Welcome to my Hoff of Folklore and Legend! Here, it is my hope, you can read and experience the folklore and the legends together with a bit of the practices of Asatru, as it exists today, and glimpse a bit of what it was in the Dark Ages.
Before I get too far ahead of myself, allow me to introduce myself. I am known to my Asatru friends and other pagans as Rowan Angell. I have walked the path of the Wayfarer or Wanderer for thirty-two years, before aligning myself with The Troth this year. I have a Bachelors Degree in English and Anthropology with Certification in Creative writing. I am pursuing Godfolk training through the Troth when they reopen their program this summer, and I am preparing for a Masters degree in Folkloric Linguistics.
On this site I hope you will find information you can use to learn more about the Asatru Tradition as it is practiced today and more about the Lore and Legends that inspire those of us that practice this renewed faith.
First, let me explain something very critical to this site. For some the terms lore and legend connote fictitious accounts. That may be in some cases. However, when it comes to matters of faith, it becomes a gray area, fictitious to some but very real to others. This being said, I do not expect everyone to take what is posted here as fact. It is not fact (necessarily). It is, however, faith, which for me holds equal if not greater value.
Welcome to my Hoff of Folklore and Legend! Here, it is my hope, you can read and experience the folklore and the legends together with a bit of the practices of Asatru, as it exists today, and glimpse a bit of what it was in the Dark Ages.
Second, since so little is actually known of the religious practice of Scandanavia during the Dark Ages the only way we can tell objectively about their beliefs and practices is what they left in the archaeological and literary records. Therefore, what we do know about are burial practices and the Lore which was written down centuries after the tales were first told by a Warder of the Lore or Lawspeaker. What we have, in the case of Norse Lore, is various translations of a few written records of the lore as it was in the 12th century. In the case of the Scandanavian Archaelogical record, we are relatively lucky that so much has survived. There are stellas from Scandanaiva and the British Isles as well as numerous graves which have been excavated, but there again, archeologists only have what Nature has not claimed through rot and what has been left or undiscovered by grave robbers.
What we have as far as the Runes are concerned we have Rune poems which act as a legend for the interpretation of these ideographs. These poems were the only way for the Warder of the Lore and Rune masters to convey the meaning behind the symbol and were not committed to writing until about the 11th or 12 Century.
