nsholmberg11

What do you feel is the primary link between Odinism and ancient Nordic religious beliefs? On its face value they seem very different to me, and that's it's more of a "wild interpretation" of Viking Paganism from American men who are white supremacists. Almost like they're bored with neo-Nazism, occultism and satanism and this whole Viking thing sounds pretty cool. But it's extremely fascinating to compare an Islamic terrorist with an Odinist terrorist because they both interpret a religion in a way that it clearly wasn't meant to be interpreted. Which ends up being dangerous(not that Islam or Paganism are inherently dangerous because I don't feel they are). Hope this makes sense and thanks for doing this!

However, Brevik specifically says "I believe in the only God, Odin" which is a direct contradiction to ancient Nordic religion which was polytheistic. On the same note, these self professed Odinists have seemingly no ties to Scandinavia as they're from America and express their belief in monotheism. Your thoughts?

Interesting because in your story these North American Odinists are saying as much. That they believe in one God. How can they zero in on a "primary" God but believe in one God? I don't quite understand

Interesting, thanks for clarifying for me. Very interesting investigative work on this and glad you did a AMA session! Good luck with all your future work!

Fantastic question and I just wanted to follow up too. It almost seems an ironic question given today's state of affairs, the inclusivity of Nordic people and their willingness to help refugee's for example. Ancient Nordic people, although part of the Medieval era, which was a rough time to say the least, learned from other cultures, served in foreign lands and because they were kings of the sea they experienced/lived with more of a variety of races than arguably any other in Medieval history. There is very little evidence of Viking history to begin with, but there is no evidence of racism indeed quite the opposite. Viking people were constantly being intertwined in modern day Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Greece, France, the entire UK through marriages and co-existing in settlements in said lands.