In 2018, the first Norse pagan temple built in Iceland since 900 years is about to open. It is located on a hill in the capital of Reykjavik, Iceland' s capital city.
Asatru is Iceland's fastest growing Religion, several thousand inhabitants of the small Iceland follow the old Norse customs.
Looks like Odin and the Aser are making a comeback.
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Is Asatru as cozzy as it looks?
>larping religion
>modern architecture
???
Not sure if they are larping, Iceland was the least Christianized region of Europe, they always believed in trolls and elves and stuff and some norse practices did endure pretty long.
Also, boat shaped temple with view on the Atlantic Ocean. Pretty nice!
>larping
Well yea
it's a religion
touche, Icelanders running around as Christians is just the same.
>mythical creatures = paganism
FUGG DA HOLE WORLD IS ROMAN because of da dragon
Europe would be more interesting if their adopted their traditional pantheon
Greek*
Trolls and Giants and Elfs belong the the classic Norse pantheon and are mentioned in the Edda.
Wouldn't it be nice to have some small Pagan temples all over Europe?
You can say that for any continent really.
I'm not entirely convinced this isn't larping.
We barely know anything about ancient Pagan practices, so aren't they just recreating it from scratch? That's not really the same religion then is it? Its like trying to recreate Christianity without the bible.
any religion founded in the postmodern era would be cozy because they're not blood-thirsty like aztec/incan pantheons, incredibly demanding and capricious like the greek/roman pantheons, not extremely intolerant like post Roman Empire collapse christianity, and isn't just a philosophy like confucianism/taoism/buddhism
Thank Odin the Norse pantheon is totally pacifistic.
But it's not like paganism ever had an official set dogma though.
We have three, that I know of, in California, and about a dozen in Massachusetts, at least one in Pennsylvania, and probably a bunch of others scattered across the nation I've just not heard of, and you're telling me Iceland is getting it's first one just now?
If you don't mind killing horses.
You know those aren't even then only traditional religions at all?
Christianity is supposed to be universal, though.
If everybody goes back to their religion they haven't had for 100-2000 years, who's right?
>supposed
A nature based religion just fits Iceland more than some middle eastern sin&salvation cult.
Personally I prefer a religion that tries to keep people out.
You do realize how many churches are set up in office buildings and crap that looks like this.
Oddly, building a genuine nordic lodge would cost a lot more, and not last nearly so long.
I'm okay with this.
I feel like in the modern world real belief in a god in the traditional sense is silly, but a pantheistic approach where you don't view God as a sentient being, but instead worship and thank the world as a sort of philosophy, while keeping your traditional/cultural religion, unless you want to practice another kind.
Religion has always been used to explain how things work when we didn't know, but now we do know, and instead of treating religion as something we grow distant of, we should treat it as culturally useful, to show respect for the world and the universe, interpreting it in whichever way the culture wishes to. That way, no religion can be wrong, it's just cultural differences, and maybe theists and atheists can get along and agree on a compromise.
No if you think autstic sperging is bad start hanging around heathen forums. Heathenry is the encompassing term for Germanic paganism. Asatru is Icelandic traditions and draws from Norse and Scandinavian traditions. Theodism draws from Anglo Saxon reconstruction. Odinism is white supremacy wrapped up in non reconstruction. They all squabble about everything constantly. On top of that heathens fall into camps open to all races or whites only so it gets even more complicated because you can have two "theods" who nominally practice the same but absolutely hate each other.
see: "founded in the postmodern era"
do you think that protestantism is the same as catholicism too?
>do you think that protestantism is the same as catholicism too
Of course not. One wears hats.
>aztec/incan pantheons
Oddly, they are neo-aztec groups, and yes, due to the modern era, quite pacifistic.
Though both they and the Asatru tend to sacrifice animals. Not sure if that's legal in Iceland - is here in the US, but there's acquisition and sanitation rules ya gotta follow. Satanists kidnapping cats is a no-no.
it ought to be universal but it isn't.
Yeah, but those are not just whitepride fatties larping, those guys are true born viking descendants and regular folks, thy at least have a fair claim to the religion.
Also second biggest religion in the country (ok, minination) which is usually Islam in Europe. If they keep growing like that they will be majority Norse by mid century.
>Also second biggest religion in the country (ok, minination) which is usually Islam in Europe. If they keep growing like that they will be majority Norse by mid century.
I tend to look at all religions as LARPers, but that's Interesting.
Blaming Christianity for the decline of the West, which coincides with the decline of Christianity in the West, are we? While Atheism has been on the rise for the last few decades at least?
no, but then I don't think of protestantism as peaceful either.
If by cozy you mean "dishonest and fueled by nostalgia of a better past", you would be right.
Ha. That was actually original. You can't really label Protestants as any one thing except NOT Catholic Christians though.
how?
