Nordic Culture and Ancestry: Reading + Listening Guide

Written By Nourishing Kin

This reading and listening guide is meant to provide you with ample avenues for reconnection with Nordic culture and traditions. The Nourishing Kin community is full of avid readers and researchers, and we want to share all the goodness we find with anyone who is interested. This list is not comprehensive; it is curated. This means that we have encountered many more resources than what is listed here. For a resource to be included on our guide, it must meet the following requirements:

  • the content faithfully centers the culture/practice/people it claims to represent;

  • the resource and its authors do not condone racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, colonization, etc;

  • the resource has been reviewed by one of our facilitator team members.

We will continue to read and tend to this list. For reference, this collection was last updated: October 29, 2024

Cookbooks

Handicrafts

Modern Culture

Modern Norse Paganism

Mythology + Folklore

Runes

Traditions + Practices

Academic Resources/Creators of Interest

  • Nordic Animism by Rune Hjarno Rasmussen

  • “fjöll öll ok hólar váru fullir af landvéttum”: The Old Norse landvættir and related mythological beings by Flora Schanda

  • “The Maiden with the Mead: A Goddess of Initiation in Norse Mythology?” by Maria Kvilhaug

  • “Between Nature and Culture: Animals and Humans in Old Norse Literature” by Timothy J.S. Bourns

  • “Healing Hands and Magical Spells” by Britt-Mari Nasstrom

  • “Paleoeuropean Languages and Epigraphies: Germanic: the Runes” by Tineke Looijenga

  • “Theories of the Antiquity of Runes” by Tarrin Wills

Helpful notes on Nordic/Scandinavian reconnection, books, and resources:

  1. The region known as “Scandinavia” encompasses some - but not all - Nordic countries. It is commonly used as a reference for Nordic countries and culture. Nordic countries include Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland, while “Scandinavian” countries include only Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Norse and Germanic cultural influence extends beyond this region into the northeastern parts of Scotland, Ireland, and England and the coastal areas of mainland countries including France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Germany.

  2. “Scandinavian” and “Nordic” are broad terms referencing geographic areas, and are often used interchangeably. They do not accurately represent the nuances of culture present in distinct countries, counties, and provinces. Swedes are culturally distinct from Finns. Norwegians do things differently than Danes. Appreciation for the complexity of cultural variations is important. For folks living in the United States, a helpful comparison exercise is to consider the difference between Texas and California. Same country and similar latitudes; distinctly separate cultures.

  3. Sami are the Indigenous people of the lands known as Sapmi, which includes the northern parts of Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Russia. The Sami people are ethnically distinct from Scandinavian Europeans. Sami culture is separate from Scandinavian culture. The Sami are recognized as independent nations and have cultural protections in both Sweden and Norway.

  4. Viking culture is Nordic, but not all Nordic culture is ‘Viking.’ The Vikings and their culture belong to a specific time and place in history. Viking culture alone does not represent the breadth and depth of Nordic culture throughout history and geography.

  5. There is a heavy focus from modern white men on the traditionally masculine “warrior” aspects of Nordic and Viking culture. This is a narrow understanding of Nordic ancestral traditions. Women were active, prominent participants in Nordic culture and history, and women of the Nordic diaspora have a right to participation and representation in reconnection efforts.

  6. Historic (Classical Antiquity Era) peoples of Nordic countries were the Norse and Germanic tribes. Angles and Saxons share Germanic roots, but are not included under the Nordic umbrella.

  7. Unfortunately, many readily-available modern Norse pagan resources are rife with ideologies from the Nazi era. The Nazis appropriated ancestral traditions to cultivate a Volkish identity, a form of closed-ethnic nationalism, among German citizens. Esoteric “research” was funded by the Nazi party and used as white nationalist propaganda. Engaging with primary resources from this era should be done in the spirit of suspicion, and authors who align with their ideals should be held to the same standard.

  8. There are more resources for runes available than those listed on this guide. The curators of this list 1. wish to communicate their awareness of these resources, and 2. desire the limited nature of listed resources for runes to be interpreted as purposeful exclusion rooted in ethics rather than a representation of their research scope. Norse and Anglo-Saxon runes are still used to this day by racist neo-Nazis and white nationalists (see #7). For this reason, they are listed on the Anti-Defamation League website. Double check all authors of sources regarding runes and rune lore. Do not merely take authors at their word. Norse pagan community members are dedicated to informing folks about the reliability of resources. Research runic symbols and inscriptions before displaying or wearing them.

  9. Because of the significant language barrier, many primary sources and documents are inaccessible for English-speaking members of the Nordic diaspora. For this reason…

  10. … books, academic articles, and podcasts are not superior to knowledge held by living elders and tradition carriers. English-speaking members of the Nordic diaspora rely heavily on wisdom carriers who are able and willing to teach and translate traditional practices from their native languages and cultures. Nourishing Kin encourages respect for the patience and generosity of living tradition carriers.

Nourishing Kin
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Animism and the Natural World: Reading + Listening Guide