The Birth of Odinism

Now, some people are going to tell you that Odinism is an ancient faith, the “faith of our ancient white ancestors.” But this is more of a conceit than any actual fact. Odinism as it is practiced today is actually just a little over a hundred years old. And it’s quite different from the Norse Paganism, Ásatrú or Heathenry most people practice today.

Most of those differences were there right at the beginning.

The foundation of what would become known as Odinism began in earnest with an Australian Fascist named Alexander Rud Mills.

“Odinism” as a term first entered the language through a British Essayist, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), but it didn’t find purchase as an idea for a new religion until it reached, of all places, Australia. Alexander Rud Mills (1885-1964), an Australian lawyer, became enamored with the writings of Thomas Carlyle, Friedrich Nietzsche, early Fascist thought, and with the idea of Odinism as the natural religion for “the British Race.” He lived in and toured Europe from 1931 to 1934. In Germany, he met Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler (who was, however, not especially interested in his ideas) and Erich Ludendorff and his wife, founders of an Odinist society called the Tannenbergbund. 

Mills was also influenced by the Ariosophy of Guido List. In England, he met leading fascists, attended meetings of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, and apparently tried to found a group called the Moot of the Anglekin Body. (Bird, Nazi Dreamtime, pp. 19-20, 30-31, 116-117)

Back in Australia, Mills began producing a series of books expounding his own somewhat idiosyncratic take on the elder religion, beginning with his 1933 book of poems Hael! Odin! In Melbourne, he founded the Anglekin Body, also known as the Anglecyn Church of Odin. Allegedly, his Thursday night ceremonies on the outskirts of Melbourne drew as many as 120 people. His book of liturgies and hymns, The First Guide Book to the Anglecyn Church of Odin, was published in 1936, under the pen name of Tasman Forth (Winter, The Australia First Movement, pp. 39-41; Bird, 116-117).

Mills’s Odinist religion was quite different from what modern Ásatrú would later become.

It was nearly monotheistic; Odin, for Mills, was essentially synonymous with the One God, being “that of the Great One which man can know” (The Odinist Religion, p. 117)

Odin was also the name of a mortal man, also known as George, Sigge, Zag-Dar, or Adam-Thor, who was “hallowed as the greatest and the most beloved of all messengers of the Great One” (The Odinist Religion, pp. 31-35; First Guide Book, pp. 17, 61).

The other Norse deities are not mentioned as often, but Mills saw “the Thor” as a personification of Odin’s active strength, while “the Baldur” was a sort of collective divine image in all humanity: “All children born upon the earth are children of the All-Father, and the Baldur is in each of us.” (The Odinist Religon, p. 160).

Mills neatly solved the academic question of whether Freyja and Frigga might be the same: his Odin was married to “Freyga,” a maternal figure. He also made fairly frequent references to angels.

An important aspect of his theology was the idea that God or Odin had assigned each person a natural position in life with its own duties and obligations, as a small part of the great whole. This he called the “Gard in God,” and every man’s divine purpose was to work faithfully at his Gard in God.

Mills’s understanding of historical Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon culture was rather fanciful by scholarly standards.

His Odinist liturgy was heavily based on the Anglican Christian order of worship: The First Guide Book includes rites for fast days (“Vigils and Days for Partial Abstinence”), “Morning Service”, “Communion,” and “Evensong”, as well as a list of ten “Commandments,” seven of which are identical to seven of the biblical Ten Commandments (p. 63).

Written in a rather flowery imitation of the language of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, it includes “scripture” readings and feast days dedicated to the Eddas and Beowulf—but also to Shakespeare, Newton, Nelson, Locke, and other English worthies, as well as to the traditional patron saints of the four British nations: George (England), Andrew (Scotland), David (Wales), and Brian (Ireland—not Patrick, for some reason). (pp. 13-14, 48-49)

His church also showed more than a little Masonic influence; his initiation ceremony for new members reads like a cross between the Sacrament of Baptism from the Book of Common Prayer and the initiation of an Entered Apprentice Mason. (First Guide Book, pp. 76-78; see Winter, The Australia First Movement, p. 44; Bird, Nazi Dreamtime, p. 123)

Most of Mills’ actual liturgy didn’t survive into modern Odinism and other Folkish religions. What did survive, though, was the fundamental belief in racial identity as the center of spiritual life, and the need to fight to preserve the purity of that white folk-soul against “universalist” religions that would destroy it.

Alexander Rud Mills as the forefather of modern Folkish religions

“Folkism” is commonly understood in our faith as being religions that emphasize racial, ethnic or national characteristics as essential to the character of someone’s spiritual life and thus determinative of what religions are “natural” or “unnatural” to them.

In shorter terms, Folkists believe that race determines religion, and that any religion who doesn’t center racial identity is fundamentally perverse, degenerate and to be completely rejected.

