A poem by me, speculating on the cosmos from an Anglo-Saxon pagan point of view. Much of this is taken from Norse cosmology, but is given a uniquely English flavour. It is written in alliterative verse, as is much of Old English poetry.
âTwas on one windy night, that I dreamt a dream
of WĆden, the High One, in his High Seat.
I went to him âfore I wandered the Worlds,
to pray for knowledge of their number and names.
I begged that he tell me of those bright
and those dark; the dread-homes of dead things,
the hallowed halls of high Gods,
so of the Worlds âneath the windy World Tree might I know.
And so High from the highest of heights
spoke thus, as he sat in his seat at the summit of All:
âWisdom I shall grant you; but what shall you give?
For the price is a gift for a gift from the Gods.â
So to High I did say, âI shall swear to you thus:
that a sacrifice be made unto you and yourself.
I promise you this with prayer and praise,
from one wanderer to the wisest of all.â
Then High said to me, âI hear your prayer,
and the words that you weave for your oath.
So my knowledge Iâll grant you, that know you might
of the Worlds âneath the windy World Tree.
âThe first I shall speak of is the first among worlds,
the supreme and shining seat of Gods.
Esageard we call it, cradled by Heaven,
where rule does High from his hall.
âWithin Esageard are three heavenly halls,
a refuge for the righteous from rot,
and the Fields of Frīge, Neorxnawang,
and WĂŠlheall where wĂŠlcyrian roost.
âWithin our borders beneath one of three
mighty roots, reside the three weavers of Wyrd.
There they tend to the well from which fate is drawn
and draw up the doom of Men.
âYonder, yet not far from Esageard
are the hallowed halls of the elves.
There dwell they in brightest ĂlfhÄm
ruled by fair Ingui-Frea.
âBy ĂlfhÄm, youâll know, is the abode of Man,
called Middangeard, or by you Middle-earth.
By an ocean itâs embraced, older than time,
wherein waits the World Serpent for night.
âTo the east if you go you shall find Ettin-home,
ÄotenhÄm, land of the ettins and ents.
Where in Iron-wood wolves and worse
monsters are spawned, and âneath a root is Memoryâs well.
âYet go north from your world,
Middangeard, and youâll arrive in murky MurkhÄm.
Where halls of gold and of grand craftsmanship
serve as dwellings for the deep-delving dwarfs.
âFurther still from MurkhÄm is misty Hell,
where the Queen of the Dead does dwell.
Find your way to the hall of the Goddess Hell
lest you wind up in Wyrmsele, ravaged by worms.
âNext go north to the northernmost realm, NifolhÄm,
a bitter land of frost and fog,
where the third of the World Treeâs roots does rest
above a bubbling, ancient spring.
âFrom this spring flow the rivers,
their numbers unnumbered,
that with waters old wend a way between worlds,
crossed only by bridges, and we brave wanderers.
âThus I speak of the seven
worlds beneath the World Tree,
and to you make this knowledge known.
Go with it, wanderer, with wisdom and sense.â
So said High, the Seer of All,
as he shared his secrets with me.
And so of the names do I now know
of the Worlds âneath the windy World Tree.
Death is often viewed as an evil, something to loathe and fear, but I do not share this outlook. Death is a reality, a necessity, and an inevitability. It is often sad and painful, but is not evil. Death is, ironically, something that troubles the living more than the dead, and for thousands of years humans have created stories to wrestle with their own mortality â and I, too, partake in this tradition.
In my writing, I try to present different aspects, views, emotions, hopes, fears, and struggles about death. My books portray the pain and suffering brought by death, but also the glories and hopes surrounding it, and the way those faced with death each day deal with the inevitable. My short stories also paint various pictures of death as something that is welcoming and sweet to some, yet horrifying and difficult to others.
I try to present the reality of death as experienced by humanity as a whole, not as some caricature or ideal.
Behind my house, at the bottom of the driveway, is a drain. This drain directs stormwater away from the house and sends it down into the gorge below, where it flows along a stream out to sea.
