Untitled - Awaken Video

Chapter 3. Midgard 64
Europeans led a life which was closely bound to Earth and her moods. Up to the
Viking Age, the ancient Scandinavians depended almost entirely upon the Earth as
a source of income. According to archeological evidence, the Swedes who occupied
Sweden early on, from about 5000 - 3000 BCE, were hunters and gatherers, from
3000 BCE to 0 CE, herded small livestock or smale, and from 0 CE to the last century,
were engaged in family farming operations. Additionally, they hunted game
in the wilderness, fished the lakes, streams, and fjords (in Norway), and foraged the
forests for wild foods. In fact, until the industrial revolution most families entire
income came from farming, fishing or mining, and it was this close tie to the land
that shaped much of Germanic culture as it is known today.
In the 20th century, vestiges of our agrarian way of life often go unnoticed. For
example, the modern American “school year” was originally set up so that young
people would go to school when they were least needed around the farm. The
payment of income tax comes when the last of livestock are sold off (most ranches
will not start selling this year’s calves until June). For the most part, these “customs”
left over from farming days long gone are no longer meaningful since income for
almost 90% of American families comes from business and industry rather from
laboring in nature. Lacking any firm ties to the cycles of nature or to the earth, it
is no wonder that the “sterile-rock” group got such a strong foothold in this country
between 1920 and 1970.
Up and into the last century, all aspects of folk life from birth to death, including
art, music, and spirituality, were shaped by the forces of nature and the changing
of seasons. Secular festivals related primarily to planting and harvesting or animal
husbandry. The modern Christian holidays of Christmas and Easter were originally
Heathen holidays. Christmas was called Yule or Jól which according to Snorri
in the Heimskringla was a holiday to celebrate the fertility of the fields for the
coming year but it also came during a period of leisure time at the tail end of the
butchering season and was closely tied to the disappearance and reappearance of
the sun at the Arctic Circle during the winter solstice. Easter is allegedly named
after an unknown Goddess or giantess tied to the return of spring to the land and
was known in the ancient north as “summernights.” 5 Both holidays, now under the
sway of the Church, retain trappings and ritualized customs related to their earlier
form as fertility festivals with but a thin veneer of Christianity. Baptisms, weddings,
councils (which he calls a by) functioned. This type of government also became the standard for
Iceland with regional differences, of course. Both kingdoms and councils are also alluded to by
Tactitus in his Germania. Both systems of government apparently have long histories and were
known to work comfortably beside one another.
5 See Heimskringla: Saga of the Norse Kings, translated by Samuel Laing (Everyman’s
Library #847, London), 1961, p. 13 and p. 49. The footnotes on these pages define
”winternights-summernights” and Jól respectively.