How the Northern European Forest Commons Can Inform Modern Heathen Practice in Canada

This is part 4 of my blog series on the Forest Commons of Northern Europe. The previous section was on how the Enclosure Movement affected colonization in Canada and elsewhere and how Canadians can ally with Indigenous peoples going forward. Previously we also talked about what the Forest Commons were and their History up to modern day. If you haven’t read those posts yet, you may want to loop back to them.

This post will be about modern Heathenry in Canada and building grith with Indigenous Communities. In this post we will examine stories from Indigenous peoples of North America as well as Heathen stories, and attempt to create common ground. We will discuss:

• Spirits of Place

• 7 Generations philosophy and being good ancestors

• The importance of community

• Sacred Trees

• Ancestry and connection to land

• Gifting practices

• Ways to move forward

An important part of Heathenry is the veneration of Spirits of Place. Understand this to be spirits who would aid humans, not malevolent spirits. Heathens usually believe that there are spirits all around us in rocks, trees, and landforms. These spirits should be respected and honoured when we are on the land that they call home. We honour these spirits through the gifting cycle, which is giving gifts in hopes that these spirits will see us favourably and treat us fairly. 

It seems to me that there is a very close parallel between Heathen gifting and reciprocity with Spirits of Place and the Indigenous ideology surrounding the Honourable Harvest. This is the concept of approaching the spirit of an animal or plant before taking its life or some of its vitality to sustain your own. It is about making sure that there is enough of something before you take, to ensure sustainability, and also about asking permission from that spirit.

It is important as Canadian Heathens to think about the implications of our actions. We should learn about Honourable Harvest practices. We should also think about what gifts we give to the Spirits of Place and tailor them to our landscape. In Europe gifts were often things like milk or alcohol, but we need to be mindful of the feelings of the beings around us. These gifts may not be well received here. We may want to instead offer tobacco or cornmeal, or something that will not harm the local environment such as water or herbal tea.

I have also heard that some Indigenous groups do not believe it is wise to recognize the Spirits of a Place because that would draw attention to you that may not be wise. It is important to learn about the place where you live, its history, and the customs of the Indigenous peoples who live there to help determine the best way to relate to the Spirits of Place.

"Seven Generations" by Frederick Franck. Image accessed from Wikimedia under Creative Commons attribution.

7 Generations and Sustainability for Our Descendants

We see with the modern Swedish Forest Commons that they have increased old growth forests, and yet the Timber Industry spins that as “non-productive” land. What we know is true as modern Heathens is the need to reconnect with the land on a spiritual level in order to heal our history and our relationships with the natural world. The forest doesn’t exist to be commodified, and neither do people. Healing this inter-generational wound will take generations to heal.

The 7 Generations Principle is an Iroquois teaching about choosing our actions now based on how they will affect the next seven generations. We cannot let all the decisions about land use come down to profit margins or we won’t have much left for our descendants.

Beyond this, we can see the path to decolonization of the Western mindset, and also to healing our relationship with Indigenous peoples through the work of Truth and Reconciliation. It is important to understand that the task seems daunting because we are at the beginning of a multi-generational path to healing. The first steps will seem the hardest but the important part is to keep moving forward, so that we leave less for our descendants. 

In Heathenry we talk about being a good ancestor. Often we think about that just within our direct family lines or close-knit communities, but in this case we need to think more broadly about the next seven generations and what they need to be successful.

Community is Our Strength

We can see the importance of community and how it ties to sustainable practice for land use. As Heathens our strength is community, and have the ability to act as catalysts of change because of this strength. Just like the dairy cooperatives in Sweden we have the ability from a grassroots level to affect real change here in Canada. We need to start small and grassroots building our own Heathen communities here in Canada, and building change. Building grith bonds with Indigenous communities is imperative to our continued success.

The Heathen Confederation of Canada is an inclusive Heathen organization here that will hopefully help us to build grith bonds between Heathen communities across Canada, and also grith with other communities that we ally with. It is a tool for finding other inclusive Heathens, sharing ideas, and driving change. We also need to work at the local and regional levels to promote inclusivity, and learn about the local landscapes. We have learned from the Forest Commons that the best way to protect the environment is at the local level, because the people living there have the best knowledge of the land and its inhabitants, and what they need. 

Indigenous knowledge keepers hold the key to understanding the landscape even better, as their oral histories can tell us about sustainable practices and environmental changes on the land further back than our own recollections. It is important to help foster healthy community with local Indigenous peoples, proving ourselves to be trustworthy allies who understand our shared history and actively work towards healing and reconciliation. We need to recognize when to act and when to listen, and work towards a brighter shared future for humans and non-humans on the lands that we call home.

"Yggdrasil" from the 17th century Icelandic manuscript AM 738 4to.

