Odinism and Else Christensen

If we take Alexander Rud Mills as the progenitor of modern Odinism, let's look at the "Folk Mother" Else Christensen and her legacy. 

In the mid-1960s, Else Christensen discovered Rudd Mills' pamphlet "The Call of our Ancient Nordic Religion" (Gardell, Gods of the Blood, 167). I briefly discussed the pamphlet here. 

Rud Mills seeems to have been a source of inspiration for Christensen that focused her work through this Norse lens. She came to see the pre-Christian European past as the source of values and ideas that would foster white/Aryan renewal. 

Or more precisely - attaching her political/social critique to Odinism had a legitimizing effect on her work for her audience -- imprisoned white men and far right activists. But incidently, it also tapped into the burgeoning Pagan movement although this wasn't her initial target audience. 

She did more than retrieve Rudd Mills from obscurity. She was influential in bringing together a new socio-political-religious confluence of ideas that created American Odinism (Calico, Being Viking, 141). In addition to tapping into Mill's writings and his dream of an Anglo-Saxon Church of Odin, she was in dialogue with Francis Yockey's Imperium and the Traditionalist and European New Right movement that included Julius Evola and Oswald Spengler. She also brought Odinism in touch with the radical right politics of the United States including the American Nazi Party and its leader George Lincoln Rockwell. These various tributaries shaped Odinism as a new white racial politics that saw the West threatened with cultural and spiritual degradation and sought to revive the Western, European, "white" soul through a spiritual awakening to its pre-Christian roots. 

Odinism from its very start presented itself as a superior alternative to Christianity. This stance goes back to Rudd Mills. While the racial opponent was the Jews, the ideological opponent of Odinism has always been Christianity--Christianity is the foreign (Middle Eastern) ideology that seduced white people, Europeans, into a racial and spiritual confusion that has resulted in the decline of the West and the dilution of Ayran superiority. This position comes through to the contemporary period, even in the Odinist critique of the Black Lives Matter movement. (See my paper "Heathenry and White Nationalism" on Academia.edu.)  As Gardell puts it, Odinism was "a vehicle for racial rejuvenation" (Gods of the Blood, 171). A significant part of Odinism has always been the fight or "struggle" they might say for Aryan rights, Aryan religion, Aryan self-determination, etc. Odinism stands up for the white race and they would claim everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Hitler as heroes in that racist cause (Gods of the Blood, 172) 

Blot at Else Christensen's grave,
2021 AFA Day of Remembrance

The early American Asatru movement in the 1970s was substantially influenced by Else Christensen. Many of the early founders of Norse Pagan groups had personal relationships with her.  If a group recognizes Else Christensen as the Folk Mother - they are working with this tributary we could call Odinism. This includes Stephen McNallen and the AFA; the Asatru Alliance led by Michael J Murray aka Valgard Murray; Heimgest and the Odinic Rite under his leadership; Max Hyatt and Wodan's Kindred and Wodanesdag Press. 

Christensen's influence was embedded in the ideology of Odinism through her personal relationships with these early leaders, her voluminous personal correspondence, and her newletter The Odinist. According to the Heathen History podcast, The Odinist was published in 151 issues from 1971 - 1992 and was focused mainly on right-wing racist political and social analysis and commentary on current events. "Very little content that you could actually call religious." It seems that Christensen was simply not very religious and was much more interested in social and political questions of "Aryan spiritual liberation." However, her writings comprise a large body of ideas that circulated through the early years of Norse Paganism. In addition, she began her Odinist Fellowship as a prison ministry by establishing study groups in three Florida prisons. Through her correspondence, visits, and newletters, Odinism began spreading within the US prison system--a religion or at least a philosophy of white empowerment inspired by an imagined Norse-inspired past. 

It may be important to point out that Odinists are not Pagan Reconstructionists. Reconstructionists try to recover the practices and worldviews of ancient Pagan peoples in order to provide a type of authenticity and legitimacy to contemporary Pagan religions. Reconstructionists study the ancient primary texts, often using the original languages, and make use of current academic research and archaeological discoveries to better understand what the elder or arch-Pagans thought and did. 

This is definitely not what Odinists are doing. Odinists are inspired by a particular imagined Pagan past, often an era of Viking battle glory. We should note that the sources used by Odinists are often from the Völkisch movement--the racial German nationalist movement from the turn of the 20th century that also invoked a romanticized version of the Germanic & Norse pagan past to legitimize Germanic military expansion and the genocidal repression of non-Germanic people.

As the Heathen History podcast points out, her ideas and influence were quite broad - while all of it came from the racist perspective of white supremacy, she critiqued globalism, believed in the importance of smaller "tribal" human communities and economies, was concerned with environmentalism, and valued individual freedom and self-expression. Odinism - as developed by Else Christensen looks like a philosophy, a social critique, and a socio-political agenda.

Several scholars, including myself and Being Viking, are quoted in this wikipedia article on Else Christensen.