CONTEMPORARY PAGAN AND NATIVE FAITH MOVEMENTS IN EUROPE EASA Series Published in Association with the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) Series Editor: Eeva Berglund, Helsinki University Social anthropology in Europe is growing, and the variety of work being done is expanding. This series is intended to present the best of the work produced by members of the EASA, both in monographs and in edited collections. The studies in this series describe societies, processes, and institutions around the world and are intended for both scholarly and student readerships. 1. LEARNING FIELDS 14. POLICY WORLDS Volume 1 Anthropology and Analysis of Contemporary Educational Histories of European Social Power Anthropology Edited by Cris Shore, Susan Wright and Davide Edited by Dorle Dracklé, Iain R. Edgar and Però Thomas K. Schippers 15. HEADLINES OF NATION, SUBTEXTS 2. LEARNING FIELDS OF CLASS Volume 2 Working Class Populism and the Return of the Current Policies and Practices in European Repressed in Neoliberal Europe Social Anthropology Education Edited by Don Kalb and Gabor Halmai Edited by Dorle Dracklé and Iain R. Edgar 16. ENCOUNTERS OF BODY AND SOUL 3. GRAMMARS OF IDENTITY/ALTERITY IN CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS A Structural Approach PRACTICES Edited by Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich Anthropological Reflections Edited by Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes 4. MULTIPLE MEDICAL REALITIES Patients and Healers in Biomedical, Alternative 17. CARING FOR THE ‘HOLY LAND’ and Traditional Medicine Filipina Domestic Workers in Israel Edited by Helle Johannessen and Imre Lázár Claudia Liebelt 5. FRACTURING RESEMBLANCES 18. ORDINARY LIVES AND GRAND Identity and Mimetic Conflict in Melanesia and SCHEMES the West An Anthropology of Everyday Religion Simon Harrison Edited by Samuli Schielke and Liza Debevec 6. SKILLED VISIONS 19. LANDSCAPES BEYOND LAND Between Apprenticeship and Standards Routes, Aesthetics, Narratives Edited by Cristina Grasseni Edited by Arnar Árnason, Nicolas Ellison, Jo Vergunst and Andrew Whitehouse 7. GOING FIRST CLASS? New Approaches to Privileged Travel and 20. CYBERIDENTITIES AT WAR Movement The Moluccan Conflict on the Internet Edited by Vered Amit Birgit Bräuchler 8. EXPLORING REGIMES OF DISCIPLINE 21. FAMILY UPHEAVAL The Dynamics of Restraint Generation, Mobility and Relatedness Among Edited by Noel Dyck Pakistani Migrants in Denmark Mikkel Rytter 9. KNOWING HOW TO KNOW Fieldwork and the Ethnographic Present 22. PERIPHERAL VISION Edited by Narmala Halstead, Eric Hirsch and Politics, Technology, and Surveillance Judith Okely Catarina Frois 10. POSTSOCIALIST EUROP E 23. BEING HUMAN, BEING MIGRANT Anthropological Perspectives from Home Senses of Self and Well-Being Edited by László Kürti and Peter Skalník Edited by Anne Sigfrid Grønseth 11. ETHNOGRAPHIC PRACTICE IN THE 24. BEING A STATE AND STATES OF PRESENT BEING IN HIGHLAND GEORGIA Edited by Marit Melhuus, Jon P. Mitchell and Florian Mühlfried Helena Wulff 25. FLEXIBLE CAPITALISM 12. CULTURE WARS Exchange and Ambiguity at Work Context, Models and Anthropologists’ Accounts Edited by Jens Kjaerulff Edited by Deborah James, Evelyn Plaice and Christina Toren 26. CONTEMPORARY PAGAN AND NATIVE FAITH MOVEMENTS IN EUROPE 13. POWER AND MAGIC IN ITALY Colonialist and Nationalist Impulses Thomas Hauschild Edited by Kathryn Rountree CONTEMPORARY PAGAN AND NATIVE FAITH MOVEMENTS IN EUROPE Colonialist and Nationalist Impulses Edited by Kathryn Rountree berghahn N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D www.berghahnbooks.com Published in 2015 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2015 Kathryn Rountree All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78238-646-9 (hardback) E-ISBN: 978-1-78238-647-6 (ebook) Contents List of Figures vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction Context Is Everything: Plurality and Paradox in Contemporary European Paganisms 1 Kathryn Rountree 1 Sami Neo- shamanism in Norway: Colonial Grounds, Ethnic Revival and Pagan Pathways 25 Siv Ellen Kraft 2 It’s Not Easy Being Apolitical: Reconstruction and Eclecticism in Danish Asatro 43 Matthew H. Amster 3 Modern Heathenism in Sweden: A Case Study in the Creation of a Traditional Religion 64 Fredrik Gregorius 4 The Brotherhood of Wolves in the Czech Republic: From Ásatrú to Primitivism 86 Kamila Velkoborská 5 Soviet- Era Discourse and Siberian Shamanic Revivalism: How Area Spirits Speak through Academia 110 Eleanor Peers 6 In Search of Genuine Religion: The Contemporary