Tag Archive | Anglo-Saxon Paganism
October 1, 2025  

Modern English Speakers as Living Heirs of the Viking Spirit

The Hidden Continuity of Germanic Pagan Culture

Though most modern English speakers do not realize it, the very language they speak and the rhythms of their daily life are steeped in the ancient traditions of their Germanic ancestors. English is a Germanic language, descended from the tongues of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and other peoples of northern Europe who shared deep cultural, religious, and spiritual kinship with the Norse. When we look closely, we discover that much of our modern worldview, values, and practices echo the Pagan foundations of these forebears.

Every time an English speaker uses words, observes time, or celebrates seasonal customs, they are engaging in practices rooted in the ancient Pagan world of the Germanic peoples. In this sense, English speakers — and indeed speakers of other Germanic languages like German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic — are spiritual Vikings at the root level of their culture.

Language as Living Pagan Memory

The English language itself is a direct carrier of Pagan heritage. Many everyday words have sacred Germanic and Norse origins:

  • Days of the Week: Tuesday (Tiw/Tyr’s Day), Wednesday (Woden/Odin’s Day), Thursday (Thor’s Day), and Friday (Frigg/Freyja’s Day) are divine echoes in every calendar. Each time an English speaker marks these days, they are unconsciously honoring the gods.
  • Core Vocabulary: Words like house, kin, wife, husband, doom, wyrd (fate), and hearth come from the deep well of Germanic culture, carrying with them ancient values of family, destiny, and sacred space.
  • Poetic Structure: The alliterative rhythms of Old English poetry — found in Beowulf and Norse sagas alike — still shape the way English speakers find beauty in rhyme, rhythm, and song.

Language is not just communication but a vessel of worldview, and English continually whispers the voices of Odin, Thor, and the ancestors.

Timekeeping and the Pagan Calendar

English speakers still live in cycles marked by Pagan roots. Seasonal festivals like Yule (now Christmas), Eostre’s festival (now Easter), and Harvest celebrations are Christianized overlays on far older Germanic traditions. The very shape of the year — with its turning of solstices and equinoxes — is Pagan at its foundation.

Even the use of the twelve-month cycle with names like “March” (from Mars, but integrated into Germanic reckoning) reflects how ancient people harmonized cosmic order, agriculture, and ritual. In living by these rhythms, modern people continue a Pagan relationship with nature’s cycles.

Customs, Folkways, and Values

Many cultural practices in English-speaking lands have direct roots in Germanic Paganism:

  • Yuletide traditions like decorating trees, exchanging gifts, feasting, and lighting fires are straight from Norse and Germanic winter rites.
  • May Day dances and fertility customs echo older Vanir-inspired celebrations of spring and renewal.
  • Halloween (Samhain/Winternights blends) retains the Germanic veneration of the dead and the thinness of the veil between worlds.

Core values — hospitality, loyalty, courage, and honor — emphasized in the Hávamál and Old English laws, still form the moral foundation of English-speaking societies. The cultural love of storytelling, of heroic individualism, of journeys and discovery — these are Viking traits carried forward.

The Spirit of Exploration and Innovation

The Germanic and Norse peoples were wanderers, explorers, and seafarers. The Viking drive to cross oceans, to settle in new lands, and to trade widely resonates in the modern English-speaking world’s emphasis on adventure, exploration, and curiosity.

  • The British, American, and wider Anglophone traditions of sailing, pioneering, and technological innovation are cultural continuations of this restless, questing Viking spirit.
  • Even the modern internet, with its web of global connections, mirrors the trade and story-sharing networks of the ancient Norse.

Spiritual Vikings in the Modern Age

Though the gods’ names are now hidden beneath centuries of Christian veneer, and though most people no longer consciously sacrifice at the holy grove or pour mead at the blót, the underlying spiritual DNA remains. English speakers live in a culture whose roots are Germanic Paganism, and thus every person who speaks this language carries a spark of the old ways.

At a deep cultural level, English speakers today are still modern Vikings — unconsciously practicing the traditions of their ancestors. From the words on their tongue to the holidays they celebrate, from their values of freedom and courage to their love of exploration and storytelling, they embody the continuity of a spiritual lineage that began long before Christianity.

To recognize this truth is to awaken to one’s wyrd: that beneath the surface of modern life, the old Pagan soul still beats strong, waiting to be honored.

February 27, 2013  

Groups

At the time of writing this I am not currently, nor have I at any recent point been involved with any groups, but if at some point I do in any way, shape, or form get involved with any group (unless it is one I have founded and am the leader of) it does not in any sense imply I am following or at all loyal to whatever tradition the group is related to.

Often times when people become active within a group other members make the (often times false) assumption that this person has somehow (without that person actually pledging such) dedicated themselves to following the tradition of the group. But the truth is that often times the person is a spiritual-tourist. What this means, spiritual-tourist, is someone that is there to observe and learn things from some of the ideas of the group picking and choosing what aspects of the groups tradition they wish to adopt for their own personal spiritual tradition and also rejecting the parts that are not useful to them. This is not at all a bad thing to be a spiritual-tourist, and it is important that members of the group that have decided to adopt the tradition of the group not negatively judge spiritual-tourists. Another reason why someone may become active in a group who is not there for the purpose of following the groups tradition, are those who are looking for a social outlet. This also is not a bad thing. It is a normal healthy human need to have social outlets. There is many verses from northern lore that talk about this exact need as a normal valid thing, the need for people to have the company of other people. When members of a group whom are the ones there because they have devoted themselves to the tradition of the group start to negatively judge spiritual-tourists and social members this often times creates more of a cult like vibe within the group, which leads to such groups getting very negative reputations. This is something needs need to be careful about. It is important that members of any open public group are light and playful enough about things to accept that not all will wish to be as serious about things as those who have devoted themselves to following the groups spiritual path.

The point I am making in explaining all this here is that if at some point I do get involved with any Heathen or Pagan (or any religious or spiritual) groups or organizations of any sort I am doing so as either a spiritual tourist or as a social member and not as someone wishing to dedicate myself to the tradition of the group. I have my own personal Heathen tradition I follow which is my own and I shall not give that up to follow someone else’s tradition. This post is also related to this one.

February 27, 2013  

Traditions

No matter what we may consider our religion to be labeled, Heathenism, Asatru, Vanatru, Norse-Paganism, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, Northern Tradition Paganism, we still all follow various separate traditions within any one of those various religions, with tradition being a sub-path within the larger label of religion. I have my own tradition. It is mine. I may choose to share it with others who are interested in it, if there is any such, but that is not at all my purpose in having my own tradition. I have my own tradition simply because it is what works for me spiritually. I don’t expect what works for me will be what works for and/or is ideal for others. In some cases it may be, but that is not for me to decide, only each individual can decide if they wish to follow another persons tradition or even make their own. Just because I may take some elements from or gain some ideas from or be in some ways inspired by some other traditions does not in any way make what I follow that other person’s tradition. My tradition is only my own. There is not a tradition existing that does not take ideas from other traditions and remix them with their own ideas to make their own tradition. This borrowing and remixing is how all new traditions are made. People of other traditions need to keep in mind what may be good or bad for practioners to do in their own tradition’s system does not hold true in other people’s traditions. Each tradition has it’s own basis for how things work and why. I do what I do in my own tradition because that is what works for the basis of mine. I am not a heretic of your tradition, because I am not even a member of your tradition. Unless you are someone who follows my exact tradition than even you have no concept of why I do whatever I happen to do.