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>The Ásatrú faith also celebrates Old Norse mythology and its pantheon of morally ambiguous deities – gods such as Odin, Thor and Loki – that came to Iceland du

>The Ásatrú faith also celebrates Old Norse mythology and its pantheon of morally ambiguous deities – gods such as Odin, Thor and Loki – that came to Iceland during the Viking Age, when the island was settled by Norwegian famers looking for new pastures. These deities were worshipped across this ‘land of fire and ice’ until the year 1000, when, under pressure from the influential Norwegian crown, the country abandoned heathenry and adopted Christianity. The subtext from the BBC is interesting, the Viking gods are 'morally ambiguous deities', the arrival of christianity is summarised by 'the country abandoned heathenry'. Is worth noting that heathenry is still a synonym in english for 'uncivilised'. This is presumably to stand in contrast with some notion of the supposed moral certainty and civilisation of the Abrahamic god. The BBC should really be above playing team sports with religions, but I guess they just can't help themselves.

geofft 7y ago
But those gods are morally ambiguous: they're not everything-I-do-is-right like the God of Abraham (in any of the religions that worship him). It's an accurate part of the news and implying that Loki is a paragon of virtue would be misleading people about the subject. And "Heathenry" is a term used by practitioners of this faith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathenry_(new_religious_movement) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathenry_(new_religious_movem... If it's got a negative connotation, well, that's the limits of working in a colonizer language.
- Fjolsvith 7y ago
  Heathenry is a term that comes from the "heath" or what we would call the hearth - the central part of the ancient home that provided heat and cooked food and light. It was the gathering place of family and guests, where songs would be sung and stories told and games played and hospitality offered and accepted. The family shrine would typically be nearby. The Norse gods are about family. They do whatever is needed to protect and help kith and kin. Lumping Odhinn and Thor with Loki as examples of moral ambiguity shows a total misunderstanding of the roles of each of the gods in Asatru. And, implying the three Christian gods are paragons of virtue is laughable. There are examples of genocide and infanticide scattered throughout the Bible - it is a veritable bloodfest of violence. To say otherwise would be misleading people about the subject...
  - wyldfire 7y ago
    > And, implying the three Christian gods are paragons of virtue is laughable. There are examples of genocide and infanticide scattered throughout the Bible - it is a veritable bloodfest of violence. To say otherwise would be misleading people about the subject... The canon of christianity includes the torah, and it is certainly filled with tales of a terrible god. But the gospel is much more generally virtuous. I'd say the inclusion of the torah provides a great context for the contemporary religion around the time of Christ's life but not a very good model for religion at all.
    - Fjolsvith 7y ago
      IMHO, Christianity is a schizophrenic religion with its split deity (vengeful/jealous/unforgiving/domineering vs. loving/peaceful/tolerant/submissive). I see these split personality traits daily in the behaviors of people who follow that religion.
- brodo 7y ago
  The god of the old testament is morally ambiguous too. The christians defined the evil aspects away and made humanity responsible for all evil in the world.
  - Andrex 7y ago
    The religion itself presents God as doing good; pagan religions don't have such framing, thus the classification "morally ambiguous."
    - Fjolsvith 7y ago
      And good for the Christian god means anything that benefits that god. Murdering children at the passover. Murdering people at the flood. Ad nauseam...
    - magduf 7y ago
      >The religion itself presents God as doing good Does it? I seem to remember a part in the Old Testament where the Abrahamic god orders his followers to commit genocide against some other tribe. How is that "doing good"?
