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The image of a warrior drinking blood or eating the heart of a recently killed animal is something most people today would probably associate with fantasy. It appears constantly in modern depictions of "Viking" culture, usually as a display of savagery or as an attempt to absorb the strength of an enemy. But there is an actual idea behind it in Norse literature. Across several Old Norse sources, we find blood and hearts being consumed immediately before a person undergoes som

Among the many virtues that shaped the worldview of our Norse ancestors, few were as fundamental as reciprocity. Modern people often reduce the phrase “a gift for a gift” to simple generosity or the exchange of material possessions. The surviving sources reveal something much deeper. Reciprocity was the mechanism by which friendships were formed, alliances maintained, hospitality guaranteed, honor preserved, and even the relationship between humanity and the gods sustained. T

When many people picture a Norse farmer of the 9th or 10th century, they often imagine something primitive and distant from modern life. Yet, when compared to today’s industrial agriculture, the Viking Age farm bears a surprising resemblance to the modern homestead movement. While separated by more than a thousand years, both systems share values of self-sufficiency, resourcefulness, family labor, and a close relationship with the land. The Norse Farm as a Self-Sustaining Hou

For nearly five centuries, the Varangian Guard stood as one of the most feared and respected military units in the medieval world. Composed primarily of Scandinavian Vikings, Rus warriors, and later Anglo-Saxon exiles, these elite soldiers served as the personal bodyguards of the Byzantine emperors and became legendary for their loyalty, courage, and devastating skill with the battle axe. The story of the Varangian Guard begins in the late 10th century. Scandinavian adventure

Tyr and Fenrir Written by Gothi Alan Panicucci Tyr Tyr, the one-handed god is of the Aesir clan. He is known for his righteous or justifiable sacrifice, war, and more. The purpose of this is to explain who he is, but to do that, I must tell you that the gods and goddesses of the Norse are as human as a god can be. They make mistakes, have great achievements and failures. They live and die as we do. They just have long lives and supernatural abilities. Tyr has a moral compass

A final call to take lessons learned, and coexist with the natural world around us.

What has happened to us? Why does humanity as a whole feel the way it does? Lonely, depressed, anxiety ridden, emotionally detached.... The answer can be as simple as; we've lost our connection...

Animism is, at its simplest, the belief that the world is alive, not just metaphorically, but literally. It holds that animals, plants, rivers, mountains, storms, tools, and places all possess spirit, awareness, or presence. In an animistic worldview, nothing is truly empty or inert. Everything exists in relationship with everything else. For the Norse and broader Germanic peoples, animism wasn’t a philosophy or a label, it was simply how the world worked. You didn’t live on

High Gothi Brandon Sample Across many media and social outlets, we see people claiming that our ancestors used the runes strictly as a writing tool. Throughout the Sagas and Eddas though, we see that this is a false narrative and wasn’t believed by those who wrote down our stories. Within our sources we have a plethora of examples of magical runic use, below we will list quite a few of them and a brief description of what they mention: Poetic Edda (Havamal) : Describes Odi

There are many beings throughout Norse Cosmology. The Gods (Aesir/Vanir), Ancestors, Jotnar, Ljosalfar, Dokkalfar, Dwarves, and the many other beings of the cosmos can be summed up under one word, Vaettir. One class of Vaettir often gets overlooked, however, and they are the ones that surround us every day on Midgard. They are known as Landvaettir (Land Spirits), Husvaettir (House Spirits), Skogvaettir (Forest Spirits), Fjallvaettir (Mountain Spirits), Sjovaettir (Sea Spirits

The Norse View on the Afterlife Written by High Gothi Brandon Sample One topic that is steadily talked about and debated amongst Norse...

Not everyone knows that we are children of nature. However, the true nature is that we are of nature. This is because of the simple...

One of the aspects of Norse culture and faith that can be the most confusing to people is their concept of Fate, or Orlog. There are many...