Heathens in Pandemic

A virus sweeps through the nations of the world. Governments scramble to find a cure or vaccine. People shelter in their homes whether through caution or law. How should the Asatruar adapt to this? It is covered in the old stories.

One such story tells of a dwarf called Alvis who attempts to marry Thrud, Thor's daughter. The dwarf, traveling by night to avoid the sun, reaches Asgard and offers great treasures if Thrud will marry him. Many tell Her it is a good idea. When Thor gets home, He is not so sure. He devises a test to see if Alvis is knowledgeable and wise. All night, Thor asks questions about the Nine Worlds, and the dwarf answers them all. The last question is about what happens when the dwarves are caught out in the sun. By this time, it is dawn, the sun rides up through Delling's Door and Alvis is turned to stone.

There are many tales where being clever is the key to success. Even the Thunderer, known for His brute strength and poor impulse control, knows this. One must be both knowledgeable and wise.

How does that relate to the pandemic? We must be knowledgeable and wise. We must take precautions. The Asatru community is not large enough to risk our people unnecessarily. It is not cowardly to take precautions, it is wisdom.

Be careful about where you get your information. There have been many conflicting sources out there, and some of them do not have your best interest at heart. Try to find the ones who actually study these things as their profession and have the general support of the other members of their profession.

I've met many Asatruar who work in construction or similar trades. In some cases, the pandemic may have stopped you from working. If you do have to go back to work, take the extra precautions, even if your coworkers give you crap. Now is also a good time to look at going back to school, even with distance education, to get a job where it is easier to survive these blows to the economy.

Many people are worried about when life will go back to the way it was before the pandemic. Heathens know there is no real going back. Instead, you go forward and deal with the world as it is. When an ideological plague overwhelmed the world to wipe out our religion, our ancestors adapted as needed, and today, we adapt to live our religion in the modern world. We can do this through a pandemic too.

Be clever. Look for the opportunities to start new business ventures that are disease resistant. Apply your boldness to the situation and move forward while the others are paralyzed with hopelessness. Can you make local deliveries? Can you build or fix things? Can you make masks or maybe plexiglass shields for the workplace? What can you do to move forward?

When all of this is done, which may take quite a while, we need to still be standing, at the very least. The optimal result is not just that we are standing, but that we have shown that we can be knowledgeable and wise, applying wisdom with boldness, and have progressed.