Why…
…a new group?
The simplest answer to that is that I got a clear message which amounted to: ‘Stop pissing around and get on with it.’ When the gods give you a message like that — particularly gods swinging a hammer impatiently — it’s pretty clear it’s time to get off your bum and do it, the it being getting a new Hearth started in Glasgow.
The idea of starting one came up in a conversation at the Hearth, the confusingly named long-running Pagan moot in Glasgow. There were a handful of Heathens who came along from time to time, one of them being an English friend with whom I got talking at the moot some time last year. We were bemoaning the lack of a Heathen Hearth in Glasgow and Central Scotland generally. As the conversation continued, we realised that if we wanted one, we were going to have to start it.
We put out some feelers and it was obvious that it was something a few people at least would like. The small numbers didn’t discourage me: the example of Caer Clud, the Glasgow Druid group, was there to show that a group which had only two people at its first meeting could grow over a few years to have regularly more than twenty people at its meetings.
It was obvious, though, that the organisation would have to be done by me as my friend had more than enough to do in completing her studies and would be returning to England once she had. I was a little reluctant to take on the starting of a new group since I already seemed to be doing quite a lot: the decision of the Hearth to move from the City Centre to the South Side left a vacuum, so along with the local PF reps I got heavily involved in the setting up and running of a new moot, open to all and newbie-friendly, in the Merchant City; I run the Scottish PF website; and I’m also involved in Caer Clud. Running a new group seemed to me something I could do without.
And yet, I wanted a Hearth, and there was some need for a Hearth, and it was pretty bloody obvious if I didn’t do it, no one would. So I dragged my feet for a while until I got the gentle kick in the arse I mentioned earlier.
…Yggdrasil?
At what I tend to think of as ‘Meeting 0’ — the meeting to discuss starting the group — the question arose of what to call the new group. I would, all things being equal, have been happy with ‘the Glasgow Hearth’, but that did risk confusion with the established Pagan moot in the city. It was Peter who suggested the name ‘Yggdrasil’, and we all liked it immediately.
Yggdrasil is excellent as a name for our group because the World Tree links all the worlds, and there is no suggestion of devotion to only one god as might be implied by a name like ‘Odinist Hearth’ or ‘Thor’s Hearth’; it seems a name which cannot be bettered.
…the Norse gods?
I feel like saying ‘Why not?’, but the question has been asked of me in all sincerity, so I will try to answer it. The first thing I suppose I should explain is why I personally tend to use the term ‘Norse gods’ when I am thinking about this path, or talking about it with friends. I generally find if I am talking to people I do not know well, especially people whose knowledge of the non-monotheistic religions is poor, that when I use the term ‘Heathenry’, which is much preferable, I have to explain it and then, too, I fall back on ‘Norse’ as a descriptor they will understand.
It is not that I am unaware that these gods were revered not just by the Norse but by the Anglo-Saxons and other Teutonic peoples, it is simply that given my heritage ‘Norse’ is the term with resonance for me and most of the people I know. The people who brought knowledge of these gods to my homeland were, broadly speaking, Norse, not Anglo-Saxon. It makes sense for English people to relate to the gods as ‘Anglo-Saxon’, but the Heathen part of my ancestry (my forebears came from Ayrshire) is Norse. I don’t at all mean to imply that Norse is a suitable general term for the Heathen path(s) (any more than ‘Ásatrú’, ‘Odinism’, ‘Germanic’ or some other possibilities might be), it is simply one which means something to me.
So now I have to answer the question: why do I follow the Norse gods (or some of them at least)?
Well, the short answer wouldn’t be all that different from why I started Yggdrasil. They came and got me, pure and simple.
You want more? Oh, all right, then.
Of the various mythical tales I was exposed to as a kid, the only ones which seemed to resonate with me were the tales of the Norse gods I read in a paperback aimed at schoolchildren. Other myth cycles, especially the Christian mythos, were rooted in other lands, hot, dry desert lands far away or the hot, lush lands on the shore of the Mediterranean, but when reading even the simplified accounts in that paperback of the Norse myths I felt these were set in a world I understood: I could smell the wet rocks and the moss, the wind-blown grass and the melting snow, hear the wind in the trees; these were the stories of people of the cold North.
Of course, it was a long time before I learned that there was anyone out there worshipping any of the old gods let alone the Norse ones. When I eventually came across modern Pagans I knew that this approach to spirituality was more like what I was looking for than anything the traditional faiths had to offer. Wicca was the first Pagan path I encountered, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. I found some other Pagans who were not Wiccan and who followed more-or-less Celtic paths, which was more like it — my ancestry and heritage is partly Celtic, after all; the friendships and work I did then eventually led me to Caer Clud.
As I looked into Celtic spirituality and encountered one or two of the Celtic deities I gradually became aware of what I can only describe as a pull to the North. It seemed more and more natural for my thoughts to turn to the Norse gods rather than the Celtic (with one exception, a local deity), and not only during ritual. For quite I while I treated this as, in a way, honouring the gods of my ancestors, which was certainly true as far as it went; the trouble was, it didn’t really go far enough. I realised that I was becoming an out-and-out Heathen, which gave me pause; it wasn’t the way I had imagined my spiritual development heading.
That was when, for the first time, I got the impatient word from Thor: ‘Stop hanging about, come on.’
If that sounds disconcerting, it’s nothing like so unsettling as the presence of Odin, who seems to be around as I write this.…
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