Get your own Free Home Page
Asatru (pron. AY-sah-true) means 'true to the Aesir'. The Aesir are a group of Norse Gods,
which includes Odin (Woden, Wotan), Thor, Freya, Frigga and others. The Asatru religion was
practiced by the ancient Germanic tribes, and later by the Vikings.
985/986 A.D. Bjarni Herjolfsson accidentally discovers North America, first known arrival of
practitioners of Asatru religion to North America
1000 A. D. Because of economic pressures from the Christian world, the people of Iceland, in
the Thing (Icelandic Parliament) vote to convert from their traditional Asatru to Christianity.
1874 A.D. The King of Denmark grants the people of Iceland freedom of religion.
1875 A.D. The cathedral of Reykjavik (capital of Iceland) is the site of an Asatru religious
service, the first public Asatru religious service since 1000 A.D.
1907 A. D. German painter and writer Ludwig Fahrenkrog founds the Germanic
Glaubens-Gemeinschaft, a German Asatru group.
1933-1945 A.D. In the Nazi era, the Germans who practice Asatru face persecution. Their
groups are forbidden to meet, some leaders are jailed, Ludwig Fahrenkrog is not permitted to
write or exhibit his art because of his refusal to end his writings with the words 'Heil Hitler', and
one member of Fahrenkrog's Asatru group, Ernst Wachler, a man of Jewish ancestry, ends in a
concentration camp.
1970s Individuals in Iceland, England, and the United States, quite independently from one
another, form Asatru groups.
1989 Llewellyn Press publishes A Book of Troth by Edred Thorsson, the first book on the Asatru
religion published by a major American book publisher.
1996 The Asatru religion is mentioned in a Time magazine article about religion in cyberspace.
1997 In a local religious freedom controversy, a township board in Menominee county,
Michigan, which had previously voted to put the Ten Commandments on display, voted to grant
the Nine Noble Virtues of Asatru an equal place on the wall of their township hall.
This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page