My health being what it is, I tend to spend my time elsewhere these days, trying to focus on brighter, more cheerful topics than this blog usually leads me to. The fruits of which have started to come forth, and may finish coming about soon. Still, I occasionally look at things and I saw a something that I wanted to address because sadly the most common topic in Heathenism on the net seems to be “racism” no matter how long I leave everyone alone.

It really is a shame, because I would have hoped my fellow heathens would learn to deal with it better, but it seems anytime anyone says anything involving race, the Norse/Germanic heritage, etc, everyone has to jump on their box and/or lose their shit because there has been so much “programing” done.

Wyrd Designs recently posted a piece called “Murderers don’t go to Valhalla.” It had some things that I felt I must address because they paid some special attention to Hel and her realm, which I am deeply tied to. So I’m going to try to muddle through wordpress’s horrible editing system and try to talk about some of these.

Their post is in response to the recent shooting in Buffalo, NY by a young man named Payton Gendron. However, we run into what I would call an immediate red-flag/issue with this post, as the first source Wyrd quotes is the ADL.

A group who is legendary for their hatred of Heathen practitioners and who were founded for the express purpose of defending a pedophilic rapist from the charges and consequences of his crimes. A service they provide to this very day. So, hardly a source I would count on to display any sort of honest reporting. A good example is from their article:

“The name “Ebba Aukerlund” is also written on Gendron’s assault rifle. Ebba was killed during a April 2017 Stockholm truck attack, in which an Uzbek asylum seeker ran his car into pedestrians on a busy street. Brenton Tarrant’s manifesto cites the death of Akerlund as one of his primary motivations for his Christchurch attack, and he too wrote her name on the weapon he used.“

I did quite a bit of research when Christchurch happened, and the description of Ebba as a “victim of a truck attack,” hardly describe the violence terrorist attack that ended the life of a young girl, going about her daily life. Given, if my memory serves, she was hit so hard her body was torn into three pieces, it is little wonder that some have reacted strongly to her death over the years. In the case of Christchurch, it was especially key because it was part of why he attack the mosque he did, due to its ties to international islamic terror.

Something the ADL doesn’t mention. Further they state:

“On the assault rifle, Gendron wrote “buck status: broken.” This is likely referring to “buck breaking,” the use of brutal sexual violence by slave owners as punishment against enslaved Black men. He also wrote “#BLM mogged.” Mogged is internet slang term meaning to assert dominance. Writing above the trigger of the AR-15 stock reads “James Watson,” the name of the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who was stripped of his honorary titles in 2019 for linking race and IQ.“

What the ADL fails to mention is that this “buck breaking” seems to be the sole concept of a black supremacist (I believe his name is Tariq Nasheed) based on deeply held sexual fantasies of his. It certainly, to my knowledge, has no real true historical significance and I say this as someone who has taken classes on american slavery and the civil rights movement.

Further, they fail to mention that James Watson happens to be one of the men who discovered DNA as we know and understand it today, which makes his being striped of his titles for the fruits of his research (however politically unpleasant) highly offensive to the nature of scientific endeavors.

I could write an entire series on how many things the ADL gets wrong, I think we have establed they are not a trustworthy source about anything, so let us return to Wyrd’s post and get to what I truly wanted to address.

What seems to have upset Wyrd the most is that both Gendron and the Christchurch shooter signed off their manifestos with “Goodbye, god bless you all and I will see you in Valhalla.” There are claims that both manifestos are much the same, but I cannot and will not speak to this because unlike the Christchurch shooter, I have not seen or read Gendron’s manifesto. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t.

Wyrd states:

“I’d like to say something for the hate spouting extremists in the back. Murderers don’t go to Valhalla. In fact in our lore we know murderers go somewhere else entirely. In Gylfaginning we are told by Odin (in his guise of Þriði) that those who commit evil go to Nifolhel (Misty Hel). In another section of Gylfaginning, and supported also in Völuspá, we learn that within Nifolhel we have Nástrǫnd (Corpse Shore), and that is where oathbreakers and murderers go in the afterlife. Nástrǫnd is home to the serpent Níðhöggr (Malice Striker) who gnaws for eternity on the corpses of murderers and oathbreakers that have been condemned to the serpent’s hall. We think that Nástrǫnd may correlate to the Old English Wyrmsele, which means serpent hall, it appears in the poem Judith found in the Nowell Codex (which is the manuscript source for Beowulf).

