The Forsa Rune Ring (Forsaringen) used to be on the parish church in the Central Swedish Province of Hälsingland. This iron oath ring (17 in / approx. 45 cm wide diameter) has been argued by some to date to the 9th Century, though other scholars argue late Medieval era. Scholar Sophus Bugge, interpreted it as being Christian, but scholar Aslak Liestøl argues that Bugge’s reading of lirþir (clergy) was incorrect, and that the legal inscription should read liuþir (the people), and thus removed the Christian context. Scholar Stefan Brink has provided a more recent 21st century translation, one that points to it being a heathen relic that stipulated what was necessary for cultic practice in maintenance of a holy temple, or the Old Norse vé[1] (or the Old Swedish vi as it appears in the following translation):
Did you find an awesome statue of Odin with a price to good to be true? Maybe some cheap jewelry? There’s a reason for that: theft. The internet is plagued now with online shopping sites like Temu, Wish, Shein, Aliexpress, and far, far more. If the website url seems odd, or gibberish or some mash up of a real word then random junk, you’re being scammed. If product description fails to tell you materials used, you definitely are. These sites take other designs, artwork, goods and recreate inferior knock-offs without any financial compensation to the original artist or business. They then sell the fakes reaping profits while the original artist loses out on sales, impacting their livelihood. These sites also now have access to your credit card information, and personal information… everything they need to steal from you sooner or later too.
Online Store with stolen photos (scraped from the official store) selling cheap knockoffs
Recently I was told of a gathering where a friend after a recent move had visited a nearby group for the first time, only to unfortunately discover they polluted their faining (ritual) by catering their religious space for atheists while undermining the sacred for the Heathens.
I was absolutely flabbergasted and appalled. To be Heathen is to be a polytheist. If you don’t believe the gods are unique holy powers with their own agency, if you do not venerate them as such, then by definition you are not a Heathen. Our sacred spaces and places are not to be adapted to a worldview that is absolutely antithetical to our existence. If someone chooses to be an atheist, that’s their right. But removing the Gods or to allow discussion in ritual space that they are not real to make the atheists comfortable is irrefutably wrong. To permit such blasphemy in our sacred spaces is tantamount to destroying our own tradition. The group in question apparently tried to justify it by pointing to the concepts of hospitality found within the ancient Heathen worldview, but they failed to account for the fact that different rules and cultural norms applied for our sacred spaces and rites, versus the secular sphere of life.
In the skaldic poem Austrfararvísur (written circa 1019 CE) we have a first hand account by Christian skald Sigvatr Þórðarson (995–1045 CE) as he traveled through Sweden on a diplomatic mission to jarl Ragnvald Ulfsson. While en-route he and his companions sought out a place to stay for the night. He was refused hospitality at three different heathen farmsteads because it was the sacred time of Álfablót and he was Christian. One of those exchanges follows:
‘Gakkat inn,’ kvað ekkja, ‘armi drengr, en lengra; hræðumk ek við Óðins — erum heiðin vér — reiði.’ Rýgr kvazk inni eiga óþekk, sús mér hnekkði, alfablót, sem ulfi ótvín, í bœ sínum.
‘Do not come any farther in, wretched fellow’, said the woman; ‘I fear the wrath of Óðinn; we are heathen.’ The disagreeable female, who drove me away like a wolf without hesitation, said they were holding a sacrifice to the elves inside her farmhouse.
R. D. Fulk 2012, ‘ Sigvatr Þórðarson, Austrfararvísur’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1
In the wake of the tragic mass shooting at the Tops Market grocery store in Buffalo, New York on May 14, 2022 we have been learning more about the murdering criminal who had perpetrated the attack. He was wearing a sonnenrad (a swastika related symbol), the assault rifle and shotgun were adorned with the Othala rune, and the shotgun also featured a Celtic Cross (which is a variation of our solar cross symbol). He also had references on his assault rifle to five other mass shooters (who I am choosing not to name) behind the following attacks: 2011 Norwegian attacks in Oslo and Utøya, 2011 Tree of life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, the 2015 Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, the 2019 Chabad Congregation in Poway, and the 2019 Christchurch attack.