Sacred Trees

Both Heathens and Indigenous people see the land and other-than-human beings as sacred. In particular, I want to focus in this section on Sacred Trees, since we are talking from the perspective of the Northern European Forest Commons as a basis for understanding. In the first post in this series I talked about the Heathen creation story, about Ask and Embla (the first humans) being created from trees, and about Líf and Lífþrasir (the two humans who survive Ragnarok by hiding among the roots of Yggdrasil). I also talked about Yggdrasil as the Tree of Life and the center of the 9 worlds in the Heathen cosmology. 

Just recently I was attending an online group discussing the Year of Aun/Unn (a Nordic pagan revival of the octennial cycle, which is related to the lunisolar calendar, but also associated with transformation of broken cycles and healing) and some of the people present asked me for Indigenous stories about sky deities, knowing that I knew a number of Indigenous stories. In the process of recounting these stories I was reminded of one story that is very relevant here. That is the story of Turtle Island. It has a number of versions across Indigenous groups from the Anishinabe to the Huron to the Iroquois to the Mohawk. I will just tell the story as I recall it being told to me.

Long ago the world was covered in water. Above the world lived the Sky Chief and his daughter, who was pregnant. In the lands of the Sky Chief there was a great tree, whose seeds were medicines. At the base of the tree was a hole in the clouds looking down on the world below. One day the Sky Daughter went to the base of the tree to peer down at the world below, but she lost her balance and fell through. She tried to grasp a branch so she did not fall, but instead only grasped a handful of seeds.

Below in the water there were animals who saw the Sky Daughter fall and they knew she could not live in the water like them. They rushed to her aid. 

“Put her on my back.” said Turtle and the other animals did. But they knew that she could not live like that and needed ground. 

One of them said, “There is soil far below the water if we could get to it.”

Each one tried, and each could not swim deep enough to reach it. Finally Muskrat said, “I will try.”

The other animals laughed because he was so small, but Muskrat dove.

And he was gone so long that the other animals began to worry he would not resurface. 

Eventually he did but he collapsed and the other animals placed him on Turtle’s back along with the Sky Daughter. It was a while before one of them noticed that Muskrat’s hand was clenched shut. They pried it open to find it was full of soil. 

They spread the thin layer of soil on Turtle’s back, praising Muskrat for his bravery. In the soil the Sky Daughter planted all the seeds. They grew into all of the plants that we now know. All of the plants we use for food and medicines, and the four sacred herbs. Soon the Sky Daughter gave birth to twins and from them came all people, and some of the animals joined her on Turtle’s back as well. If you look at a map of North America you will see it is shaped like a Turtle.

From this story we can see that many Indigenous peoples also had a story about a sacred tree and how we as people are connected to the trees. Our understanding of trees through these stories helps to understand our connection to the land and to the other-than-humans.

The Tuntre and Connection to the Land

The Tuntre is a tradition in Scandinavia where a sacred tree is planted in the center of the yard on a family farm which reflects the intimacy with place. Caring for the tree demonstrates respect for ancestral spirits and provides direct connection with the spirits of the land. The tuntres have a guardian spirit that resides in them that keeps the farmstead safe as long as it is treated with the proper respect.

Tree types are chosen for their longevity and it is believed that destroying the tree spells disaster for the family.

Understanding Ancestry and Connection to the Land

For many Indigenous peoples home is not a building, but a sense of place, a connection to the land and the different beings that live there. The connection to the land is measured in the presence of the ancestors' bones beneath our feet. Wisdom of the land and how to survive is passed down from generation to generation. The way of living for Indigenous people reflects their closeness to the land and preserving it for future generations.

When I was in university I took a course in Canadian Poetry. At the time there was a resident poet at the university who was an Indigenous woman, and she spoke in class one day. We were reading a poem by Margaret Atwood called “Death of a Young Son by Drowning.”

He, who navigated with success

the dangerous river of his own birth

once more set forth

on a voyage of discovery

into the land I floated on

but could not touch to claim.

[...]

After the long trip I was tired of waves.

My foot hit rock. The dreamed sails

collapsed, ragged.

                   I planted him in this country

                   like a flag.

What the resident poet then said stuck with me, “Indigenous people see white people as pale ghosts drifting across the landscape. They cannot connect without the bones of the ancestors beneath their feet.” 

It was these words that informed my own practice as a Heathen, when I found myself moving halfway across the country and finding it difficult to connect with the land around my new city. I was lucky enough to have had family who lived here previously. I went to my grandfather’s grave and I asked him to help me connect with the land. After I asked, the wind picked up. Since then it has been smooth sailing. Our ancestors connect us to the land. In the Havamal it says, “A rootless tree cannot be trusted.” Don’t be a rootless tree. That is the challenge of being a Heathen in Canada. Not all of us have ancestors beneath our feet to guide us. Some of us have to be the ancestor. And that I think is why us as non-Indigenous Canadians, and often us as Canadian Heathens, are interested in lineage. It isn’t all about blood ancestry. As Mathias Nordvig said in his podcast, The Sacred Flame, “You are a nobody.” The idea of blood ancestry was elitism among the nobility of Europe. Most of us descended from the common people. 

