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Norse Revival offers a thorough investigation of Germanic Neopaganism (Asatru) through an international and comprehensive historical perspective. It traces Germanic Neopaganism’s genesis in German ultra-nationalist and occultist movements around 1900. Based on ethnographic research of contemporary groups in Germany, Scandinavia and North America, the book examines this alternative Neopagan religion’s transformations towards respectability and mainstream thought after the 1970s.
It asks which regressive and progressive elements of a National Romantic discourse on Norse myth have shaped Germanic Neopaganism. It demonstrates how these ambiguous ideas about Nordic myth permeate general discourses on race, religion, gender, sexuality and aesthetics. Ultimately, Norse Revival raises the question of whether Norse mythology can be freed from its reactionary ideological baggage.
"[V]aluable, rewarding, even urgent. I agree entirely with the author that we need to seriously think through the stakes of reconstructionist methodologies. The challenge issued in this book’s pages is one all students of Old Norse myth must take up …[Norse Revival] is an erudite, nuanced work of scholarship—an important contribution to our understanding of a growing international religious movement, its intellectual and cultural underpinnings, and our relationship to both."
—Merrill Kaplan, Edda