He signed off his manifesto with the words “Goodbye, God bless you all and I hope to see you in Valhalla.” Compare it to the manifesto from the shooter behind the 2019 Christchurch attack and there’s lots of similarities (basically plagiarized with slight rewordings) including the sign off “Goodbye, god bless you all and I will see you in Valhalla.”
I’d like to say something for the hate spouting extremists in the back. Murderers don’t go to Valhalla. In fact in our lore we know murderers go somewhere else entirely. In Gylfaginning we are told by Odin (in his guise of Þriði) that those who commit evil go to Nifolhel (Misty Hel). In another section of Gylfaginning, and supported also in Völuspá, we learn that within Nifolhel we have Nástrǫnd (Corpse Shore), and that is where oathbreakers and murderers go in the afterlife. Nástrǫnd is home to the serpent Níðhöggr (Malice Striker) who gnaws for eternity on the corpses of murderers and oathbreakers that have been condemned to the serpent’s hall. We think that Nástrǫnd may correlate to the Old English Wyrmsele, which means serpent hall, it appears in the poem Judith found in the Nowell Codex (which is the manuscript source for Beowulf).
The heathen afterlife is first and foremost Hel. Hel, is more than just a name. Her name literally is not only the realm of the dead, but etymologically is the very earth where the dead are buried and reside, from the great cairns and graveyards. To speak of Hel is to speak of both the Goddess, Her realm, and all those who dwell there. Sooner or later we will traverse those halls, because as the Havamal states, “cattle die and kinsmen die” because the most fundamental truth of life is that sooner or later we die. From the sources we know that there were certain places or deities within the afterlife of Hel that played host to the dead: Odin’s Valhalla, Thor’s Bilskirnir within Valhalla, Freya’s Sessrumnir, the hall of Vingolf (mentioned three times: once connected to Odin, once to the Goddesses, and once just generally as a place for the dead), Gimlé where the just go, and then we know that the Goddesses Ran and Gefjon also play host to specific types of the dead (respectively those who died at sea and maidens).
One of the commonly misrepresented beliefs of our afterlife is that the end goal is for us all to go to Valhalla, it isn’t. Valhalla is specifically intended for a select few, and only for those that Odin thinks has the right skillset to his warrior purposes and thus chooses. Killing in self defense, or killing in the course of war is one thing. Gunning down a bunch of innocent people in a grocery store makes you only one thing: a murderer, a nīðing (nithling) which is one of the worst labels given to a person, as it means the person has no honor and is a villain.
This gunman doesn’t represent my religion nor my beliefs. In fact both he and the Q-Anon Shaman from the January 6, 2021 Insurrection in Washington DC use the singular Christian god in messaging, but combine it with some of our religion’s sacred symbols and places. This is sadly yet another despicable real world example of what should be sacred being profaned for the purposes of hate. Let me be clear, in the Northern Tradition these are the races that exist: the Giants, the Gods, the Dwarves, the Disir, the Alfar, other vaettir of land and sea, and the human race. That’s it. If you look at our creation story we see that as the Gods create the first people, Odin breathed life into them, Vili granted them intelligence, and Ve gave them their senses so they could see and hear. So whether an individual or any other cultural or religious group believes that or not, if someone believes and worships Odin then to my mind you should believe he is the All-Father of humanity, not the Father of only some.
You would think after decades of being a Heathen and seeing white supremacists pervert the sacred, I’d be used to this. But I’m not. I’m furious. Each time we’re here I’m just as outraged as the last time. So I had to do something, in this case I made a meme. Yes, it is but a small act, but maybe if we can educate there’d be fewer people misusing Valhalla. If we can burst the fantasy bubble around Valhalla, maybe we can start to dismantle part of the appeal in how white supremacists who don’t even worship our Gods use it to galvanize others to hate. Share it, spread it. Let’s make this go viral.
All too often among modern worshippers of the ancient gods of Germania and Scandinavia, they focus on rites like blot (or the modern alternative faining), and traditions like sumble. But they tend to ignore other religious ritual customs we have ample evidence of in both historic textual accounts and archaeologic artifacts, especially including the religious processionals of yesteryear.
I updated my older article, The Healing Gods and Goddesses of the Northern Tradition with information about the Ribe Skull Fragment, an interesting find from the archaeological record which contains a runic inscription invoking Gods for healing including Odin, and what appears to be his father Borr, the god Tyr, and Ulfr (which means wolf and may possibly be Fenrir). You can read up on the skull fragment and some interesting research, and some of m own thoughts about this archaeological remnant at the link.