Estonian Maausulised Movement and Nationalist Discourse 130 Ergo- Hart Västrik vi ◆ Contents 7 Emerging Identity Markets of Contemporary Pagan Ideologies in Hungary 154 Tamás Szilágyi 8 Hot, Strange, Völkisch, Cosmopolitan: Native Faith and Neopagan Witchcraft in Berlin’s Changing Urban Context 175 Victoria Hegner 9 Paganism in Ireland: Syncretic Processes, Identity and a Sense of Place 196 Jenny Butler 10 On the Sticks and Stones of the Greencraft Temple in Flanders: Balancing Global and Local Heritage in Wicca 216 Léon A. van Gulik 11 Iberian Paganism: Goddess Spirituality in Spain and Portugal and the Quest for Authenticity 239 Anna Fedele 12 Bellisama and Aradia: Paganism Re- emerges in Italy Francesca Ciancimino Howell 261 13 Authenticity and Invention in the Quest for a Modern Maltese Paganism 285 Kathryn Rountree List of Contributors 305 Index 309 Figures 2.1 Aarhus Blótlaug’s midsummer ritual, held at Lindholm Høje, June 2012. 46 2.2 Mathias (left) leading the procession with the statue of Freya to the Gudenå spring. 56 2.3 Participants wash with water from the Gudenå spring as part of the cleansing ritual. 57 2.4 Hammering a Danish two-kroner coin onto the statue of Freya. 57 4.1 Adrian and his Wolfdog, Akeenah Runar Waawanyanka. 89 4.2 Adrian, his daughter and Wolfdogs. 94 4.3 Wilmar. 97 4.4 The Wolves cook outdoors during summer. 104 6.1 Prayer meeting of maausulised at Kunda sacred hill in Mahu (Viru- Nigula) parish, north Estonia, November 2009. Homemade bread was placed on the white cloth. Beside it is a cauldron of porridge which was boiled at the site while folk songs were sung. Prayer elders addressed their prayers to the ancestors, Maaema, Uku and other deities. 137 6.2 Calendar of Maavald 10226 (2013), an alternative calendar in runic symbols introduced and popularized by maausulised. 139 8.1 The ‘initial spark’: handwritten advertisement for the purpose of founding an association to practise and cultivate ‘old customs’. 179 8.2 Xenia casts the circle and invokes Germanic deities at the ritual site at Krumme Lanke, thus creating a ‘super sign’ in the city of Berlin. 188 9.1 Druid sensing energy from a stone. 201 viii ◆ Figures 9.2 ‘Boann’, from the painting series The Ever- Living Ones by Jane Brideson. 207 10.1 Greencraft’s Tree Calendar. 221 10.2 Tree of Life–Tarot correspondences. 223 10.3 Stone circle on private land created with stones and pebbles gathered from various locations by coven members. The fence was erected for privacy because the ritual space can be partly seen from a nearby road. 226 12.1 An outdoor Pagan shrine with a Goddess statue. 267 12.2 Druids, Wiccans and other Pagans consecrate a new stone labyrinth at a community ritual site in Piedmont, 2013. 273 12.3 ‘Gallo- Celtic warriors’ assemble to spar and process in Milan’s central piazza, Piazza Duomo, at the Celtic New Year festival 2008. 276 13.1 The Goddess Atilemis. 295 13.2 The God Rahab. 298 Acknowledgements My sincere thanks to the volume’s contributors for their rich and diverse contributions. It has been a privilege and a fascina- tion to engage with your work. I am indebted to Jim Lewis, Sabina Magliocco, Graham Harvey and Liselotte Frisk who helped by recommending authors to round out the collection. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of Massey University, the School of Social and Cultural Studies and the School of People, Environment and Planning for supporting my fieldwork in Malta over the years. My thanks, also, to Massey’s wonderful librarians and my anthro- pological colleagues. I am very grateful to James Carrier, the EASA book series editor, whose solicitous and gracious shepherding of the project has eased the work, and to Adam Capitanio, Molly Mosher and Charlotte Mosedale at Berghahn Books for their attentive and encouraging assistance along the road to publication. Special thanks to the project’s three reviewers whose careful reading and perceptive comments were greatly appreciated. Introduction Context Is EverythingContext Is Everything: Plurality and Paradox Plurality and Paradox in Contemporary European Paganisms Kathryn Rountree Modern Pagan and Native Faith groups and movements have sprung up across Europe – as in the rest of the world – in recent decades, yet comparatively little has been published about them compared with the extensive literature on British and American Pagans and Pagan traditions.1 This is beginning to change, especially in relation to Central and Eastern Europe.2 All such movements, wherever they are, share some important characteristics – especially the