The Evolution of Ásatrú: What I’ve Seen and Experienced Thus Far

As a new middle-aged guy, I’m experiencing things that I have always heard about happening to you when you reach the half-century mark and beyond, and it has not disappointed me in the least. The biggest thing, other than deepening the sense of your own mortality, is the newfound ability to look back. Until this point in a person’s life you’re very busy living life and don’t spend a lot of time reflecting. I’m about to be 51 and for the last 25 years of my life, I have been an Ásatrúar. I’d like to give you, dear reader, a brief look back on what that has been like from my perspective, as well as show how far we’ve come in a quarter century.

Twenty five years ago, there were no Hofs. There were sheds or pole barns that people claimed were Hofs, but they were not proper temples to the gods, nor was a single one dedicated to them. The idea of having something comparable to the churches we saw everyday was nothing more than a pipe dream, something to be mused aloud after the mead had gone to one’s head. Ásatrú in my part of the world was small and very fragmented. It was like a jigsaw puzzle that had a lot of pieces missing when you opened the box.

One of the most important missing pieces, from a Folk perspective, was women. Sure, there were girlfriends and sometimes wives who attended moots, but they 9 times out of 10 fell into two categories: uninterested hang around or content to just cook/cater for the weekend. Actual participation from womenfolk was rare. Women as priestesses? Again, you’d have a better chance of winning the lottery than attending a Blót performed by an actual Gyðja.

A couple of other vitally important pieces that were missing in the early 2000s were piety and structure. I don’t want to give the impression that no one was serious or pious, but rather convey that neither was held in high regard. Something that I’ve spoken of often when talking about this time period of our history is that there was a nasty phenomena of cannibalizing leadership. What I mean by that term is that anyone who grew tired of the rudderless direction of the community and the entire religion at that point and tried to take the helm was almost immediately taken down. There were varying degrees of success from certain folks, but by and large no one could agree with anyone taking the reins. It was a maddening thing to witness. Kindreds and larger efforts rose and fell, either from in-fighting or from the inevitable collapse of a cult of personality. I had painful personal experience of the latter, and it greatly affected my personal practice of our faith for years. On the matter of piety, there were extremes to be seen. Some folks stuck around because they didn’t want to be Christian and were a part of things for mainly social reasons, and if someone displayed what was considered an abnormal amount of fervor and reverence for the Æsir, they were just trying to be “more Ásatrú than thou”.

Another aspect of Ásatrú life back then was a giant sense of keeping things small and local. Before joining the AFA, the largest organization that I was personally involved in was restricted to the State of Georgia. The AFA already existed, of course, as did other smaller national efforts like the Asatru Alliance and the Ring of Troth, but in my neck of the woods, the AFA was a West Coast/California thing, and the AA and Troth were viewed in the same light. I can distinctly remember a widely held sentiment at the time that these “national orgs” weren’t the kind of Ásatrú that any of us trusted or wanted to be a part of; we had our little camping moots and small kindreds/groups, and that was good enough for us.

And so life went on, no meaningful progress being made, no evolution of the faith taking place that I could see, and myself and others like me considered ourselves to be doing the best we could with what we assumed was all we had. As the years marched on, I was a part of some larger gatherings, such as the MeadHall Moot where I famously met Founder McNallen and Gyðja Sheila, and steadily grew in my knowledge of the lore and our faith. That was until 2012…

I firmly believe that the Gods and Ancestors see us and bless us by rewarding our piety and steadfastness by putting the right people together at the right times. I finally decided in 2012 to see what the AFA was all about and joined, attending my first moot in April of that year. At that point, we still didn’t have any Hofs, but I could immediately tell this was a different animal than I was used to and in a good way. First off, there were men and women from all over the country there, with some taking flights from the other side of the continent to be present. That alone blew my mind. My previous experience was people not wanting to travel out of their state, let alone their region. I saw men and women working together to build and maintain something greater than I had ever known, with a clear purpose and goals. To say that it was refreshing would be the understatement of the century. I was hooked.

In the years that have followed, I have witnessed and helped with the growth of the church. I have been a Folkbuilder and now a Goði. I have seen one Hof become two, then three, and now five. I have seen kindreds formed that have existed now for decades, with no signs of stopping anytime soon. Our Folk are now more connected than we ever have been. Our sense of piety has improved and is becoming more commonplace among the Folk. So, too, has our knowledge and understanding of the lore and how we should use it to inform and improve our lives. I have seen the creation and evolution of an actual priesthood, dedicated to the Æsir, imbued with a purpose and a mission to lead our Folk into the next Golden Age. We have applied structure and consistency to our faith and done our best to eliminate the rootless, empty feeling our Folk have suffered from for far too long. There have been many bumps and bruises along the way thus far, but they have been nothing that our noble spirit and drive have not overcome.

I have been fortunate and blessed to have found the Gods and the true religion of my Folk, and over the last twenty-five years, I have seen and experienced a lot. As I’ve laid out in this writing, the evolution of Ásatrú that I have witnessed thus far is both amazing and encouraging for the future of our church and our faith. I look forward to the next twenty-five years!

Hail the Gods! Hail the Folk! Hail the AFA!

Goði Bodi Mayo

bmayo@runestone.org

~ From The Runestone, April 2026 ~