As more information comes to the surface since the insurrection in my nation’s capital I just get angrier. I am so furious. I could rant on this topic for hours. While my nation grapples with the serious ramifications and fallout, I always think about how it’s important not to lose sight of our Gods during both good times and bad. To that end I am giving away bookmarks of the Egyptian Gods and Goddesses, scroll down to the bottom to learn how to enter.
Queen Nefertari’s Egypt – An Exhibition
I took a much needed mental health break to Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum as it is currently hosting an exhibit to Queen Nefertari’s Egypt. Nefertari was wife of Pharaoh Ramses II. When her tomb was discovered by Ernesto Schiaparelli in 1904 in the Valley of the Queens near modern day Luxor, Egypt, it had already been ransacked. Most of the artifacts were gone, but the tomb was still stunning, the walls were elaborately and beautifully decorated. But nearby was the artisan village of Deir el-Medina, and this exhibit features many artifacts from that village. Including a vast array of Shabtis, pottery, cosmetics and their accompanying containers. Plus several coffin lids. So you get to learn about the workers village, and women in this period of time in Egypt as well. This exhibit isn’t focused around mummies, but there are mummified remains on display, specifically the dismembered mummified legs found in Nefertari’s tomb, and is most likely all that remains of her. I wasn’t expecting it, and was annoyed to discover that in the exhibit. I’m not a fan of putting the dead on display, when during their life they had no expectation of that happening to them in their death.
Usually when we see exhibits on Ancient Egypt, it tends to be solely about the royal family and the Gods, we don’t necessarily see or learn about the life and beliefs outside of the upper echelons of society. But this exhibit talks about how houses in the worker village had niches for ancestor busts that were placed in the home’s main room, and were worshipped daily. In fact because of the isolation of this village, there were unique cultic practices we have no evidence of anywhere else in ancient Egypt, including a thriving cultic practice to Pharoah Amenhotep I, as well as Queen Ahmose-Nefertari herself. The snake goddess Meretseger also was popularly worshipped within the village.
While the Kimbell exhibit doesn’t feature the actual walls of the tomb, it does have some photos blown up on the walls to give you a sense of it. To have the Goddess Ma’at towering above you fills one with awe. This video will give you a virtual tour of the actual tomb.
While my religious praxis is within Northern Tradition polytheism, there was a brief period of exploration where I was learning about Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. There’s something awe inspiring about seeing the stone carved statues of Sekhmet that were given offerings (a different statue every day) to the lion-headed Goddess. To see stele with depictions of Osiris, Anubis, Horus, Ma’at, etc. Statuary of Taweret, as well as Bastet. There’s plenty in here to be of interest to polytheists, but especially for Kemetics.
If you’re in a reasonable distance of the museum, it’s definitely worth a trip if you feel comfortable doing so during the time of a pandemic. The museum has tried to establish a specific route among the artifacts, and attempts at social distancing and crowd control with masks being mandatory. As a member of the museum I personally was able to visit during members only hours which are even less crowded. But while it’s not the same as seeing it in person, there is a virtual tour as well you can view here.
My one complaint, is despite how brightly illuminated things look online at the museum website, in actuality the lighting is very dim, while I understand this is to help preserve the artifacts, it’s so dim as to make the decorations on the object undistinguishable on the objects at times.
In the gift shop were some painted papyrus bookmarks of various Egyptian deities. I decided to pick up a number of these for one purpose, to give them away to fellow American polytheists. Because we need a little good in the world right now considering what’s going on in national politics. This is my random act of kindness, and something that hopefully will feed the soul for some during a tense time in our country.
BOOKMARK GIVEAWAY
Bookmark Prizes
I am giving away Egyptian Gods Bookmarks for free (including shipping) to any polytheist living in the United States of America. Limit 1 per household. Bookmarks will be awarded randomly among the entries on January 15, 2021. If any bookmarks remain after that date, they will be randomly awarded on a first come, first serve basis until all bookmarks have been distributed.
To be considered you MUST completely fill out this form.