      - ARandomerDude 7y ago
        According to what standard? Presumably you believe you are an accidental combination of chemicals, here because other chemical mixtures were the "fittest" -- often, the most ruthless. On what basis does a fittest chemical blob say "you ought to..."? You need an objective moral standard for that and you won't find it in your chemistry set.
      - tsimionescu 7y ago
        The point is that those events, in the context of Christian thought, are seen as good - their god is telling his people to clear some unbelievers. Christian dogma maintains that their god and his commandments are fundamentally moral, that they are the very base for objective morality. In Christian thought, by definition, anything that their god wanted to happen is good. Norse religions, on the other hand, make no such claims about their gods. Within the context of Norse beliefs and religious moraloty, Odin has done evil things, Loki has done evil things, etc. That is why, within their own system of beliefs, the gods are morally ambiguous.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  >everything-I-do-is-right like the God of Abraham Are we talking about the same god? The god that orders his most observant follower to sacrifice his own child then changes his mind when he attempts to obey, the god that apologises with rainbows after committing genocide, the god that has to incarnate as a member of his own creation and then be sacrificed by others before he truly gets what it is like to be mortal? That god? If you read the bible as a story about this deity called Jehova or whatever, it does not read as everything-I-do-is-right, but more about a flawed character that slowly goes through a process of personal discovery, who hasn't really benefitted very much by having a load of hangers-on worshipping him. Was one of the things that convinced me as a child that the bible probably wasn't all that reliable as a guide to cosmology. God as portrayed in that book, is actually far too human to have created the universe, at least that was my rough opinion at the age of 11 and it hasn't really changed that much since.
  - Amezarak 7y ago
    You misunderstand the point. 'Rightness' in Abrahamic theology is what God does and what he commands you to do, period. Everything he does is by definition right. This is very convenient as far as moral philosophy goes, since it provides an absolute and objective foundation. That's the sense in which he's the everything-I-do-is-right God of Abraham. The same is not true for the Nordic gods or the Greco-Roman gods. The Book of Job probably makes this point the most powerfully and clearly. As an aside, it doesn't really make sense to judge historical moral norms by modern 21st century ones. Morality is an anthropological/sociological phenomenon, not some kind of measuring stick we can sensibly apply to other cultures and times.
    - inflatableDodo 7y ago
      >You misunderstand the point. 'Rightness' in Abrahamic theology is what God does and what he commands you to do, period. Everything he does is by definition right. I'm not missing the point, I am making the point that this is just what his followers say and if you read the bible as a story about this character god, then you can get a very different impression.
  - 7y ago
Accacin 7y ago
I understand what you're saying but one of the things I found attractive about the Norse gods was that they're not perfect. They are uncivilised at times! For me at least, I found I could relate to them better because of their faults.
- Fjolsvith 7y ago
  Exactly! And they are living gods. I never knew until well into my adulthood that Odhinn and Thor had been calling to me all my life.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    I like archetypal deities, to me they kind of represent the standing waves in causality that occur once you get to biological levels of complexity, in much the same way that fundamental particles emerge when looking at simpler levels of detail.
- sampo 7y ago
  The Greek and the Roman gods were like that, too. And maybe had more influence on the European culture, than Nordic gods.

