Being Viking: Heathenism in Contemporary America by Jefferson F. Calico (review)

Heathenry, the modern Pagan religion modeling itself on the pre-Christian beliefs and practices of the linguistically Germanic peoples, has attracted growing attention over the past two decades. This, the latest contribution to the subject, began as a doctoral project conducted at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary by Jefferson F. Calico, now an associate professor at the University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky. Based on fieldwork carried out between 2010 and 2016, Calico has produced a dense, 500-page monograph examining the movement as it exists in the United States, with some reference to its history and manifestations elsewhere in the world.

After introducing its reader to the subject, Being Viking provides an overview of the religion's history in the United States before discussing what Calico calls the "tributaries" running into the movement, including white nationalism, pop culture, and Wicca. It explores questions of race in a chapter on Stephen McNallen's concept of "metagenetics," before examining practitioners' conceptions of the self. Subsequent chapters look at the religion's polytheism, the place of animal sacrifice within its ritual framework, its concepts of kith and kin, the role of "magical" activities like seiðr, and, finally, its views of nature and environmentalism. Although there are parts of Calico's book that cover topics already examined in some depth by previous scholars, he also sheds light on previously neglected topics, for instance discussing the place of children in the Heathen community and underscoring the class identity prevalent in the movement, neither of which subjects have attracted much attention in the past.

Calico's is the third academic monograph devoted to U.S. Heathenry. Mattias Gardell's 2003 Gods of the Blood looked at extreme right-wing Heathen groups, while Jennifer Snook's 2015 study American Heathens focused on Heathen concepts of identity, especially the politics of race and gender in the movement. Of these, Calico's is the first to be written by someone outside the Heathen community itself. Comparisons will most likely be drawn with Snook's work, although this is a far less politicized volume than hers. As an outsider, Calico appears largely content to observe and describe the Heathen movement, rather than seeking to promote specific reforms within it. This apparent detachment from the movement sets him apart from many of the scholars who have conducted ethnographic research into U.S. Pagan movements. Such an approach may have resulted from the project's origins as a dissertation conducted at a Protestant theological seminary—one can imagine some interesting discussions about his research taking place there!—but may also simply reflect the fact that Calico did not personally want to convert to Heathenry himself. In its outsider orientation, his book is perhaps best compared to Stefanie von Schnurbein's Norse Revival (2016), a recent magisterial study focusing on Heathens in Northern Europe.

There are points in Being Viking where Calico offers some reflexive thoughts about his experiences (10, 275, 424, 484–6) but perhaps more could have been made of this, particularly given the substantial literature on the insider/outsider debate and the important place this has in ongoing methodological and theoretical discussions among scholars of modern Paganism. Indeed, the virtual absence of reference to these debates is a drawback. Similarly, while Calico interviewed an unspecified number of practitioners for his study, they are only occasionally quoted directly, and more could have been made of this resource. Another slight disappointment is that the pictures featured in the volume, all of which appear in black and white, were reproduced at a fairly poor quality. This minor quibble notwithstanding, Calico's is an important and very welcome contribution to the study of modern Heathen religion and for its breadth is probably set to become a required volume on the subject. It is essential reading for all scholars of modern Paganism and highly recommended for scholars of U.S. religion and new religions more broadly.