Antisemitism

Mills’s writings bespeak an obsession with the Jews, whom he blames for essentially everything wrong with the world, including Christianity:

• “Under Christianity with its cloak of sanctity, the Jews and the usurer have their feet upon our neck” (The Odinist Religion, p. 29);
• “Jew-worshipping Christians still ask us to discard and forget the wonderful story of our own Aryan people and take the so-called story of the Jews in place of it” (p. 36);
• “Till our people see it, the Jews have got us enslaved, spiritually and otherwise, till we, devitalised, decay and die.” (p. 246);
• “the Jews, generally speaking, recognise the degradation and disintegration of the peoples under Christian culture, and by its direction and otherwise, have hopes of ruling over such people (and over all the world’s peoples if Christianity be spread over the world). . . Jews try to hasten the process by using the many powers in their control” (First Guide Book, p. 34).

In modern Folkist religious movements, this has been one element that has persisted unchanged, though it’s not always expressed as straightforwardly as Mills (but it’s always under the surface). In most public facing statements, Folkists will fall back on this idea of “spiritual enslavement” and imagery of “liberation” for white people from the Christian (here understood to mean Jewish) yoke.

Ásatrú rejects this notion entirely. It has no place in any genuine expression of our faith traditions. This is part of the reason why the label of “Odinism” is rejected by most modern Norse Pagans: it directly ties back to this virulent anti-semitic nonsense.

Metagenetics, Eugenics and the Taboo of Miscegenetion

One belief that would pass to folkish Heathenry was Mills’s insistence that genetics determines spirituality, and that following a “foreign” religion was the root cause of social malaise: “Our own racial ideals and traditions (not those of another) are our best guide to health and national strength.” (The Odinist Religion, p. 7)

Another was the importance of banning miscegenation: “Odinists do not marry persons racially distant from them. They understand the dangers of mongrelism and the mating of opposites.” (The Odinist Religion, p. 54)

This is also the reason why Folkists despise Christianity and other “universalist” faiths, like Ásatrú, because they promote an environment where the most vile sin of “miscegenation” can and does occur. In the view of the Folkist, the white race is under constant threat of elimination by all the other races, and must fight back to preserve itself. This elimination isn’t through any direct war, but through the tolerance of “miscegenation” which, in their view, dilutes and ultimately destroys the white race’s connection to the vital source of spiritual nourishment.

These sorts of beliefs couldn’t be further from the fundamental values of hospitality and inclusivity common to most if not all forms of Ásatrú today.

This constant anxiety about “white genocide” lead Mills naturally to his alliance with the Hitler government in Germany.

Rud Mills direct involvement with the Nazis

Mills’s position is made unmistakably clear by the fact that he was also publishing outright Nazi propaganda at the time, including two issues of a paper called the National Socialist in 1936 and 1937, which bore a swastika on the masthead and ranted at some length about “Aryans” and Jews. (The front page of one issue is reproduced in Bird, Nazi Dreamtime.)

He personally sent a copy of The Odinist Religion to Hitler, and he worked closely with Australian Fascist leaders (Winter, Dreaming of a National Socialist Australia, pp. 42-47; Bird, Nazi Dreamtime, pp. 88-92, 116-119).

Germany, of course, had its own Völkisch (Folkish) movement that promoted many of the similar ideas as Rud Mills: racial determinative religion, Christianity as an unnatural religion for the “aryan” race and the promotion of a re-imagined pre-Christian (or post-Christian in some cases) religion as the natural and necessary faith to which the white race must return.

It was here that the basic ideas of Odinism fused with the political principles of the Nazi Folkish movement and inspired the creation of the “Odinist Fellowship”

It was here that a familiar character enters the stage, who would become critical to the spread of Odnism in the United States. Else Christiansen, a member of the Danish Nazi Party and avowed “Folkist” was inspired also by Alexander Rud Mills’ Odinism, and when she immigrated to Canada she brought this faith with her and formed the Odinist Fellowship.

The end: Australia First, arrest and decline in popularity

In March 1942, Mills was detained under harsh conditions by the wartime Australian government along with members of the isolationist Australia First discussion group, which he had joined in 1941 (Bird, Nazi Dreamtime, pp. 257). Whether his detention was legally justifiable is still debated by Australian historians. Some have called it an illegal infringement of civil rights. Others point to the threat of Japanese invasion as justification for the measure—some, though not all, of the Australia First circle were advocating cooperation with Japan, although Mills himself seems not to have done this (Bird, Nazi Dreamtime, pp. 316-320). In any case, no criminal charges were ultimately filed against Mills. He was released from detention in December 1942, but his Anglecyn Church of Odin dissolved, although some Odinists allegedly continued practicing in secret.

After the war, Mills tried and failed to win restitution for his imprisonment. He apparently tried to re-establish his church in the 1950s as the First Church of Odin, but it was not successful (Gardell, Gods of the Blood, p. 167). He self-published his last work on Odinism, a pamphlet called The Call of our Ancient Nordic Religion, in 1957.

And it’s in prison, ironically, where Alexander Rud Mills would have his most lasting legacy: through Else Christiansen’s prison ministry.

Else Christiansen saw prison ministry as an essential part of a Folkish resurgence in the Americas. She began doing direct prison ministry in Florida and introduced “Odinism” as a viable alternative to Christian and Muslim prison ministry as a way for prisoners to organize and establish relationships. When they got out of prison, Else would pass the former inmates onto a support network that would help further guide them to be tools of the far right white nationalist cause.

Which is why, to this day, Odinism is almost exclusively used as a term within the prison system to describe a religion that is fundamentally white nationalist in its beliefs and goals.