Bjorkism Icelandic Cult, when?
Oddly, we've come full circle, at least in the US, where the Catholics have become the voice of reason, and the Protestant offshoots have become the angry bigoted anti-rational thought fundamentalist fanatics.
...Albeit, not all of them.
Problem is there's nothing stopping any religion or ideology from going full retard.
I guess a pantheon with many deities and magical beings makes more sense in a setting like Iceland. If you combine that with rituals and folkloric tradition you got a meme that is likely stronger than Christianity in the 21st century.
There is not a single living person who genuinely believes in Norse paganism.
I ritually masturbate on a Post album ever new moon, then I drink Brennivin and burn myself with cigarettes.
Darwin destroyed protestantism and it's never had the chance to recover, only self reinforce in disregulation and crosstalk with other disregulated elements of society.
He kicked my ass? Must've missed the memo.
Yeah, thats why they are building a new temple...
>Darwin destroyed protestantism
Darwin didn't do anything but publish a book about biology. If that crashes your religion with no survivors then it likely wasn't that great anyway.
???
You've never left your tiny rural town, have you?
You'd be amazed at the shit people genuinely believe.
>user basementdweller judges who is genuine and how is not.
Well, you never know, currently Christianity feels not up to date, and the good thing with a new religion is you can set some of the morals standards to "modern"
Sounds like a real religion to me.
this
>incan pantheon
>blood thirsty
Are you stupid? They did the same as germanic lake gods. Except they had a commom main god Sun.
trolls are real tho
...
So if I start getting old as an Astaru if I go out and attack a bear with an axe and get mauled to death would I go to valhalla?
Why the animal cruelty? Can't you just charge the local street gang hangout naked and armed with a sword like normal people?
Isnt making it up from scratch how every other religion (Christianity included) was created?
All religion is larping. You think Christianity came out of the box with all the weird, retarded, idiotic, vile dogmas it currently has? No, those were created by larping early christians. Same thing will happen to this new idiotic religion, if it lasts long enough it will develop all the dogmas and rituals and other moronic foolishness typical of """real""" religions.
That's because you haven't read him, fucktard. Its easy to pretend you haven't been BTFO if you refuse to read the book that BTFO of you.
I think 'dying in battle' needs to consist of a battle against men, not just some animal somewhere.
This is an interesting question though: how does Asatru view the afterlife? Generally, the Norse view was distinct from morality: if you died and were buried well, you'd get to go to Helheim and just sleep in the death goddess' cozy mead hall for eternity. If you had a really shitty death (like being mauled and eaten by a bear) or weren't buried properly I think you got lost in Helheim outside the hall, and had to relive your death until you somehow found peace.
Alternatively, if you died in battle it was a 50/50 shot of going to Valhalla and feasting and training with the Honored Dead to join the battle at Ragnarok, or going to Folkvangr and doing the same. Folkvang was run by the goddess Freyja and IIRC women could get into it by dying honorably or with dignity, so it probably had a much better guy/girl ratio.
I think I'd rather wind up in Folkvangr.
Is this a reinassance in Norse Paganism, or have enough Pagan traditions and mindsets been extant in Icelandic culture for this to be a continuation of Norse Paganism simply pulled out of obscurity?
>women could get into it by dying honorably or with dignity
They also go there if they die in childbirth, so its probably more female than male.
Fuckin' score, then. So the trick is to die in battle, but not well enough that you wind up in Valhalla so you can go to Folkvangr instead.
I would like to join a group like this but I don't think I can subscribe to the idea that any single people throughout history had the right idea of what the divine actually is. I've started thinking that maybe there are some fundamental supernatural forces in the world and people have just given them different names and attributes across cultures. Even as a science-minded person I think there is something mystical about this earth and our existence, and I'd like to share that with people. Nature worship is the way to go but I just don't think it's useful to replace "HAIL JESUS" with "HAIL ODIN"
I can't be the only one who feels this way
As a dirty pole the witcher games have made me read up on, appreciate our rich culture and old myths, a shame so much has been lost to time
...
Intradesting, a poet or singer is usually taken für the job as gode in Iceland.
It's been a while since I read on the subject, but being a bard was a pretty important job, because tradition was really written down and only kept through retelling.
grapevine.is
a large percentage of Icelanders still believe in Elves and Trolls, or at the very least that they once existed
Lol I don't know guys, I saw a doc about Icelandic bodybuilders, those sons of bitches can get gigantic. Things are gonna get spicy if they keep pumping out those literal giants and also go back to their old Nordic ways, I just want to visit Iceland one day and gawk at the Ice Giants one day.
