From Viking Re-enactor to Practitioner

A still from the BBC video, linked below.

At the BBC, a short video with a man who started doing re-enactments and ended up adopting Norse religion.

Fighting with the Wuffa Viking and Saxon Re-enactment Society, he did not expect that his hobby of more than three years would help him find his own belief through Norse mythology.

“What it is about the Norse gods is they teach you to respect nature and the world and that’s how the world should be run, not like in the modern day,” said Mr Mehmed, who is also known as Magnus Shield-Breaker.

It is a different sort of re-enactment, but in America, Wicca is more or less the “house religion” of the Renaissance Faire circuit, or so says Rachel Lee Rubin in her history of Renn Faires, Well Met: Renaissance Faires and the American Counterculture.

5 thoughts on “From Viking Re-enactor to Practitioner

  1. Pitch313

    No surprise that re-enacting a historical culture might lead to embracing the spirituality of that culture. Or vice versa.

    And during my few years of involvement with the Nor-Cal Ren Faire, being a Pagan was easy and something of a plus.

    But, for my generation of Pagans, these opportunities manifested after we accepted some sort of Paganism or early on being Pagan. It may have been more challenging to find a Pagan Way.when paths were more obscure.

    1. Kalinysta

      Back in the late 1960s and 1970s, it was very difficult (but not impossible) to find any type of Pagan path unless you were in a big city. I speak from personal experience. Some of the folks I did run into were “weird” to say the least and not anyone I’d like to hang out with.

  2. Kalinysta

    After reading the description of Well Met, I wonder if the resurgence of Ren Faires has its origin in the Society for Creative Anachronism, which was first held in the backyard of Diana Paxson’s (the “mother” of us all) house. (Wikipedia says: “The SCA’s roots can be traced to a backyard party of a UC Berkeley medieval studies graduate, the author Diana Paxson, in Berkeley, California, on May Day in 1966.”)
    Yes, I’m a former member and humorously, so is my doctor (my real medical doctor!)

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