Recently in an online group I am in, there was a post which greatly annoyed me because it hit on one of my biggest pet peeves: a tendency in the interfaith community and some parts of the pagan community to use vague terms in prayers, offerings, or when talking about our sacred powers: Oh Spirit, Great Lady, Oh Goddess.
The offending post in this case:
"The Owl, symbol of the Goddess, represents perfect wisdom. Owls have the ability to see in the dark and fly noiselessly through the skies. They bring messages through dreams. The Owl is the bird of mystical wisdom and ancient knowledge of the powers of the moon."
To which I responded:
Which Goddess? People died in worship of their Gods and Goddesses. Please use the deities’ names. Otherwise you are complicit in continuing the destruction of what Christianity wrought to the pre-Christian religions of the world.
Wyrd DOTTIR
I meant every damn word of it too.
The spread of Christianity focused on stripping our Gods and Goddesses of their names to destroy their identities. Their idols were destroyed or defaced, their holy shrines destroyed, their worshippers killed, oppressed, and sometimes even enslaved. We know in some ancient cultures denying someone their name was to curse and destroy them. We see this often in the archaeological record in Egypt as just one example. That is what Christianity wants, to take their names, to obfuscate, to destroy so only their God is left.
Christianity took our Gods and Goddesses, they re-branded them to erode what had existed before Christianity tried to usurp their sacred places. Some of the pre-Christian deities became re-branded as Saints while others were vilified becoming associated with devils and things inimical. We see an euhemeristic process introduced where Gods and Goddesses were reduced to just remarkable humans, and in the process eroded the connections of the sacred from them in human consciousness.
Then you had Christian scholars who came and started studying every God or Goddesses as merely aspects of the same divinity. This essentially lump-sums these deities together into ever increasing definitions of marginalization, making them merely footnotes. Afterall the operating ideological paradigm of Christian thought is that Christianity has the only real God so why should you treat these other religions with any claim to their own divinity, to their own power or sacredness? And then you had the revival of modern paganism where people were using this Christian written research that looked at Gods and Goddesses as an amalgam and re-made it into their watered down version of a pseudo religion.
If you’re at a pub, and ordered a pint you want to get what you paid for not some watered down over priced beer. So if you’re going to be a pagan who is a true polytheist, and isn’t afraid of specifically saying their names when they pour out libations, then use the names that the ancient practitioners called their Gods, their Goddesses. Otherwise take your watered down cheap swill and leave. You’re not helping.
Words have power, meaning and nuance. We know in many instances the words and the meaning of a deity’s name helps to show that power too. In some cases all we have left is their name because Christianity so destroyed everything else. When you lump sum deities as a vague unspecified group, you say they aren’t worthy of learning more about their individual uniqueness. You are saying, even unconsciously, that they are less than.
These Gods and Goddesses had names. They were worshipped by Their names. People died in worship of Them, people STILL die and are tormented in worship of them. So use their names. If you can’t call them by their names, get out of the way for those of us that do. Because by refusing to be specific, you are an active participant in the undermining of these Ancient polytheistic traditions. You are in fact being a destroyer and an active participant in the erosion of our polytheisms.
And if you’re still resisting this concept let me ask you something:
How would you feel if for the rest of your life every family member, friend, lover, co worker, neighbor and stranger merely addressed you by : ‘hey you’, while everyone else was also called ‘hey you’. Imagine if you ask ‘hey you’ to do something, it’ll probably get ignored because how does anyone know who the request was for?
So use Their Names. Be specific in your prayers.
The Morrigan is not Pele, nor are either of those goddesses Aphrodite, let alone are they Taweret. Freya is not Sif, nor is she Sigyn, Syn, Skadi, Hel, Skuld, and so many, many more.
So there’s been a bit of a push in recent years that somehow male facial hair was extra special to ancient Heathens, and this has been the basis for some today to ask for special waivers who are serving in the military, such as stories of US service men who are being granted these waivers. I am glad to see that the military is open to these religious accommodations for not only Heathens, but those of other religious and cultural groups too.
While I have no problem with people making a personal choice in their appearance, or making symbolic outward choices as a way to express their own devotions, I do find it highly problematic that the notion that a Heathen man >must< have facial hair (as an aspect of religious identity) is being so strongly pushed and spreading into the community at large.
