of different avenues that you can explore especially when it comes to who you venerate now i do want to mention here at the very end i did say ancestor spirits and then dcr are a form of ancestor spirits as well because we've covered the god component really well and then the folk component really comes in two things it's the community and family you have now here in this life and then the ancestors that came before you we all have ancestors that's one of the most beautiful universal truths about being human is that we have ancestors that got us here we have ancestors who are great heroes who are great rulers we have we all have ancestors who did great things and we all have ancestors that didn't do great things and that's something that really makes us human and something that really brings us all together and then the third thing i had mentioned was spirits and spirits come in many different shapes and sizes as well you have spirits that can exist in the woods here experience of the lake you have river spirits lake spirits ocean spirits you have tree spirits you have the like kind of the fey type creatures you have the elves which can sometimes be considered spirits so this is when again it's best i think personally i generally give offerings to the spirits like if i give an offering to the lake i'll be like this is the lake spirits you know this is to the tree spirits but you know one of the things i think is beautiful about this faith is the fact that we do see beauty and magic and spirits all around us um i've seen so much wildlife on the way here i saw a turkey i've seen a bear i've seen deer i've seen geese i've seen fish all just today and yes those are animals but in the same time there's a spiritual presence to that as well which is one of my favorite parts about this faith hello if you've made it this far in the video thank you so very much and i do hope it is helpful for you um so if you're coming to the channel for the first time a few things one please make sure you like this video and subscribe if you want to see more content here i do have a backlog of like 200 videos um some i've already mentioned in this video already so please make sure you go back and check those out it's impossible to get everything about this faith in one video but i'm doing my best in this one but that's why i have so many videos on this subject but also if you really like the content here at the wisdom of oat and you want to support what i do here please think about donating to patreon i do have a link down below and i do have benefits there for you as well including our community discord where you can talk to everyone in our community um and ask them questions about the faith i have community live streams where you can get more connected with me and then of course i have early access videos and so you're the first ones to see videos like my viewers last week or a couple weeks ago depending on when this comes out they got to see the tier video first so please think about going down there and supporting this channel otherwise thank you so much for watching this and i hope you enjoy the rest of the video [Music] so why become a pagan of course there has to be a reason why why get into it now of course you can have that calling within your heart you can feel the drums but why stick with it and i think it's because the relationship we build with the gods with the beings we just talked about is much more personal than one that we you know we've come to know from monotheistic religions um and it's you know because really when you sit down and talk with a deity and you start feeling those presences for the first time it's a really amazing experience and then when you take that the next step further and you start asking for guidance or asking for help and you start seeing signs from the gods or you start finding that inspiration you never knew you had and once you really start having those experiences it's hard to deny that that's why we do this is because these experiences are real these gods these beings are real i've had so many crazy experiences in the five to six years that i've done this that i can't deny that this is i mean it's all real so that's why you really become a pagan and that's why you really start following norse paganism is because of the experiences that you have in life now one thing that also seems to come with people from a christian background in particular or at least a monotheistic background is the fear of the afterlife or the over emphasis on the afterlife which is something that really isn't that big or at least that prevalent with a norse pagan belief system now some people of course put really heavy emphasis on this and again i think it's because they're coming from a christian background um like valhalla a lot of you know especially a lot of guys who work out and get real well beefy they come into this and they're like oh victory over all the bro and it's like come on man like the majority of people in the viking area the bronze era did not die in battle they had a straw death and valhalla is definitely something that is greatly blown up about this faith i mean it's a really cool idea it's a very romantic idea in the grand sense but ultimately death is not something that is really thought of that much and we can see that um in the past as well death is really or at least not thought of seriously i guess is the way i should say it because it's just the transitioning of lives it's the opening of doors into the next life because when you die you just become part of the ancestors and i think that's so beautiful is that i know when my family dies or members in my family die that i can still communicate with them i can still you know give offerings to them seek advice from them and i know that when i die my children and my grandchildren can still seek advice from me because that's really what death is is just becoming an ancestor and i think that's really beautiful and i think the best way to really understand the norse concept of death comes from the havamal which is a line i quote many times and that is cattle die men die you yourself will also die but there is one thing that cannot die and that is one who has won a good reputation and that is what i really live by when it comes to the afterlife and i don't really need anything else because honestly we as human beings no matter how spiritual you are no matter what science we find out we really do not know