>Asatru is Iceland's fastest growing Religion
but they don't actually believe in it so it's worthless.
like if a million years from now, catholicism had been dead for 500 thousand years and someone whips out an old textbook and says "look at this 'catholicism' thing... i'm going to be catholic", we'd laugh at him because it has nothing to do with his culture. for better or for worse your religion and culture are intertwined.
This is a funny debate. Is it real; is it the same as the *old* Norse paganism?
I'd say it isn't the same, it's inspired by it, obviously. But that doesn't necessarily preclude it from being a real set of beliefs, maybe. Compare it to modern Hebrew, if it's used as a real, everyday language, it's a real language.
looks like it was designed by a jew
laughingZoroastrians.jpg
Who are you to say what people do and do not believe in?
Icelanders are notoriously superstitious, believing in elves and trolls and such. Numerous public works have been delayed or rerouted so as not to disturb supposed communities of these elves. Rather than a Christian tradition, beliefs of such beings (at least in this instance) have their roots in Pagan tradition.
Besides, it's not as if Iceland flipped a switch in the eleventh century and all pagan traditions/thought were magically done away with. The Christianization wasn't instant, and some might argue it wasn't complete either.
Is this is a total rebirth of a religion that hasn't been extant for a thousand years? No. That doesn't mean it's being completely made up with zero background in contemporary tradition or folklore.
I'd say that as long as people believe in it, it's a religion. Neopaganism always seemed odd to me, because it was like taking a step back, so to speak- like, you used to believe in Santa Claus, then you didn't, and now you're going back to believing in Santa Claus again.
But then I realized that people change faiths all the time, and it's not like any one religion is empirically correct or more 'accurate' to reality than the other, and religion usually plays a much bigger role in people's lives than just explaining life and what comes after it. So, more power to them. Pantheism isn't any less valid than monotheism, so who fucking cares?
*Polytheism, I meant, not pantheism. Sorry.
>Who are you to say what people do and do not believe in?
I am
Zoroastrianism was the theological satanism of the Classical world.
>believing in elves and trolls and such
no they don't.
we're not talking about norwegians. this isn't a nation of retards
It's like me saying i believe in the jersey devil.
it's all fun and sometimes gets the skin crawling.
but it just ain't so.
Try wicca, or some other pan-pagan amalgamation.
Some people do believe in the jersey devil, or alien abductions, or the loch ness monster. People believe in all kinds of stupid, crazy shit, like the earth being six thousand years old, like the entire story of noah's ark, etc etc.
It's not impossible to believe in something that has little to no evidence for it, or even something that's counter to existing evidence and understanding. Other people and religions do it all the damned time. What's the difference between an old man saving two of every animal on a gigantic boat, bigfoot, or elves living in lava fields?
>wicca
>fat feminist dualists who think they're witches
no thanks
>I don't think I can subscribe to the idea that any single people throughout history had the right idea of what the divine actually is.
I think they've all been right - for themselves at least.
Personally, at risk of tipping a trilby, I think we are the divine - if a work in progress. Life gives creation meaning, not the other way around.
No it requires a bit more than just dying in combat
Most people seem to think you'll go to some kinda ancestral hall or it's be a bit like Elysium. If you're god sworn your go to their hall presumably.
On dying in combat there is some controversy. The valkyrie aren't innumerable and aren't at every battle same with freyja so you have to hope they're there when you die and you actually need to die in battle. Getting dlstabbed and dying a week later doesn t count. There's also a matter that there seemed to be some conception of the battle being of import and the person dying showing great, skill and bravery. So just dying in combat ain't enough.
see
Fuck off fedora tipper no one cares about your enlightenment
Yeah see this is what I don't get. Why not just repurpose buildings like this for your faith? A lot of really old church designs were based off of polytheist temples anyway. Especially with the "staff" churches in the nordic countries this would seem to be the way to go here.
????
>but they don't actually believe in it
Yeah, because user cathocuck says so...
>When the Asatru first conducted a ceremony at the Thingvellir, Icelands historical national assembly ground, Christian groups protested against them
looks like someone is afraid from a bit of competition is the soul market..
frankly it sounds like a good political/cultural strategy
By building it in a modern style, it demonstrates that they're living in the modern age, it is a clear message that they aren't simply living an outdated and obsolete faith, but instead one suitable for contemporary times.
Not everybody is into pseudo-historic Kitsch as much as you are.
Why would anyone willingly become an enemy of God? pagan religions are idolatry
Oh common, even muslims use a black cube idol stone. By the way, christians wear an idol of jewish god Jesus on neck, while ancient asatruasts don't wear idols on necks mostly.
What god? Zeus? Vishnu? Please be specific, there is so many of them.
Having a golden dead jew on your neck means good fortune for business.
If your business is making Jews dead one would assume.
Christians are kinda moany whiny bitches. Fuckin'ell isn't this the exact way Christianity spread, by convincing the locals to let them erect a church?