Origin from 1969
An early American and Canadian Odinist organization founded by Else Christensen, presenting Odinism as an ancestral Northern European religion. Academic treatment identifies it as historically significant in shaping a folkish, racially exclusive current within the broader modern Heathen movement.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period FounderElse Christensen, with her husband Alex Christensen 1 FoundedFounded in Canada in 1969 as the Odinist Study Group, renamed the Odinist Fellowship around 1971 following Alex Christensen's death; the Fellowship later published its periodical The Odinist from Crystal River, Florida. 1 Disputed
Point in DisputeAcademic treatment (Kaplan, 1997) identifies the Odinist Fellowship as an early vehicle for a racially exclusive, folkish interpretation of Heathenry, in explicit contrast to the universalist position that later Heathen organizations, The Troth among them, were founded partly to counter. 1 Status
Status TodayHistorical; not practised continuously 1 Dissolved as an organization after founder Else Christensen's death in 2005. Organisation
Distinguishing FeatureElse Christensen combined Odinist religion with an anarchist-inflected political framework and became known within the movement as the "Folk Mother." The organization dissolved after her death in 2005, with much of its membership moving to the Odinic Rite. 1 Learn More
The Folk Mother and an Early Fault Line
Else Christensen and her husband Alex founded the Odinist Study Group in Canada in 1969, renaming it the Odinist Fellowship around 1971 after Alex's death. Else went on running it alone for decades, publishing the periodical The Odinist first from Canada and later from Crystal River, Florida, and became known within the movement as the "Folk Mother," a title that captures both her longevity in the role and the ancestral, ethnically framed version of the religion she taught.
That framing is the reason the Odinist Fellowship matters to the movement's later history as much as its own. Jeffrey Kaplan's academic study of the group places it squarely within a folkish current, the position that the old Northern gods belong specifically to people of northern European descent, in explicit contrast to a universalist current that later Heathen organizations, The Troth prominent among them, were founded partly to stand against. The split between those two positions remains one of modern Heathenry's most publicly argued fault lines, and the Odinist Fellowship is where an organized American version of the folkish side first took durable institutional form.
Christensen also grafted an anarchist political framework onto her Odinism, an unusual combination that set her apart from later folkish organizations as much as from universalist ones. The Fellowship did not survive her: she died in 2005, the organization dissolved, and much of its remaining membership moved to the Odinic Rite.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names The Odinist Fellowship directly: "treatment of Else Christensen and the Odinist Fellowship and its place within the broader Odinist and Heathen movement."
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