what's going to happen when the lights go out and we die and of course our ancestors looked at that and they saw well you know they're dead but they kept telling stories about them [Music] so now that we know the who we know why we give to these deities but how do you give to these deities and how do you get into this faith um and as the theme of this video is deceptively simple because there are so many different routes you can go down um so many different things you can explore but at the end of the day connecting with these gods and getting into this faith it's not very dramatic honestly a lot of people i feel like get into this and they think again they need some form of christian equivalent they need to form a baptism they need a you know a big explosive moment to really dedicate themselves to these deities and if that's what you want to do you can but you don't need to um i think it it really can be as simple as sitting down outside or even in your house in a quiet spot meditating and just calling out to the gods it can be that easy at least when you first start and i still do it now meditation i think is a really great way to clear your mind and then be able to reach outward um to the energies that are around you and honestly those energies are always around you it's just connecting to them at the right times um and getting your head clear enough to actually connect with them and meditation i think is the simplest way like you can do that right now turn off this video go on to a nice comfy spot into a corner of the room and meditate and kind of reach out to those northern energies reach out and picture the fjords of norway um feel the cold remember what cold feels like remember the first time you saw snow and start hearing drums in your mind and slowly you'll begin to like kind of switch yourself over and begin to connect with those energies that are the the northern deities now if you want to take that the next step further if you want to go out and kind of plan it have a nice little ritual so to speak there are several different ways you can connect in that way some people like to call it bloat um you see that in a lot of heathen and ostrich circles um you know i don't necessarily call it that i usually say give an offering to the gods and so like today i'm going to give an offering to new yord in a few days i'm going to give an offering to heimdall and so you can kind of do it however you want um so today even again someone been doing this for a while now has a community given amazingly large offerings i'm giving a gold coin and a beer and that is it and i think it can be that simple so uh you know i i don't have a shrine with me i have a little token that i'm going to give it to you know setting up the token um you know i think building something on the river here on the lake would be really good too building something to the gods so it can really start so simple and i mentioned this in my ritual video is it can really just be as simple as hey gods i have something for you i need help thank you you know obviously make it a little bit more complex than that but it really is that simple summon them give the offering ask what you want ask what you're searching for just have a conversation thank them and it's that easy and you know of course these rituals can evolve as you're into this faith um again i i feel like i famously called it a ritual sandwich um start with a grilled cheese sandwich make it nice and simple you know you need those two pieces of bread nice slice of cheese but then as you get more complicated you can start having them in double decker sandwiches and i've definitely had rituals ranging from very complicated hour-long rituals with lots of people involved to me coming out to nature like this and pouring out a beer [Music] so now where can you do this as i've already mentioned you can do this right now in your own home you can do it out here like where i am um you know you can really do it anywhere but again i'm kind of bringing up this section because i know many of you are coming from the monotheistic background um so you're used to having a church or some form of temple that you do your worship at and that's something that really took me a while to understand about this faith is you can really do it anywhere again coming from that christian background i thought it needed to be one spot because i didn't really have an experience with christianity where it was like oh you can obviously you know people would say like god is everywhere but i never heard like you can worship god wherever you really want it was kind of like you worship at church you experience god everywhere where here it's you experience the gods everywhere and you can worship them anywhere at the same time so your options as far as where you do this is really endless um i think the most common one obviously was within your own home many people do have altar spaces which is usually a shelf a bookshelf a corner um you know elaborate setup it really can range what your altar setup is and at this altar you perform your rituals you give your offerings you communicate with the gods this is something that you know encompasses a lot of practices and sometimes it's people's entire practice and that's okay personally for me i tend to do my practices outside i tend to do my rituals outside in nature again giving an offering out here um it just makes me feel more connected but again i i gave an offering just the other day in my house at my altar very quickly just poured in some wine at my altar space um and that's all i needed to do now so as far as a temple did they have temples in the past well it kind of varies we know that there could have been temples and there might most likely would have been particularly in scandinavia because uh basically where these stop churches save churches were built were most likely locations of pagan temples or holy sites now at the same time we know the germanic people were very against having indoor worship they believed in worshiping and venerating their gods outside typically near waterways or bogs and then the celtic we saw the same way we saw sacred groves and we see sacred trees but less of the temple idea so for me and personally as a community what we're seeking is a hall it's something that i say at the end of every single video and something we're working on right now is building a hall but the hall itself isn't necessarily for the gods the hall