The Modern Revival

The Anglo-Saxon paganism practised today is a modern reconstruction, not a survival handed down in unbroken line from the pre-Christian past. Emerging within the broader growth of Germanic Heathenry (Heathenry, or Asatru in its Norse-focused form) from the later twentieth century, and taking clearer shape in the twenty-first, the specifically English-facing tradition often calls itself Fyrnsidu (Old English for "old custom" or "ancient way"). Its adherents seek to honour Woden, Thunor, Tiw, Frig, and other deities and to revive seasonal observances, drawing on the same sparse evidence, Bede, place-names, archaeology, and comparison with Norse sources, that scholars use, and supplementing it with informed reconstruction and personal practice. Careful practitioners are candid that theirs is a contemporary revival building on fragments rather than a continuous inheritance, a distinction that matters both historically and out of respect for what can and cannot be known about the original religion.