[Carruthers]

A group of Heathen sailors aboard the USS John C Stennis gather to worship Norse gods

Sailors on the USS John C. Stennis operate a warship that brings American power to the Arabian Sea and deploys jets to bloody fronts in Afghanistan.

But occasionally some gather on their long boat to recognise another power, thought to rule the waves and command the winds.

“We do a lot of praying to the god of seafarers, Njord,” said Joshua Shaikoski, one of a small group of practising Heathens who take part in “sumbels”, or ceremonies to worship Norse gods.

These are led by Joshua Wood, an aviation electrician’s mate from Alaska. The US Navy said Mr Wood had practised Heathenry for five years.
“I took a world mythology class in high school and that opened my eyes to the Nordic Gods,” he said.

Contemporary efforts to revive the Norse religion of Odin and Thor have involved reconstructing the cosmology laid out in medieval Icelandic texts such as the Prose Edda, by the 13th-century politician Snorri Sturluson.

In Iceland, the revival was recently marked by the reconstruction of a Norse temple, although a high priest suggested that the religion was not necessarily taken literally.
“I don’t think anyone believes in a one-eyed man who is riding a horse with eight feet,” Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson told Reuters.
“We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology.”

In the US military, one manifestation of rising Heathenry was a successful appeal by a soldier to be allowed to wear a beard, in observance of his “Heathen, Norse Pagan faith”.
The hammer of Thor has been added to a list of symbols that may be carved on a veteran’s headstone in Arlington National Cemetery.

Mr Wood said the Edda made him realise he identified more with the polytheistic system of faith of the Vikings than his family’s Roman Catholicism. In San Diego he found a group of Norse worshippers and through them became “certified to lead services on this ship”.

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The Times

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