Hello! I've been working on a norse fantasy RPG setting for a long time now and named a central region on my map that's surrounded by other countries Innangard. I had never heard about an Innangard/Utangard debate until I read it on your blog and was surprised to see that this supposedly random name I "came up with" is part of some issue? I don't want to seemingly incorporate something iffy or connected to a problematic real world thing. Could you briefly explain or link me something to read?
I’m going to give a much more complex answer than you really need, but to respond to your specific situation I’d say you’re probably fine with that name, just be aware that if any North American recons engage with it they’re probably going to pick up some connotations you don’t necessarily intend.
You might find it more palatable to watch Jackson Crawford on the topic than to read my stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsIZneUeZQw
If I were to give my angry, oversimplified answer it would be: the idea of the “innangard” and “utangard” is the fake heathen belief that it’s morally wrong to give a shit about anyone outside of your in-group.
Full-disclosure, I’ve been on the anti-innangard train for a long time and just to be completely honest, I’m at risk of misrepresenting it somewhat. I’d give time for some followers to respond.
There is a belief predominant in North American (and British?) heathenry that pre-Christian north Europeans conceived of their social, geographical, and cosmological worlds as all integrated into a binary categorization consisting of that which is innan garðs ‘(from) within the fence’ and útan garðs ‘(from) outside of the fence.’ It originally developed in Norse academia from scholars applying structuralist anthropological models to Norse literature, but it was always contentious in academia and has been largely ignored for the last 20 years or so. However, many heathens are convinced that it’s a fundamental and necessary component of any possible heathen worldview.
Many heathens are under an impression that there was an Old Norse word innangarðr and an Old Norse word útangarðr; neither of these actually seem to have existed, and I’ve argued that they’re grammatically incoherent although others have disagreed. They arose by mistake, derived from the prepositional phrases innan garðs and útan garðs which I used above.
The garðr ‘fence’ is a boundary that separates (whether literally or metaphorically) the civilized from the wild, the controlled from the chaotic, the safe from the hostile, the familiar from the alien, the rule of law from lawlessness, the æsir from the jötnar, “us” from “them.” Though it can be literal especially in the case of an Icelandic farmstead which was encircled by an actual garðr, modern heathens who apply it usually do so more metaphorically so as to include close friends, family, the heathen kindred/hearth/whatever, the gods one is loyal to. That which is innan garðs is also specifically preferred over that which is útan garðs, and furthermore, protection and advancement of what is innan garðs is an ethical imperative even at the expense of that which is útan gards. More to the point, many modern heathens who have internalized this dichotomy argue that within the garðr is the only place where their own identity and agency is interconnected with the identity and agency of others, so that what happens útan garðs is basically none of their business unless it threatens to spill over the garðr. In heathenry, it emphasizes having a shared internal worldview and ethics that is isolated from that of other social formations including other heathen kindreds.
We can point to specific instances in Norse mythology where it seems to apply, like when Óðinn’s cavorting with jötnar brings a threat from outside in the form of Hrungnir, who Þórr has to slay in order to protect the sanctity enclosed by the garðr. But that’s because it’s a narrative about two antagonists -- any such narrative necessarily is subject to binary analysis.
Indeed, humans are all able to analyze things in binary opposition, and the fact that we can do it with Norse mythology tells us nothing novel. The fact that this grand concept of the innan garðr doesn’t come from Norse literature but rather is an abstract model imposed on it means that it’s actually a null category without fixed meaning, and heathens have heavily modified it in order to apply it in a way that isn’t completely incoherent.
Not all applications in modern heathenry have actually been bad. There was a major push for using it to inoculate against universalism (that is, actual universalism, not non-racism), that is to say, to tell kindreds to mind their business when criticizing other kindreds for worshiping the wrong gods. Jennifer Snook has said that some anti-racist kindreds who have internalized this dichotomy deploy it in a way that protects their members with marginalized identities from being targeted by folkish heathens. Many people who have had difficulty setting personal boundaries on their own have used this concept to encourage themselves to do it backed by religious imperative.
But we can retain these useful things without relying on a model that equally protects racists, homophobes, sexual predators, and scammers, and which makes tiny micro-nations the essential social unit of heathenry.
Furthermore, by taking it for granted that this was how heathens saw the world and their place in it, it prevents heathens from exploring other more complex, subtle, and realistic approaches to these things. The fact is that Scandinavian society in the first millennium underwent massive changes and developments over time and no one model will ever be adequate for explaining everything (this is part of what I mean when I say that heathens have confused the abstract model for the real). We should not expect social organization to look the same in a seasonally-occupied ringfort in Roman-era Gotland to be the same as in a remote Icelandic farm in the year 950 (nor even those same Gotlanders during the time of year that the ringfort is not occupied).
It also ignores an actual interesting fact that is glaring them in the face: medieval Icelandic law had something called fjörbaugsgarðr, an ACTUAL analogous relationship between a physical space and social status, referring to the protected status of a person convicted of a crime and sentenced to lesser outlawry but who has paid a fee preventing themselves from becoming full outlaws. Interestingly, this usage of garðr occurs specifically in a liminal space. It’s also noteworthy that it’s temporary and pertains to the deliberate legal creation of a temporary state of exception from the normal everyday world.
There are other metaphorical references to the garðr. The phrase ganga í garð ‘go into the garðr’ means ‘to lose one’s freedom [enter servitude].’ There are also times when it can be said to indicate the time of year, for example when the spring season (Vár/Vor) gengr í garð ‘goes into the garðr’ it means that spring has arrived.
There actually are medieval laws that apply differently to property or events that happen innan garðs and útan garðs, but then again it should be noted that this is a function of the fact that most of a farmer’s property actually was útan garðs (they owned big tracts of land which were mostly not enclosed, especially for grazing animals).
It might be possible to frame innangard/utangard ideology as the extreme opposite of the fallacy of an original single, cohesive, pure, monolithic Germanic (”Teutonic”) culture but like that idea, it is also wrong.
Any recons who have bought into it and have emphasized the possible positive uses of it would do well to move on beyond this outdated, discredited 20th-century anthropological model and try to use the lessons learned from it in their readings of newer, better explanations for the extremely complex topic of social and cosmological organization.