The drain protects the house and garden from flooding and waterborne illness. Itâs a vital piece of infrastructure here.
Our Celtic and Germanic ancestors regarded water as sacred, and often worshipped at wells, springs, and pools (a practice which still survives today in the veneration of âwishing wellsâ). The Romans revered Cloacina, the goddess of Romeâs sewer system: the Cloaca Maxima â the âGreat Drain.â
Thus, to honour the spirit of the drain that guards our house from storms and floods, guided by the wisdom and traditions of the ancestors, I made it a little shrine.
Itâs a question I often ask myself. For pretty much as long as I can remember, even going all the way back into the mists of my early childhood, I have had a love for telling stories. One of my earliest memories is of writing (and âpublishingâ) a short fiction story, about a snail on some grand adventure. I wouldâve been about six or seven.
Iâve always had a passion for storytelling, and for putting my ideas to paper, but it wasnât until the end of secondary school when that passion truly awakened. Since then my passion has only grown, and my skills have been honed by years of writing for both fun and for university courses. Iâve left behind me a long trail of short stories and half-finished novels â some of them decent, most mediocre â hidden away in old storage boxes or the recesses of ancient HDDs. I could probably dredge up some of the older stories and find within them, tucked between unedited lines, the seeds of my recent work.
In February 2021, I self-published my first novel:Â The Immortal King. It began as a short story, inspired by Beowulf, heroic Old Norse sagas, European folklore, and the scholarly works of French historian and philologist Claude Lecouteux. Like many of my short stories (both published and unpublished), this story began as a little bit of fun â a way to scratch an itch, so to speak. I wanted to tell the story of a wandering wise-man who specialised in dealing with things of a not-so-physical nature.
In this story, a Godspeaker (as I called him) named Edward came to Henton, a little woodland village, and there was employed to deal with the corpse of the lordâs dead brother, who had a tendency to crawl out of his grave and harass the townsfolk at night. Through the writing of this story, however, I fell in love with the characters I had created and the world in which they lived, so decided to turn it into a novel. I needed a plot, and having recently read the old folk legend about the British King Herla and the Wild Hunt, I decided to create a retelling of this legend involving my own Edward Godspeaker.
Thus, The Immortal King was born.
It took several years to write this book, working on it on-and-off in conjunction with my history degree(s). During this time my plans and ideas changed, the story evolved, until eventually I had something solid.
In 2019 I did a postgraduate degree (Bachelor of Arts with Honours) in history, and this took up a lot of my time. I didnât have much time to work on my book that year, so Edward and co. found themselves sorely neglected. I planned to do an MA in history the following year. By summer of 2019-2020 (I live in New Zealand), I had completed by Honours degree and my enrolment for an MA was accepted. I had a research topic lined up, a full scholarship available, andâŠ
âŠI quit. After I finished my dissertation, I realised that my true passion lay in writing fiction and fantasy. I love writing history (I decided to return to academia and do my MA this year!), but that summer I realised how much I missed the world of Ardonn. And so, I quit university, held on to a part-time job as a tutor, and decided to spend 2020 focusing chiefly on my novel.
I thus found myself with an abundance of time (especially with the Covid-19 lockdowns we had that year), and really worked hard on finishing The Immortal King. Not only that, but I also managed to pump out two dozen or so short stories set in the same world, exploring themes and concepts touched on in the novel or expanding the world and its lore (you can read them for free here).
And by the following summer, I finished drafting The Immortal King. By February 2021, I made it available to the world.
The quantity of my writing died down in 2021 partly due to a series of personal interruptions (including a death and a marriage), but I kept it up as best I could. I immediately set about working on The Immortal Kingâs sequel (to be published this December!), and published more short stories whenever I could. The world of Ardonn is still alive and well, constantly expanding and deepening with every new tale I publish. But that brings me back to the questionâŠ
Why do I write?
For me, writing is not merely a hobby. It is my outlet, an expression of my thoughts, beliefs, and ideas. It is a mission, a sacred duty, an act of devotion.