Image depicting an Assortment of Modern Beard Styles
So I decided to do a deep dive into the supposed sources for this drive from the lore, but in the process also discovered that this push in modern times is in particular coming from a fringe males only ‘religious’ group whose focus is on masculinity, not the Reginn (Holy Powers).
FROM THE HISTORICAL SOURCES
Most who are arguing for it are using Njal’s Saga as their point of reference, where the eponymous Njal is repeatedly insulted as being unmanly for his lack of being able to grow a beard. (In much the way some men will mock adolescent males who can’t grow a full beard yet today). The entire saga is one of the feud sagas, and really can be seen as being exaggerated with a lot of commentary over what is manly and what is unmanly, in addition to the overly hyped up importance of what is or isn’t honorable. You have Thorhall Asgrimsson ashamed to be caught grieving, but he’s not crying tears rather he is weeping blood out of his ears when he learns of Njal’s death. The saga itself is full of absurdity, and has very little to do with religion at all.
To dive a little deeper it is important to note that Njal’s Saga was written in the 13th century, a good two centuries or more after the events it supposedly describes (and well into the Middle Ages and Christian Europe). Respected scholar Gabriel Turville-Petre reminds us to take the story with a grain of salt, “It was not the author’s purpose to write a work of history, but rather to use a historical subject for an epic in prose”. It was penned in Christian times, and so the entire concept of it being representative of pre-Christian custom is entirely suspect. We have ample evidence from the later sagas showing a cultural milieu by the scholars penning those tales, where they alluded to other great literary works (Greek, Roman, or occasionally Biblical) within their own tales, like Snorri’s claim Odin was the Trojan King and Thor was the hero Hector. So we clearly see these late scholars adding things of their own choice to the stories. So we need to be mindful of this when looking at Njal’s saga. To assume the tale is 100% authentic is folly at best.Another reference often used to build the case for sacred beards, derives from the Guta Lag (Law of the Gotlanders), that lists a penalty for injury to a beard. Again this dates to the 13th Century (by which time the area is under Christian control). But this is also the same source that makes it clear performing a blot (a pre-Christian religious rite) was a criminal act. So you know it’s entirely possible hair customs by this point and time are counter to pre-Christian times. There were many laws enacted throughout Scandinavia about anything that was tied to old religious custom. So if a custom was rooted in religious heathen practice, like the consumption of horse-meat, it was outlawed in the legal code. So if hair (including facial hair) was a religious custom of pre-Christianity, there’s a strong likelihood it would have legal prohibitions against practicing/wearing it if it denoted Heathen religious significance.
Looking at the mention in Guta lag from a secular point of view, so much of our pride of self is reflected in our appearance, and the choices we exert in how we choose to appear and style ourselves. So it seems reasonable to me there’d be a penalty for taking that choice away from someone, especially if the intent was to somehow ridicule, denigrate, or degrade a person. Considering there are also laws that outline what the penalty is for giving someone a facial scar, it seems to fall more into a category of personal appearance, than it does to any sort of religious signifier. In fact wergild heavily considered how evident any injury was visibly to others: loss of limbs, eyes, facial scars were some of the heaviest fines levied in the old law codes.
The better sources to me are the earlier ones. We see across historical documents and archaeology a variety of depictions of facial hair. Ibn Fadlan was sent by the Abbasid caliphate out of Baghdad on a diplomatic journey among the Rus and Volgars in 922 CE. His travel account is at least a contemporaneous resource and eye-witness account (not written centuries after the fact, but rather written and penned during Heathen times). Descriptions from Ibn Fadlan describe the heathen men as wearing their beards plaited, or presenting a shaven face, thus the issue of facial hair seemed to be a personal choice. However, those with beards bleached them to a saffron yellow using a strong lye soap. This isn’t the first occurrence of a bleaching or coloring custom among the historic areas of the Northern Tradition.
The Viking Age peoples of Northern Europe had a lot of influence and ancestry in many cases from the Germanic Tribes. The later Viking Age peoples and the powerful tribes of the time either came from descended offshoots of those Germanic tribes (the Yngvonnes is where the Angles and other tribes like the Frisians, and Saxons come from for example), or settled in areas where those tribes had once held sway and in the process there was cultural blending. Many Germanic tribes shared cultural touchstones like Odin or Woden (as well as other common deities) with what we see pop up later in Viking Age Scandinavian religion, so while one has to be careful NOT to say the cultural values and practices are the same, we can look to these earlier sources and see where we can find parallels, and it is worth examining what was happening among them as well.
