Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Creating the Paradigm: Historical Preconditions of Modern Asatru -- Creating a Religion: The Emergence and Development of Late Twentieth Century Asatru -- Believing and Doing -- Contested Fields I: Race and Ethnicity -- Contested Fields II: Concepts of Religion and Anti-Monotheism -- Asatru – A Religion of Nature? -- Gender and Sexuality -- Asatru – An Academic Religion? -- Germanic Neopaganism – A Nordic Art-Religion? -- Instead of a Conclusion -- Interviews Conducted by Author -- Bibliography -- Index.

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Norse Revival offers a thorough investigation of Germanic Neopaganism (Asatru) through an international and comprehensive historical perspective. It traces Germanic Neopaganism’s genesis in German ultra-nationalist and occultist movements around 1900. Based on ethnographic research of contemporary groups in Germany, Scandinavia and North America, the book examines this alternative Neopagan religion’s transformations towards respectability and mainstream thought after the 1970s. It asks which regressive and progressive elements of a National Romantic discourse on Norse myth have shaped Germanic Neopaganism. It demonstrates how these ambiguous ideas about Nordic myth permeate general discourses on race, religion, gender, sexuality, and aesthetics. Ultimately, Norse Revival raises the question whether Norse mythology can be freed from its reactionary ideological baggage.

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