Beofeld, the author of Wind in the Worldtree, has published A Brief History of Modern Heathenry.
Modern Heathenry has no single origin story. It has no single starting point. It is quite unlike the most major world religions of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism because those religions began from revelations revealed to single individuals and from their individual work only to diversify later on. You can’t have Christianity without Jesus, it is as simple as that. But you also can’t have Christianity as it exists today without Saul (later turned Paul) of Tarsus. These individuals were the root of the entirety of all the now diverse branches of Christianity. You further can’t have Islam without Muhammad. While there are Sunnis and Shia and Sufis now, they all still branched out from Muhammad. Buddhism too, if you had no Siddhartha Gautama you would have no Buddhism. Heathenry, on the other hand, took a very different route both historically and modernly.
Byron Pendason, the author of Mine Wyrtruman, has posted A History of Fyrnsidu to act as a companion blog post to Beofeld’s.
Wes hāl! Last month, I celebrated five years in Fyrnsidu, and I thought a good way to commemorate that would be to write up a brief history of Fyrnsidu and it’s predecessors. On my home page, I define Fyrnsidu as “a modern religion based upon the religion of the pre-Christian Germanic tribes that settled in Britain in the fifth century of the common era.” Today, we usually define it as Anglo-Saxon Heathenry, but it was originally meant as an alternative to Theodism. More on them in a bit though, first I want to explore the influences leading up to it.
If you’re interested in the history of Heathenry and/or Fyrnsidu, check out these blog posts.
Fyrnsidu 