So as we look even further back to the customs of the Germanic tribes, we find some interesting references to hair and facial hair customs. In the first century text Historia Naturalis by Pliny the Elder, he noted a custom of bleaching hair and beards commonly done among Germanic men of the tribe that evokes what we see later in Ibn Fadlan’s time among the Rus and Volga. “Soap is the invention of the Gauls and this is used to redden the hair. It is made from fat and ashes. The best is beech wood ash and goat fat, the two combined, thick and clear. Many among the Germans use it, the men more than the women.” We’re not sure if this was an aesthetic choice for the yellow blonde color, or if (as has been suggested by other scholars) the dye was a secondary effect and the primary purpose was to be used to treat and prevent any infestations of lice, fleas and other pests.
In Chapter 31 of Tacitus’s Germania (also a first century text) we learn about the Germanic tribe of the Chatti. Among them, once a male Chatti achieved manhood they let their beard and hair grow as a symbol of their warrior duty to their family and tribe. Only those who stood over the bleeding bodies of their defeated enemies could then shave their face and cut their hair. So long hair and a beard was seen as the mark of a coward, or those who were unwarlike.
Tacitus’ also talks in chapter 38 about the Suebi tribe, and mentions a particular hair style, the Suebian Knot. “One mark of the race is to comb the hair back over the side of the head and tie it low in a knot behind: this distinguishes the Suebi from other Germans, and the free-born of the Suebi from the slave.” So here we see a cultural custom that denotes free membership of a particular tribe, so thereby denotes status, but seemingly has no mention to it having any religious import. Tacitus goes on to describe how the custom does occasionally crop up outside the Suebi, “In other tribes, whether from some relationship to the Suebi, or, as often happens, from imitation, the same thing may be found; but it is rare and confined to the period of youth.” He provides us with more information to, of how the custom is kept until old age, and how there is a special style worn to denote status of elevated rank too: “Among the Suebi, even till the hair is grey, the rough locks are twisted backward, and often knotted on the very crown: the chieftains wear theirs somewhat more ornamentally, to this extent interested in appearances, but innocently so.”
Sidonius, in his Letters (written in the 5th century), talks about the sea-faring blue-eyed Saxon and their tendency to shave back their hair, “along the extreme edges of his pate the razor, refusing to restrain its bite, pushes back the frontier of his hair and, with the growth thus clipped to the skin, his head is reduced and his face enlarged.” Some debate is had on if it was just hair, or hair and facial hair that rendered the appearance of such a wide face.
While Pliny, Tacitus and Sidonius’ works give us some understanding of aesthetic customs relating to hair (and sometimes facial hair at that) we need to also consider that there’s definitely a difference between a cultural aesthetic norm of the time, and a religious tradition. In Greece, those who served Vesta had a specific hairstyle to denote them–that is a religious custom. Automatically anyone who saw that hairstyle KNEW it denoted something specifically religious in that culture. We also know that as part of a rite from boyhood into adulthood, that in Greek culture boys grew their hair long, and upon their ephebeia (coming of age) their hair would be cut short and the shorn locks would be given in offering to Apollo in his aspect of Apollo Kourotrophos (protector of the young). When I had an opportunity to travel to Denmark years ago, I was struck by some of the discoveries found in the archaeological record found in the northern Jutland region of what today is Denmark. On display in the National Museum in Copenhagen, along side precious metal worked objects, were also discovered the braids of women’s hair that had been cut and sacrificed in the bog as a form of religious offering around 350 BCE. These are authentic examples of a religious oriented hair custom, even though we’re not sure what precisely was the motivation for the offering of the hair.
But a woman with a short bob hairstyle from the 1920s was just wearing something that was a cultural fad of fashion and aesthetics, the way a handlebar mustache was normally worn during the 19th century as a mode of fashion by many men. Men of a certain time may have culturally had a norm for their hair to appear a certain way, that had nothing whatsoever to do with it being an indication of religious practice. Some fashions and aesthetics had to do about hierarchical rank, and nothing to do about religious station. We see this especially with the dress codes of what men and women of notable rank could wear, versus the rest of the populace in England for instance, with even degrees of separation between ranks among the aristocracy. Or we see this with the Suebi and the Suebian knot, as a special version was worn by chieftains versus other free men of the tribe, and those without it were slaves or outsiders of the tribe.
