In Australian (and British and US) law Odinism is described as "the continuation of ... the organic spiritual beliefs and religion of the indigenous peoples of northern Europe as embodied in the Edda and as they have found expression in the wisdom and in the historical experience of these peoples".
The word Odinism was first used in 1848 by the writer O. Brownson, who wrote of "A revival of Odinism, or the old Scandinavian heathenism".
Brownson was probably wrong to limit the geographical origin of Odinism to Scandinavia. Odinism is the ancestral religion of all the Germanic peoples prior to their forced, and only partially successful, conversion to Christianity. Odinism is the indigenous spirituality of many or most of the people living in what are now Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Austria, northern Italy and Spain. All of these regions (and others) were inhabited by Germanic tribes and groups, such as the Goths, Anglo-Saxons, Lombards, Franks, Visigoths, Rus, Vikings, and so on. In more recent times emigrants from these countries have also provided a large part of the population of many "New World" countries. Odinism is therefore also the spiritual heritage of most people in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. In many other countries the ancestors of a sizeable segment of the population were also Odinists. This applies to many South American states, to South Africa and Zimbabwe, and to much of Eastern Europe.
All people around the world whose ancestors were Odinists are known collectively as "the Nation of Odin".
The focus of this site is Odinism in Australia. But it would be misleading to limit our Australian Odinist perspective to the period after 1788, when people from the Nation of Odin first settled here, since our full heritage is far, far longer than that.
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