A PIECE OF GOLD ONLY 5.2 CENTIMETERS ACROSS ALTERED THE WRITTEN HISTORY OF ODIN. Many of you have read about this unique gold object from the Fifth Century, but two years ago the Chieftain was able to look at it firsthand in the National Museum in Denmark. The object is the Vindelev C-bracteate catalogued as X13, IK 738, and C 63595. Made in the early fifth century, it bears the oldest securely datable written occurrence of Odin’s name yet known. Its worn runic Proto-Norse inscription ends...

When most people picture Ireland, they might be thinking of lush green hills, ancient Celtic folklore, and old castles. But if you dig just an inch beneath the pavement in modern Dublin and across the historic cities of the south, you run straight into a completely different world: the world of the Vikings. A 9th-century silver 'thistle' brooch. These were heavy-duty cloak fasteners worn by elite men, blending Irish design with Viking silver. Long before it was the bustling capital of the...

Among the most intimate rites preserved in Old Norse literature is the sprinkling of a newborn child with water and the giving or public declaration of a name. Modern Heathens commonly call this ceremony Ausa Vatni. It is sometimes described as a “Norse baptism,” but that comparison can mislead: the surviving passages concern naming, kinship, acceptance, protection, and belonging—not Christian conversion or the cleansing of original sin. The rite was simple in its surviving descriptions, yet...