By Trevor Swoverland

In my last essay Tribe as the Foundation for the Reconstruction of Heathenry I wrote about how our experiences in the Nordskogen Stamme have really driven home for us the importance of rebuilding tribal relationships and identity in the effort to reconstruct pre-conversion Germanic worldview and lifeways. We have also written essays on this website in the past that have underscored our developing thinking on relationship to land and place as an element in this identity, and the importance of living as closely to the land as is possible in the process of ethnogenesis, reconstructing new expressions of pre-conversion Germanic culture wherever interested people live. In this piece, I hope to make the case that to really do reconstruction of not just pre-conversion culture, but of pre-colonized culture, we need to take seriously the imperative to redefine our relationship to land and place.

I mentioned the “Avatar Blues” phenomenon in that last essay and I described how mental health clinicians reported seeing significant numbers of people who felt that their lives had begun to seem incredibly hollow and meaningless to them after having watched the movie Avatar and then compared their day to day existence with the deeply bonded lives of the Na’vi as presented in the film. Clinicians also noted that people reporting this experience of depression after seeing the film described a feeling that they had been severed from relationship to the land and the natural world in a way that really brought into stark contrast the intimately woven relationship the Na’vi tribes had with the living world of their planet. Articles about this clinical phenomenon raised a special interest in me as in my work life I am a therapist and clinical director of a mental health practice. I have seen patients in my career who have expressed feelings of detachment like this when encountering others who live lives more closely rooted in the living world, and in my life I have experienced the same sense of disconnection.

While there are countless advantages to technological progress humanity has experienced in the last several centuries, the fact of the matter is our technological and economic growth has driven a wedge between us and the living world upon which we have always depended as a species. Wendell Berry described the transformation as observed in the raising of children without experiences close to the earth:

Our children no longer learn how to read the great book of Nature from their own direct experience or how to interact creatively with the seasonal transformations of the planet. They seldom learn where their water comes from or where it goes. We no longer coordinate our human celebration with the great liturgy of the heavens.

This experience is one with which pre-colonized Germanic tribes would have had no familiarity. People in pre-conversion Germanic societies were much more closely connected to the living earth in their daily lives than are most of us today, and this difference has clear implications for those attempting to understand and reconstruct the worldviews of those tribal peoples. Today most people are not at all involved in the production of their own food, the gathering of natural resources for crafting materials or fuel for heat and cooking, or even aware of where the water they drink comes from and how it is treated. Refrigeration and cellophane have replaced direct experience and so, for most people in the world today, the living land exists as a sort of abstract idea or a set of images on television or their phones. This sort of disconnected perspective is just as fatal to the effort to reconstruct pre-conversion worldview as is the absence of experience of clan and tribal relationships. To be able to understand and then live pre-conversion heathen worldview as renewed for the 21^st century, one has to reorient oneself with respect to the land.

In various conversations over the years, we have had some significant disagreements with other reconstructionists over this point. But we continue to believe it is one that remains valid based upon our own lived experience and interactions with other tribes. We all live in close proximity to one another. We all either farm our own land or work with other tribe members on theirs. We raise livestock together, grow a lot of food, and we hunt, fish and forage in the wild lands around us. We live daily in the sway of the rhythms of the land, and that changes how we see the ritual cycle of the year. When you are regularly digging, planting, tending, feeding, harvesting, foraging, and managing the effects of the weather on your food supply there is a strong sense of participation in the natural world, rather than observation of it. It isn’t something we look at from the outside, but it is an interconnected system of which we are a part.

Our experience also results in us seeing the land – both inside the fence and outside it – differently than a lot of reconstructionists do. Many see the land outside the fence as inherently other in a way that suggests a constant dualistic split between our cultivated land and the wild. Living where we do and farming land surrounded by millions of acres of boreal forest wilderness, we understand that that line is not so clear or stark as some might believe. While home is best and as I sit here in my dining room writing this and watching a blue jay eat ripe berries from a sacred rowan tree outside the picture window, I am cognizant of the relative safety and order here. But I also from the same window saw a fox hunting my chickens over the winter. From the same chair a couple of weeks ago I saw a large black bear boar investigating a bag of sunflower seeds I forgot to bring in from where it was left 10 meters from the house. The control of this space, even inside the fence, is a complete illusion. We are careful and do what we can, but there really is no perfect line of delineation between us and the wild.

Spending significant time in those wild places also demystifies them and when one has the skills to function there it becomes clear that it is not so easy to dismiss the wildness as other. We gather medicines there, hunt for food there, and forage. My oath brother and I harvested wild rice together on a lake over the last couple of weekends, and there were fresh wolf tracks all over the shoreline when we began our last morning, but this is not something either of us find concerning, frightening, or evidence that we don’t belong there. This is not to say we take risks or ignore when there are clear indications that something is wrong. When I was working with a local indigenous community I was talking with an elder about being in the forest at night, and about a particular area. He cautioned me by saying , “you want to be careful and don’t go over to that place at night. There are manitou (spirits) in that area you don’t want to mess with.” He didn’t say don’t go into the wilderness or that all the wild places are bad or dangerous, or that we are not intimately connected to them. He encouraged taking precautions and being smart, just as we have to do with things inside the fence here. In living closely to the earth both inside and outside the fence, we learn these lessons and recognize that it is really one big system and that any sort of control we can exert over it is temporary and mainly an illusion. And this lived reality influences how we understand our own tribe’s ethnogenesis and our focus in reconstructing our spirituality.

Many readers will understandably have questions about how they can begin to reconnect themselves to the land around them in their own process of decolonizing their practice of pre-conversion Germanic spirituality. In past conversations, some folks have felt that our perspective is one that limits how well people in urban areas can develop this aspect of the worldview. While we cannot give a lot of advice on this as we are not in an urban setting, there are certainly things that can be done. Grow things if you can, even if it is a small herb garden in containers in an apartment. Get out into undeveloped spaces like parks or hiking trails. Participate in a community garden or urban farming practice. Try to buy produce from a local farmers’ market if you can and get to know the people who are involved in growing the food you buy. If they are accepting volunteers, try to do what you can to get involved in the production of the food you eat. Connect on social media with groups that plan trips to wild places for hiking, environmental classes, or other outdoor activities. Learn about the local flora and fauna and about the rhythms of the land on which you live. You may need to be creative or committed to find opportunities to connect with the land if you are a city dweller, but many people do it and it makes a difference in how you understand your connection to the earth.

Decolonizing our efforts to rebuild pre-conversion spirituality and lifeways requires us to decolonize our relationship with the land on which we depend, both inside the fence and outside of it, the cultivated land we work and the wildness adjacent to these places. We need to recognize that the differentiation between home and the wild is not nearly as absolute as we think, and that living an urban life can cast an artificial contrast on the difference between the two. When we make this effort and really begin to live in and feel the connection we have to the bigger living system of which both home and the wild are a part, we are getting closer to the worldview that would’ve been held by the tribal peoples who lived in forests of Europe before colonization and conversion occurred.