The Eddas and Sagas usually describe men and Gods with beards. But these sources come to us almost entirely post-conversion, sometimes centuries later, and are being penned by Christian scholars. The few exceptions to this, can be found among some of the skaldic poetry which tends to be overlooked and ignored. Some of those skalds were in fact heathens, or had formerly been heathen but converted to Christianity in their lifetime. So when it comes to what is in the sagas and eddas we always need to take it with a grain of salt and recognize it is not going to be 100% authentic. So even if persons or deities in the lore are described with or without a beard is immaterial when it comes to the issue at hand: did beards import sacredness? We have no reference anywhere to the time periods of heathen custom that the way a man’s hair was worn, or a man’s facial hair was treated (bearded and styled, or kept shaven) had any specific religious significance. If we look to the Germanic tribes we can make a case about cultural norms of the tribe, and even status, but we cannot make a case for a beard being perceived as being tied to sacred expression.
When we look to the archaeological record from bodies, to depictions in art we see a vast array of examples of hair and facial hair ranging from:
long beards (conical or plaited) – Kirkby Stephen Stone believe to depict Loki, Bone Gamepiece from Lund, Þórr Figure from Akureyri, Ithyphallic Freyr Figure from Rallinge, Tängelgårda Rune Stone
mustache with close trimmed beard – Carved head from Oseberg Ship Burial, Gunnar in the Snakepit Carving on Sledge from the Oseberg Ship Burial, Vendel Helmet Plate of Odin
beards but no mustaches – various guldgubber kissing figures
mustaches with no beards – Helmet Plate from Torslunda, Loki Snaptun Stone, Lokemasken pendants from Øster Lindet and Vejen, Carved Head on Sledge from the Oseberg Ship Burial
and clean shaven faces – Bayeaux Tapestry, Sutton Hoo Burial Mound 1, Gold Bracteates from Funen
If we look across the guldgubber kissing figures, a motif found across a multitude of goods at various sites, created roughly in the same period, we see that the male usually has a pointed chin indicating a beard, but in some depictions the male figure appears clean shaven. In more than one case in the archaeological evidence, we find a site that gives us multiple depictions of men’s facial hair at the same site, with artifacts dated to within a very short period of time to each other thus suggesting they were current at time of deposit. The Oseburg Ship Burial has given us depictions of men with mustaches and close trimmed beards, as well as a man with a mustache and no beard. In Sutton Hoo Mound 1 we have two men with mustaches and conical beards, one man with no mustache but a conical beard, and then a combination of men with mustaches but no beards, or men who were clean shaven. Similarly the Bayeaux Tapestry depicts both clean-shaven men, and men who only had thin mustaches.
At best we can only make the argument that beards and the wearing of them is a matter of personal choice and cultural aesthetics of a time period, possibly a symbol of some sort of social status for a geo-specific culture but not a widespread symbol of religious dedication.
THE MODERN – YET FRINGE- DRIVER OF SACRED BEARDS
I discovered one of the big pushes for this modern surge for sacred beards in Heathenry is coming from a Norwegian based males-only organization homed at FornSidr.com, who will give support to US or Canadian soldiers wanting to make the request, but ONLY if they are a dues paying member (which also requires you to sign up to pay an annual membership fee, and complete certain coursework which has additional price tags attached to it first). Funny, how a Norwegian organization is so interested in what’s happening in North America. Is this push just some tactless cash grab? Probably, at least in part.
They seem AWFULLY concerned about perceptions of masculinity. Here’s a couple of screenshots from their page:
And quoting their statement from the screenshot (in case anyone has difficulties viewing it):
WE ARENORÐMENN
We are defined by innate and natural biological traits and characteristics essential to the very survival of our species, and based on hundreds of millions of years of evolution.
Our fair skin has allowed us to thrive in the winter darkness of the north and our exceptional fitness, stoicism, and resilience to settle the harshest environments on earth. We have built western civilization with our genes, blood and sweat.
