Heathenry is a revivalist polytheistic “neo-pagan” movement, that seeks to reconstruct the religious practices of pre-Christian Germanic people of Scandinavia, Germany, Anglo-Saxon England, and Frisia. It is a very broad umbrella term, as there is no religious authority, agreed-upon sources, nor formalized praxis as is characteristic of all decentralized folk religions. As a result, there have been many diverging branches going under an endless array of names. These include Asatru, Venatru, Theodism, Forn Sed, Northern Tradition, Urglaawe, and so forth. There is also further segmentation based on specific regional traditions, derived from the aforementioned Germanic peoples.
The Focus of the Middelweg Project The focus of the Middelweg Project is going to be Reconstructed Anglo-Saxon Heathenry, derived from scholarly methods of reconstruction. That being said, all lessons regarding worldview, ancestors, house spirits and land spirits are applicable to all of the regional traditions of Germanic Heathenry. It will only get Anglo-Saxon/Inglisc centric when we begin looking at the pantheon, but many of the gods are shared across the other regional traditions as well.
A Scholarly Approach to Reconstruction So what is Reconstruction and how can it be approached in a “scholarly” way? There’s a breadth of study across multiple disciplines by academics unaffiliated with Heathenry that are invaluable to the effort of reverse-engineering the disparate bits and pieces that we have available to reconstruct the beliefs, practices, values, worldview and ritual praxis of pre-Christian Germanic peoples. History, philology, etymology, comparative literature, anthropology and so forth can all be utilized to extract that which has been lost to time and deliberate effort by the Church. These disciplines will be the basis of The Middelweg Project.
Hidden in Plain Sight Some of these bits and pieces are much closer than you may think. Vestigial remains of our pre-Christian past are embedded all around us, from the names of the days of the week, our holiday traditions, place names across Northern Europe, and hidden within our languages themselves. Counter-intuitively, even the folkstories, and “fairy tales” are a source from which to squeeze insight, as there was a concerted effort by the Catholic Church during Conversion to reduce the “pagan” gods, spirits, and other entities to myth and superstition.
The house and land-wights became gnomes, leprechauns, fairies and pooka. Woden and Baeldaeg became mortal heroes and founders of the dynasties who claimed the titles of nobility across England; gaining legitimacy among the common folk while undeifying their ancestral gods. Late Norse poetry in compilations like the Eddas and Hávamál became the basis for mythology and today, the super hero Marvel franchise which we are all so familiar with.
