The Dutch pagan community “Nederlands Heidendom” (“Dutch Heathendom”) publishes its fifth “heathen yearbook”. Where “Nederlands Heidendom” has been mostly a virtual group of mostly youngsters on an internet message board, things change slowly. There have been sporadic walks for quite some time, but since a few years there are also annual festivities. The people behind the website and the messageboard started putting longer articles together and making them available in book-form. The 2007 yearbook is 90 pages and filled with four articles. The cover and the backcover contain drawings of “Dauwvoeter” (“dewfeeter”) who also explains these drawings in the beginning of the book. Next up is an article about pagan midsummer festivals by “Boppo Grimmsma”. The word “heiden” (“heathen”) is written about by “Axnot” and “Boppo”. I prefer that English term myself in this context, because however Dutch does have the word “paganisme” (“paganism”), there is no word for “pagan” (which would be something like “pagaan”); besides, “heathen” (“from the heathers”) is a very literal English version of the Dutch “heiden”. In any case, “Axnot” opens with some taste quotes from temporal, mostly reformed publications and their idea about “heathens”. Passing positive explanations of the term in the Renaissance the reader travels further to the times of the witch-hunts and the dawning of WWII. Towards the end “Axnot” explains why we could/should still use the term “heiden”.
A continuing project is the translation of the book Die Geistliche Welt Der Germanen (‘the spritual world of the Germans’) by Jan de Vries. This time we get chapter 2 (last year it was 3 and 7), so 2, 3 and 7 have yet to follow before we have the entire work. The last article is the shortest one Olaf speaks about “the deeper roots of the phenomenon dwarf”.
All in all a nice read I guess (I have only paged through the publication), so if you can read Dutch and you are interested in this booklet, visit heidendom.nl and get yourself a copy.