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Sheila and I spent as couple of days recently at Lake Tahoe, on the California-Nevada border. It's an inspiring setting, with deep blue water reflecting a deep blue sky - and it's a wonderful place to regain perspective after a rough week at work. Besides the natural beauty - there's Vikingsholm! Yes, even on our down-time Asatru is always on our minds.
Vikingsholm is a modern rendition of an early medieval (1200's or so) Scandinavian building, complete with carved dragons and authentic period architecture. If you come out for the AFA's Midsummer gathering, you ought to take a side trip to visit it. But the real reason I mention Vikingsholm is because of...the tour guide!
Nancy has been a volunteer at Vikingsholm for nine years. She's an older woman, charming, with blue eyes set in a lined face and framed by long reddish-blond hair set off with silver. We got in a discussion of history and, of course, of ancestors. Nancy described herself as Irish, German, and Dutch - in her words, a "mutt." I gently corrected her, saying I preferred to think of myself as an "indigenous European," or an "eclectic Northern European."
I've always resented it when people describe themselves as mutts. I know they don't mean anything negative by it, but it's disrespectful to the ancestors to suggest we are dogs. Besides, it is seldom true. Eighty-five to ninety percent of the European genome is still derived from the first modern humans to move into the continent. The Dutch, Germans, and Irish are very close kin...as much as some of us don't want to admit it! Sure, European cultures are all unique - unique, that is, as variants on the basic European pattern. It wasn't that many millennia ago that the Germans, Celts, and Slavs all split off from the Funnel Beaker Folk. All Eurofolk are kin.
We call ourselves Irish, or German, or Dutch, or European-Americans, and that is true. However, we are fundamentally indigenous Europeans. We may have migrated around the world, but our homeland is Europe. Its rugged environment shaped our bodies, our minds, and our souls; it is a part of us, and we are a part of it, forever. We are just as indigenous as are the Amazonian Indians, the Congolese, and Borneo tribesmen. Once we realize this, our outlook on many things cannot help but change. A sense of continuity is a powerful thing.
Mutts? No. Indigenous Europeans? Yes!
Only when we realize we are a river will we stop drowning in puddles!
(In other words...only when we comprehend that we are a people, transcending time and space, will we no longer be frustrated by the seemingly impossible obstacles in our path.)
Steve McNallen
Asatru Folk Assembly
http://runestone.org