geofft 7y ago

But those gods are morally ambiguous: they're not everything-I-do-is-right like the God of Abraham (in any of the religions that worship him). It's an accurate part of the news and implying that Loki is a paragon of virtue would be misleading people about the subject. And "Heathenry" is a term used by practitioners of this faith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathenry_(new_religious_movement) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathenry_(new_religious_movem... If it's got a negative connotation, well, that's the limits of working in a colonizer language.

Fjolsvith 7y ago
Heathenry is a term that comes from the "heath" or what we would call the hearth - the central part of the ancient home that provided heat and cooked food and light. It was the gathering place of family and guests, where songs would be sung and stories told and games played and hospitality offered and accepted. The family shrine would typically be nearby. The Norse gods are about family. They do whatever is needed to protect and help kith and kin. Lumping Odhinn and Thor with Loki as examples of moral ambiguity shows a total misunderstanding of the roles of each of the gods in Asatru. And, implying the three Christian gods are paragons of virtue is laughable. There are examples of genocide and infanticide scattered throughout the Bible - it is a veritable bloodfest of violence. To say otherwise would be misleading people about the subject...
- wyldfire 7y ago
  > And, implying the three Christian gods are paragons of virtue is laughable. There are examples of genocide and infanticide scattered throughout the Bible - it is a veritable bloodfest of violence. To say otherwise would be misleading people about the subject... The canon of christianity includes the torah, and it is certainly filled with tales of a terrible god. But the gospel is much more generally virtuous. I'd say the inclusion of the torah provides a great context for the contemporary religion around the time of Christ's life but not a very good model for religion at all.
  - Fjolsvith 7y ago
    IMHO, Christianity is a schizophrenic religion with its split deity (vengeful/jealous/unforgiving/domineering vs. loving/peaceful/tolerant/submissive). I see these split personality traits daily in the behaviors of people who follow that religion.
brodo 7y ago
The god of the old testament is morally ambiguous too. The christians defined the evil aspects away and made humanity responsible for all evil in the world.
- Andrex 7y ago
  The religion itself presents God as doing good; pagan religions don't have such framing, thus the classification "morally ambiguous."
  - Fjolsvith 7y ago
    And good for the Christian god means anything that benefits that god. Murdering children at the passover. Murdering people at the flood. Ad nauseam...
  - magduf 7y ago
    >The religion itself presents God as doing good Does it? I seem to remember a part in the Old Testament where the Abrahamic god orders his followers to commit genocide against some other tribe. How is that "doing good"?
    - ARandomerDude 7y ago
      According to what standard? Presumably you believe you are an accidental combination of chemicals, here because other chemical mixtures were the "fittest" -- often, the most ruthless. On what basis does a fittest chemical blob say "you ought to..."? You need an objective moral standard for that and you won't find it in your chemistry set.
    - tsimionescu 7y ago
      The point is that those events, in the context of Christian thought, are seen as good - their god is telling his people to clear some unbelievers. Christian dogma maintains that their god and his commandments are fundamentally moral, that they are the very base for objective morality. In Christian thought, by definition, anything that their god wanted to happen is good. Norse religions, on the other hand, make no such claims about their gods. Within the context of Norse beliefs and religious moraloty, Odin has done evil things, Loki has done evil things, etc. That is why, within their own system of beliefs, the gods are morally ambiguous.
inflatableDodo 7y ago
>everything-I-do-is-right like the God of Abraham Are we talking about the same god? The god that orders his most observant follower to sacrifice his own child then changes his mind when he attempts to obey, the god that apologises with rainbows after committing genocide, the god that has to incarnate as a member of his own creation and then be sacrificed by others before he truly gets what it is like to be mortal? That god? If you read the bible as a story about this deity called Jehova or whatever, it does not read as everything-I-do-is-right, but more about a flawed character that slowly goes through a process of personal discovery, who hasn't really benefitted very much by having a load of hangers-on worshipping him. Was one of the things that convinced me as a child that the bible probably wasn't all that reliable as a guide to cosmology. God as portrayed in that book, is actually far too human to have created the universe, at least that was my rough opinion at the age of 11 and it hasn't really changed that much since.
- Amezarak 7y ago
  You misunderstand the point. 'Rightness' in Abrahamic theology is what God does and what he commands you to do, period. Everything he does is by definition right. This is very convenient as far as moral philosophy goes, since it provides an absolute and objective foundation. That's the sense in which he's the everything-I-do-is-right God of Abraham. The same is not true for the Nordic gods or the Greco-Roman gods. The Book of Job probably makes this point the most powerfully and clearly. As an aside, it doesn't really make sense to judge historical moral norms by modern 21st century ones. Morality is an anthropological/sociological phenomenon, not some kind of measuring stick we can sensibly apply to other cultures and times.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    >You misunderstand the point. 'Rightness' in Abrahamic theology is what God does and what he commands you to do, period. Everything he does is by definition right. I'm not missing the point, I am making the point that this is just what his followers say and if you read the bible as a story about this character god, then you can get a very different impression.
- 7y ago

Accacin 7y ago

I understand what you're saying but one of the things I found attractive about the Norse gods was that they're not perfect. They are uncivilised at times! For me at least, I found I could relate to them better because of their faults.

Fjolsvith 7y ago
Exactly! And they are living gods. I never knew until well into my adulthood that Odhinn and Thor had been calling to me all my life.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  I like archetypal deities, to me they kind of represent the standing waves in causality that occur once you get to biological levels of complexity, in much the same way that fundamental particles emerge when looking at simpler levels of detail.
sampo 7y ago
The Greek and the Roman gods were like that, too. And maybe had more influence on the European culture, than Nordic gods.