We are not special. Our blood lineage doesn’t make us special. Our race doesn’t make us special. All that lineage affords us is an understanding of where we came from. It keeps us from being rootless trees. But if we think about Yggdrasil we must remember that Nidhoggr lived among the roots feasting on the things that decayed. That is the natural order. We cannot preserve the roots that are damaged and corrupted and hope to maintain a healthy tree. Nidhoggr is necessary. We must tend to the flame, not worship the ashes. 

Take what is necessary from our shared history in order to build a better future, and be the best ancestors we can be.

Gifting Practices

For Heathens the ideas of gifting and reciprocity are how we relate to the world around us. I talked briefly about building relations with Spirits of Place through the gifting cycle, but we do similarly when relating to our ancestors and the Gods. More importantly to this narrative, we also use the gifting cycle to build relationships with people. In Heathenry we say “a gift for a gift” and what we mean is that when we gift something to someone they are more likely to view us favourably and build a relationship with us. Gifts are given back and forth to maintain friendships. Not all gifts are tangible things, but rather things that the other person sees as valuable. This could be helping someone move or taking them out for lunch or helping them edit a school paper or whatever. This is the basis for all relationships in Heathenry.

In Indigenous practices gifting is also important. The Potlatch among Northwest Coastal communities was a gifting ceremony that helped to cement status. Another example of gifting is the Cree idea of the host giving a blanket to a guest. The idea was that if you got stranded on the way home, at least you would have a blanket. 

In many ways Indigenous ideas on gifting are similar to gifting among the historic Heathens of Northern Europe, where the host would give gifts to the guests to cement status and gain favour with them. 

Why is gifting important to this conversation? We need to develop relationships with Indigenous peoples based in trust and reciprocity. We need to show through actions, not just words, that we are allies, and we need to open the doors to communication between our communities. In Heathenry, we call this “grith” which is a relationship of reciprocity between communities or members of separate communities, whereas we use “frith” to describe a similar relationship within our own community.

Moving Towards a Place of Understanding

It is in the best interests of Heathens to work with Indigenous people to preserve our natural environments for future generations. We can take what we have learned about Forest Commons and the importance of sustainable forest management for their preservation and use that as a building point to help us come together with Indigenous peoples and ally with them in land stewardship. It also informs us of the dangers of allowing industry to control the narrative. 

We can also learn from our landscape and from Indigenous people how to best build and maintain relationships with the Spirits of Place. We need to reconnect to the land to decolonize ourselves and to heal the rupture in the Western mindset that is causing us to work against the natural world, instead of embracing it as life sustaining. We have a lot to learn from Indigenous peoples in Canada and across the world as we work to remember in ourselves, the knowledge that was severed as a result of the Enclosure Movement in Northern Europe. As Canadian Heathens we are right in the thick of it, striving to heal ourselves as well as work towards Truth and Reconciliation, but also often being at a disadvantage in our own understanding as we are disconnected from our ancestral lands. What we have to our advantage is our worldview, our understanding of there being a world of other-than-humans all around us, and our strength of community. We must seek to break cycles, and be the best ancestors that we can be. 

In the beginning, we came from the trees and in the end we must return to them. 

References: 

"Death of a Young Son by Drowning" by Margaret Atwood

The Sacred Flame Podcast 

https://open.spotify.com/show/23HBBPULuPPZVhRgdNsxE3?si=dba43e2c1855421a 

“Sacred Trees of Norway and Sweden: A Friluftsliv Quest” by Douglas Forell Hulmes 

"Sentient Nature-Our Ancestors Spiritual Relationship to the Natural World" by Maria Kvilhaug https://bladehoner.wordpress.com/2019/06/05/sentient-nature-our-ancestors-spiritual-relationship-to-the-natural-world/?fbclid=IwAR3ikm4nWRBmEhGDjr0UU7cMLGDi5uJ_oJ2oFaJ7P1SJ6fj1sYLUxbkgtFAot 

"What is Home?" by Tarjei Vesaas

Further Reading: 

“Should this tree have the same rights as you?” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/02/trees-have-rights-too-robert-macfarlane-on-the-new-laws-of-nature 

Belonging to the Earth: Nature Spirituality in a Changing World by Julie Brett (this is the account of a Druid in Australia of very similar ideologies there.)

Images:

All images were made by myself using Canva stock images unless sourced in-text.