…

One of the commonly misrepresented beliefs of our afterlife is that the end goal is for us all to go to Valhalla, it isn’t. Valhalla is specifically intended for a select few, and only for those that Odin thinks has the right skillset to his warrior purposes and thus chooses. Killing in self defense, or killing in the course of war is one thing. Gunning down a bunch of innocent people in a grocery store makes you only one thing: a murderer, a nīðing (nithling) which is one of the worst labels given to a person, as it means the person has no honor and is a villain.“

First off, I wish to commend Wyrd for their well done coverage of the Heathen Afterlives. I would probably quibble over a few details, but it’s nothing that really needs be addressed here because none of it is so quibbly as to really be worth discussing, since it would mostly be down to translations, disagreements in the sources, and gnosis. In spirit and character, Wyrd here is right enough for all true purposes.

There’s just one issue that does need remarking on.

“Murder.”

The issue here, and what was one of the reasons that pushed me to write this, is that Wyrd is applying their own, modern, definition of what a murder is to this situation. Then, using this modern definition, applying a summary judgement of how things should play out…according to them. There is an issue with this…

To the Norse definition…Gendron is not a murderer.

Murder, to the Norse, was a dark, shameful thing, done in secret. “You may pass by two houses, but not three, before confessing that you have killed. Then it becomes murder,” was one of the old rules. Gendron passed by no houses. He openly declared his actions, his motives, and his deeds. He is a killer, certainly, but not a murderer. From what I understand, even surrendered to the police, in addition to posting his manifesto. He was not ashamed of his actions, he did not try to hide them or cover them up like a coward. He owned them.

Wyrd’s definition of a murderer would, well, have nearly all of our ancestors who went a Vikingr, or simply to war, stripped of all honor and shoved in the mouth of a dragon. Yet, we know from historical and mythological sources, that this is not, was not, and would not be the case. While their passion in their beliefs and morals is admirable, passion should not be mistaken for inherent truth.

And if we go with the idea that the media (like the ADL) is biased or speaking in true faith, then by all accounts Gendron viewed himself as a warrior in a war, more than anything. The ADL mentions his listing of crime statistics, for example. Having seen many of these statistics, they are indeed horrifying in the disproportionate amount of crime not only performed by blacks, but by blacks on whites. I remember the days when the 15/50 meme started up, only for it to now have been “corrected” to something like “12/60” in some places, though I cannot speak to the authentic of this change. I know that at one time, up to 90% of the violent crime committed in NYC was done by the black community, though that was decades ago.

We live in a time where the media, our schools, and even our government, have declared that there is all but open war between the races. Be this true or false, it is little wonder that a troubled person would look at the numbers, the events around them, the people in power not only saying there is violence but even going so far as to encourage it, and decide that this war is both real, and one that they must fight in. After all, were we not treated to nearly two years of “Black Lives Matter” and the free pass given to the violence involved and connected to it, justified because “black lives are at stake?” Indeed, recently a BLM supporter drove his SUV through a parade of people in Waukesha with the intention of killing whites specifically because of their race. The media treated it as if it was done by a sentient vehicle whose motives could never be known, and quickly buried the story, despite all the facts about the attacker and his beliefs being freely available on the internet within mere hours of the attack.

So it is easy enough to find data that correlates that “white lives are at stake” as well, if you wished to.

These are hard words to read, and I’m sure many will be angry about them, but we who wish to honor our ancestors must acknowledge that at times they were a bloody, violent people, who often slaughtered the “innocent” to get the wealth, slaves, and power they desired. Gunning people down at a grocery store, or charging in and slaughtering them in their farms and villages, you’re still killing innocent people. To give them a pass, but then to howl in rage at one who killed not for profit or lust, but for what he (in his mental state, however sound or unsound it might be) thought to be a true and noble cause, is not a good thing to do. Especially when you refuse to do that same howling for the victims of others who do the same.

