Making the Lore

Recently, the National Trust claimed that folklore is dying out due to the rise of social media. Their perception is that children in modern times can no longer relate to tales of yesteryear as the simply do not have any familiarity with the actions of the past. How many children, these days, have ever ridden a horse or put coal on a fire (to use examples from the above article)?

Folklore is an important part of what binds a strȳnd* together as it helps create a collective identity that allows each person to identify the “us” in contrast to the “them”. In a way, folklore also forms the foundation on which “higher” mythology is built. If mythology are the stories that teach us about the gods, folklore and superstition are the stories that teach us about the world. They contain many lessons and can give a lot of information in a way that allows for better retention than other, drier and more staid, methods might.

If younger generations are losing the ability to connect with outdated lessons about an older world, then we should be looking at forging new lessons more relevant to the world in which our children live. Whilst they may not connect with the tale of Yallery Brown and his farmyard misdeed, they may well appreciate a tale of gremlins causing the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death”.

A noticeable absence in the Anglo-Saxon corpus is any real collection of stories about the gods. Being that Frumcræft is an Anglo-Saxon form of Heathendom, we can’t simply “borrow” the North Germanic mythological tales, as exemplified by the Eddas. This is because the differences between the cultures include certain mythological beings not being evident in both contexts, and other beings being evidenced differently. What we can do is use the core stories as the basis for a brand new corpus of lore, one that is based on an understanding of the past but that is better adapted for our particular approach to Heathendom.

Creating new lore is a daunting concept but we should remember that all lore was new, once, and we see new lore sprouting up all the time. Furthermore, creating lore does not mean sticking to it or never modifying it. Lore, like practice, evolves over time and what we create now may become very different in a few generations. So long as it remains authentic and relevant, new lore should continue.

It should be noted that the creation of new lore is not an attempt to de-legitimise old lore but, rather, to give another view. Heathendom is not a universal religion, and it is okay for different denominations to have differing ideas on the gods, manifesting in differing stories about them. Likewise, we can see that almost all folklore either adapts to new times and places or is dropped in favour of something else or, indeed, nothing.

Don’t be afraid to tell stories no one else has heard before. The alternative might well be that no stories are told and the world will be a far poorer place for it.

*See the wordhoard for definitions.