It does not happen often that I get myself a book and decide not to review it. Hraftzer Asatru: An Introduction is one such though. I got the book because I never heard of “Hraftzer” and was curious what new kind of Asatru would have sprung from the USA. The book proved to be a serious A4 book of 267 pages. It soon became clear that “Hraftzer” sprang from the mind of an individual who came up with the term just because it sounds somewhat Scandinavian (but says as much too). I know this may sound like a blow under the girdle, but I do not mean this that dismissive, but the book reminds of a certain manifestoe that was launched in Norway five years ago. Like in that manifesto, the author is gravely disappointed by modern society and aims to refer it to a more ‘traditional’ makeup with parts of ‘different kinds of people’. The book is more a sociological or even political manifest than a heathen one. Actually, “Asatru” seems nothing much more than a very thin varnish to suggest a return to a more tribal, each to their own, way of living with a few rituals, but mostly a lot of reverence for the ‘elder’ of the organisation.
Not my type of literature.