I do not hold that he should be praised for his deeds. Frankly, I think them wrong and foolish. Had he desired to do something about black crime and violence, there are plenty of black gangs out there he could have confronted and done battle with, rather than civilians. I do not think he acted of sound mind, thought how many of us even at our best can truly be counted sound of mind these days I do not know.

But nor do I think his deeds any worse than the thousands of misdeeds the media has covered up over the last few decades because those acts of violence, no different from his, did not suit their tastes to speak of. Crimes even more horrific go undisclosed and unexposed because those that do them, even when their motives are just as hateful if not more, simply because of who they are. People who drive trucks and SUVs into parades, parks, and crowds. People who kidnap, rape, and torture. Whose victims go unremarked and unremarked upon, until they end up on the gun of someone seeking revenge for voices they see as silenced.

“Violence is the language of the unheard” was a common chant not too long ago. Well, there are thousands of voices left unheard. Inconvenient, dishonored voices, whose stories and tragedies are repressed because the one who killed them was a muslim, or a blm supporter, or a gangbanger. Because talking about their stories, and what happened to them, would be “racist” or “islamophobic” or “bigoted.”

At least until some “white supremacist” shows up, mentions them, and then the media uses that to justify their silence “lest we inspire hateful acts of white terrorism.” Thus not only are the voices of these innocent people silenced for being an inconvenience, a threat, they are then used as a weapon to make sure theirs and tales like there are never told.

No, murderers do not go to Valhalla. No coward’s blade is allowed in Odin’s golden halls. Only the strong and skilled.

But Helheim is full of killers. People who slashed and slaughtered those before them. Who marched across land, see, and air, wiping out those they thought their enemy. In the halls of Hel you will find all manner of man and woman, including many people would think to be monsters and niths, but who have not been fed to the dread Nithoggr. Just because you call someone a murderer, or an oathbreaker, and think they deserve to be gnawed upon for a thousand years, doesn’t means they were.

Just as Helheim is full of the slaughtered. People abused, butchers, and ignored by those left behind. Who walk the road to Hel, cross the bridge under Mordgud’s watchful eyes, and are judged the same as those that killed them. Some of them find peace, some of them are damned, and many of them find that the world they left behind would rather show kindness to those that did them wrong, than remember and honor they that died.

Wyrd ends their post by taking the Universalist position that “Odin is Allfather to all of humanity.” I understand why they take this position, but I do not agree with it. I am not such a supermacist that I believe mine is the only Pantheon of Gods out there. I believe each people was forged as was told in their original myths, and that the Gods came together here on Midgard and placed their various peoples here. We are all human, certainly, but we were made as our Gods wished us and we are different because of this.

In seeking to value human life, one should always be careful that you are not also stripping away something valuable to that life.

In the end, innocent people died and this is always a tragedy, regardless of the race or ethnicity of that person. To much of late, have I lived my half-life watching the innocent die, only for foul and grim necromancies to be used to either silence the tales of their lives, or used to twist those tales to others ends. The dead remain dishonored far to often, and too often they are dishonored for the sake of the message people do or do not want told about the one who killed them.

Wyrd’s anger is understandable. It also, going by the sources they used in their post, comes from a place of ignorance rather than wisdom. They mention the “Maga Shaman” as adopting our symbols, but from my own research, this claim is nothing more than lies made up by the media in an attempt to smear not just those who follow Trump, but those who follow the Aesir as well. They use the ADL, an organization built on lying for political gain, to tell them about the alleged killer, without questioning anything they say. For someone who does such good research on the Norse afterlife, I wish them the best in finding better, more accurate sources for more recent events.

You’d think, after all these years, a Heathen would have learned not to trust the media’s lies after having spent years seeing how the media lies about Heathens. In the end though, each of us must use our own judgements and come to our own conclusions. Right or wrong.

I wish Wyrd well in their journey.

Hela Bless