I am a pagan. Specifically, an Anglo-Saxon Pagan/Heathen/Polytheist, practicing the reconstructed religion of the hodgepodge of pre-Christian Germanic tribes that settled Britain during the Migration Era. Iâm not too fond of the term, though, and prefer to call myself a Fyrnsidere, and my religion Fyrnsidu.
âFyrnsiduâ is Old English for âthe ancient customâ (fyrn: ancient; sidu: custom) or, if you want a more poetic translation, âthe Old Way.â I prefer this term because on one hand, it doesnât sound as scholarly as âAnglo-Saxon Paganâ â a term which evokes the notion of a dead religion, confined to a past age and a past people. Fyrnsidu is a living religion, a spirituality that can and should thrive in the 21st Century, practiced not by ancient Germanic tribes but byâŠwell, anyone alive today with a love for the Gods and a willingness to embrace them.
On the other hand, Fyrnsidu describes a spirituality not confined to historical sources. Fyrnsidu is a spirituality informed by the ancient traditions of the Anglo-Saxons (and other Germanic peoples, namely Viking Age Norse), but a good number of us also embrace a living, breathing spirituality preserved through Christian times. We look not only to a body of historical literature and archaeological finds to inform our faith, but also to the folklore, traditions, customs, and beliefs handed down to us from more recent times. Folk stories and folk traditions preserve the spirituality of the English built on their interactions with real numinous forces, albeit through a Christian lens.
Are we to discount 1000 years of spirituality simply because the people didnât worship a multitude of Gods? I think not. As Fyrnsidere and Fyrnsidestre, we participate in the English spiritual traditions passed down to us by our most recent English ancestors (regardless of whether or not you are biologically descended from them), while revitalising these traditions with the ancient living Gods known to the Anglo-Saxons. We are (re)introducing a new element to English spirituality, and thus our tradition is not necessarily new, but renewed â built on a spirituality that never really died, but only transformed as a result of Christianisation. In this sense, we truly are practitioners of âthe ancient customâ â be that the custom of Penda, the last pagan King of Mercia, or the custom of some Victorian coal miner.
My writing is my contribution to this renewal. The Immortal King and all of my short stories are heavily, heavily, inspired and informed by the folklore, legends, mythology, history, religion, and spirituality of my English (and more broadly European) ancestors. In this sense, I see them not merely as works of fantasy, but mythopoeia. In the same vein as J.R.R. Tolkien (though not nearly with the same level of quality) I see myself as creating a mythological contribution to the English literary tradition, containing within it the themes, concepts, ideas, and beings found within English spirituality. Fantasy is the medium I chose for doing this. The world of Ardonn is fictional, yes, but like Tolkienâs Middle-earth is also a mythic landscape within which I can convey metaphysical principles, spiritual concepts, and pagan ideas. It is the setting within which I can tell those timeless metahistorical narratives that appear again and again throughout history, or are revealed by ancient legend.
Ardonn and the stories within it are not mere fiction; they are abstract reality.
By writing fantasy I make English spirituality accessible to everyone and capable of being enjoyed by anyone, and it is my hope that by doing this I can speak even to the hearts of those who donât practice our religion, who may not be interested in historical literature or scholarly works. If my stories can touch the souls or inspire the spirituality of those who read them, even just a little bit, then I can consider my mission a success.
So, what is the purpose of this blog?
My idea behind this blog is that it can serve as a companion to my fiction writing (which I'll also post here), while also providing more informative, analytical, and theological writing for those of my audience who are into this stuff. I will be using this to shed light on the themes and ideas within my stories, and to create articles on elements of Fyrnsidu and share my knowledge of history, sometimes linking it to my fiction writing. Fantasy provides us with a much-needed escape and whisks us away to a world of abstracts, but it is also important we stay grounded and look at how the principles and ideas within fiction apply to the real world. I hope my blog can do this, just as I hope my fantasy stories can do the opposite.
So, to whoever finds themselves reading this: I hope you enjoy whatâs to come! I canât wait to share my thoughts, knowledge, and stories with you.
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