Symbol and Ritual in Contemporary Norwegian Asatru

ABSTRACT:This article draws on qualitative fieldwork to analyze the relation between symbolical discourses and ritual practice in the Norwegian new religious movement Asatru. Drawing on the work of Seligman and others a distinction is made between an indicative as-is and a subjunctive as-if mode of relating to religious matters. Adherents of Asatru can be shown to maintain a large set of theological explanations on the gods and goddesses, many of them incommensurable. This symbolical as-is discourse is consistently subverted in preference for an as-if approach able to include the ambiguity and limits of human experience. The data reveals that the ritual sacrifice, the blót, is what keeps the community together: it is its reason for existence. With its nondiscursive open-endedness this ritual creates an alternative community. Not only that, this form of ritual, not propositional discourse, is what enables autonomy and personal development.