is for the people to come and worship the gods to come together as friends and folk um and then we most likely will go outside near fire pits and give to the gods so you know our idea of a temple is more of an idea of a gathering place um and a place to eat and to feast and to to be be a community now will we build a temple eventually possibly i think it would be really cool to see a temple to odin built a temple to freya just to see what those ideas would turn up but again that's not something that is needed it's a desire it's something i would love to see but you don't need temples you don't need a hof or a hall to really be in this faith to worship these deities you can do it in your own home you can do it outside i recommend outside but you can do it wherever you like [Music] now i feel like we've already covered this a little bit as far as the wind you do this and again you can do this whenever you like wherever you like but i will say in the poetic edda particularly to have them all it does mention not praying too much um that praying too much will not lead to good things and i'm inclined to agree with that i tend to give offerings when it feels necessary but i don't have a set day of the week or we don't have you know sunday we don't give every sunday it's kind of the reason i made this section because as you can tell i'm really trying to establish that if you're coming from these monotheistic backgrounds to kind of help you out because i know it's something i struggled with so many of us are coming from the every saturday every sunday and then you have you know bible study on wednesday not really a thing here not really at all you can kind of worship and venerate whenever you'd like you know and how often you like i mean i don't typically do it very often just when it feels appropriate now what i will say in this section is holidays or holy days they do exist we do have them you'll be in the most prominent one so yule typically takes place between december and january depending on how you do it most people typically do it in their region around when winter kind of really sets in because there's another celebration called winter nights which typically happens when summer becomes winter which is kind of around this time right now as soon as the leaves fall it's kind of when winter nights kind of happens but holidays i have again a whole video on this holidays are another thing that they're kind of all over the place no one seems to really venerate at the same time however it does seem to be that most people venerate around the you know solstices and equinoxes around the seasonal changes um it just kind of depends on what day personally as our community my community what we do is we do around the sources or equinoxes but we don't really hold true to that too much because if a solstice is on a wednesday uh we'll just have it the weekend before or after we're really not too concerned about that and it doesn't seem to affect the spiritual experience i would i would honestly say the only one that is probably like a little bit more set is maybe yule but again i've seen people that say yule is on the solstice and then i've seen people say it's sometime in january as well because you follow the scandinavian tradition so again it's all over the place so i wouldn't fret too much about what days you've worshiped just do it when it feels right and again i recommend sometime around the equinoxes and solstices to do something for the season of your local area [Music] so that answers all the basic questions so i hope that helps you a little bit if you're getting into this thing for the first time or if you're one of my returning viewers i hope it maybe made you think about other things that maybe you haven't thought of before but let's just do a slight recap what is norse paganism it is the veneration and the honoring of an ancient past in the modern day where we look at the gods the folk and the spirit in a very different way and that's the who the gods the folk the spirit the gods that we've innovated the gods of the north the people that we venerate are the community and the friends and folk that we have as well as all of our ancestors where we all came from and of course the spirits that exist in the woods even within our own home and then why do we do it we do it to connect on a deeper level with these beings we do it to ask for guidance and help so that we're not alone and so that we are inspired and guided and just able to connect to the natural world in an even deeper way and how do we do it well we can do it simply by meditating by giving offerings by seeking advice from them by calling out to them really just by seeking connections as far as where you can do it wherever you'd like but again i highly recommend going outside into nature because i don't think you're going to find any better connection but if that's not an option for you you can build your own small in-home altar or you can have nothing at all it does not matter just do it that is what matters the most and just the same as where you can do it whenever you want as well you can do it on every saturday if you wish that that's something that makes you happy or you could do it like me and just whenever it feels comfortable and of course if you want to follow any particular set of holidays i recommend around the sources or equinoxes but really it is up to you and that is it folks my brief introduction to what is norse paganism so again i hope it helped you out i hope you enjoy these beautiful views of cave lake here in kentucky and once again if you like the content here at the wisdom of odin please make sure you're subscribed and like this video otherwise thank you so very much and until the haul [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] hello

Channel: Jacob Toddson

Views: 68,839

Keywords: pagan, Paganism, Norse Paganism, Norse, Norse myth, Norse mythology, asatru, Viking, Vikings, heathen, heathenry, books, list, Odin, Thor, Freya, gods, old gods, religion, wicca, Wiccan, shaman, shamanism, Nordic, yule, pagan holidays, yuletide, winter, pagan christmas, holidays, yggrasil, offering, sacrifice, heilung, ritual, Asatru for beginners, Asatru ritual, Asatru explained, Asatru religion, Norse paganism for beginners, norse pagan ritual, Norse Pagan Religion, norse pagan, the wisdom of odin

Id: VLQlhcS9FDM

Length: 24min 28sec (1468 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 15 2021