We celebrate our ancestral primal, tribal and warrior nature, and we foster our óðr through channelled aggression and sexuality outside of modern societal as well as abrahamic constructs. We protect our lands, our resources, our culture, and our own, against all threats.
We embrace equality of opportunity, competition, as well as natural selection, and we welcome as our brothers, through life and beyond, all those men who share our identity and ethos.
We are the sacred essence of life and we perpetuate mankind complemented by women whose essential and primary nurturing role has been defined by nature from times immemorial.
WE ARE MEN
I don’t know about you, but this description makes me highly suspicious of the group’s motivations. And as of 2019 they’ve trademarked the term Forn Sidr, a term used to describe religious identity for decades across areas of Europe and are going after other groups using it, such as Forn Sidr of America. In one such article about the brouhaha between FS and FSoA by the fringe ‘news source’ Helluland National Broadcasting Service (which realistically is highly editorialized propaganda pieces as their self-descriptor is “Uncensored news from a Viking Perspective” that is of course ironic considering the Vikings were a historical occupation (pirates comprised of various ethnicities and religious groups from a wide area) from centuries ago and there’s no nation of Helluland) wrote “Is there anything women of all genders will not ruin?” referring to the women and transgendered women behind Forn Sidr of America as HNBS’ article on the subject clearly could be summarized by stating FS is awesomely right, and this FSoA is disgusting. As I dug down I clearly saw links between FS, HNBS, Helluland.org, Wall-of-women.org and Norskk.com as they seem to have some sort of inter-connected relationship in the clickable links between them.
So I am going to state here that I’ve stumbled upon part of the crazy fringe of modern Heathenry. Anyone letting (at least partially misogynistic), hyperly masculine groups drive what is and isn’t sacred (in this case beards as they have an entire page dedicated to it) really needs to stop and think things through. Their rhetoric makes it very clear their focus is more on masculinity and themselves, than it is the Reginn and other holy powers. They have a page devoted to the statement “We are Men” in multiple languages, and a page devoted to beards on their site. Do I see a page devoted to any of the Gods or Goddesses? Not a one. In fact they oxymoronically call the beard a religious symbol, while also making it clear they neither pray nor worship any of the Holy Powers: “In fact, we do not pray or worship per say the Æsir, Ásynjur, Vanir, Jötnar, Aðrir, Kindir, or Kynja.”
The only time I see Gods mentioned at all are only in passing, like when they’re trying to make their cases about the need for male warriors to have access to violence and sex, and when violence isn’t an option they need to offset it with more sex. Oh and the only warriors are men (also proclaimed by the sister organization who likes to debunk shield-maidens and women warriors all while sporting anatomy differences for why women shouldn’t fight, funny how the sister organization’s content all links to the Norskk page instead of being a true stand alone site).
So my distillation summary of the group is that they are an extreme fringe faction that promotes a modern fantasy cultural way of life for the self-inflated male ego along Viking warrior themed lines. Their religion is that of their SELF.
There are other increasingly fringe extremist and white supremacy groups on the edges of our religion also pushing for the beard for their own reasons. While not every soldier wanting to wear a beard is from such a group, I think the problem is that so many of these groups have gotten so good about hiding their real intent when they promote various types of propaganda, that it confuses others.
MY FINAL THOUGHTS
I personally don’t care if some decide to wear a beard as a sign of their personal devotion. Such a choice is to me synonymous with the person who chooses to wear period garb for ritual as it puts them into sacred mindfulness, or how another will get a tattoo, or wear a certain piece of jewelry (like a Thor’s hammer) as representational of their religious devotion. Those are indeed beautiful acts of religious expression, and things not to be mocked. Nor do I want to mitigate those who feel that a deity has asked them to do a thing as well in honor of Them. But the insistence I see by some that it was irrefutably the case, that it MUST be done, is neither factual or historically accurate. Nothing in lore or found in the archaeological record definitively points to facial hair as a religious codifier. Don’t let the propaganda of a fringe group that doesn’t even worship the Gods and Goddesses muddy the issue: we have no evidence that beards were perceived as being sacred. But to an individual heathen man who makes a choice to wear one for that reason, it can be sacred to him.
Wyrd Designs 
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