Confronting White Supremacy in Nordic Spirituality

Abstract: If there’s one thing that is widely associated with modern Norse spirituality, it is this form of Paganism’s long, ugly history with white supremacists and the far-right. A lot, however, has changed in the past decade thanks to anti-racist Nordic Heathen practitioners effectively confronting and rolling back white nationalist influences. Join Ryan Smith, author of The Way of Fire & Ice and “Subcultural Antifascism: Confronting the Far Right in Heathenry and Heavy Metal”, for a presentation on how this was accomplished, the ways other spiritual traditions can learn from the experiences of Heathenry, and the future for Nordic spirituality.

Presenter bio: Ryan Smith is an anti-racist Norse Heathen author. He has written The Way of Fire & Ice: The Living Tradition of Norse Paganism, Spinning Wyrd: A Journey Through the Nordic Mysteries, and contributed to No Pasarán: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis. He can be found at onblackwings.com.

Affiliation: Fire & Ice Community