Norway has recently tightened its asylum seeking and immigration regulations to protect its people and culture. In a statement that opens with a line that could have come from the Donald Trump play book, the government of Norway has stated (regarding those who seek to break their laws), “If you do not leave voluntarily, you will be returned by force.”
The statement goes on to say that Norway is reducing benefits by 10-20% and they are increasing the number of years you must live in Norway before being eligible for permanent residence. In a move that even a bleeding heart liberal could understand they are issuing only temporary residence status to some and are facilitating the foreigner’s return to their home country once the situation there improves.

They will be limiting family reunification so that every Tom, Dick and Harry cannot bring over 30 cousins. In an other unique move they are working with the Iraq government in order to return Iraq citizens back to Iraq! They mean business, people who cross into Norway without a visa wil be immediately deported. Those who have been granted asylum in a other country but still attempt too come to Norway will also be promptly deported. 

Norway has seized my heart! In this time when so many European nations have lost their minds regarding  refugees, immigration and the take over of their native cultures, it is very encouraging to me to see Norway stand out as such a role model to other white countries. 

You can visit their website here 

Here I am, I have a Bachelor’s degree in German and I had no idea that any modern people still sung traditional German folk music. Today I was reading over on Derek Wolf’s blog and he featured an amazing post about how nationalism and traditionalism make for happier women and he turned me on to this adorable little gal named Marilena. What an amazing role model! I’ve become and instant fan, my little girls will be enjoying these videos often in our home! 

A Twitter friend of mine recently turned me onto the artist Jennie Harbour. Her fairy tale images are beyond description. I’m completely in love ❤️❤️
   
    
   

Check out my latest video! I discuss the human need to create and seek out a black and white view of the world, how those limiting options set us up for relationship failure and how we can overcome that.

I’m loud on Twitter but I’m quiet on Facebook. On Facebook I talk about pleasant things. I post pictures of my children and share cute memes but I don’t want my friends to think I’m racist so I don’t talk about Nationalism, immigration or the refugee crisis. Until yesterday.
I woke up yesterday and felt a change, I felt different, I felt a very distinct prompting to share the YouTube video that had recently been taken down after a half million views which showed the horrors of the invasion happening in Europe. It’s hard to watch, seeing footage of white women and children being beaten, but I felt like my friends and family deserved to know the truth.
Mere hours after sharing that video it happened. The bombs started going off in Paris and 130 people died in the worst attack on Paris since World War II. I sat stunned on my couch. I cried and clutched my photo album which contained the pictures of my time spent in France, mostly Paris, as a teen girl. That beloved city was burning.

I have family in Paris. I grew up with them visiting us and us visiting them. My grandmothers best friend, whom I grew up calling Aunt Ruthie, who I thought until I was an adult was actually my grandmother’s biological sister, her daughter had moved to France and married a Frenchman, become a French citizen (took her 20 years, she’s not Muslim after all). She was like a cousin to me, 20 years older than I, she was so cool, she heavily influenced my life and who I grew up to be. 

I texted her her right away and waited. I felt stunned. Her husband is a performer, a concert hall had been attacked….was it possible…..? An hour later I heard back, they were OK and for me the worst of it had passed but still the tears came. I wept and wept and wept. Would my daughters ever walk the Paris streets as I had as a young girl? Would Europe be left at all in 15 years when they were old enough to go as I had? I continued to weep.
I watched in amazement as people who were on the fence or people uncomfortable with the idea of white genocide started to rise up on Twitter, fences were abandoned and rapidly nationalists gained allies, Trump rose further in the poles. This is the issue of our times. We will not be gunned down, we will not be bombed, we will not be displaced. 

We are strong, we are white, we are proud and we will rise again. 

After yesterday’s mind blowing post regarding how Yoga in India is only a meditation practice and that the Yoga we know today, including most of the poses, orginated from Danish or Scandanavian Gymnastics, if you’re anything like me you’re ready to give up that old phony Yoga practice for something more authentic.
I’m a certified pre and postnatal Yoga instructor and I’ve taught Yoga off and on frequently as an adult. Currently I’m very active in ballet both taking classes myself as well as teaching children’s classes. For warm ups I draw heavily on my Yoga training. I decided that I would gather a collection of images from Danish/Scandanavian/Primal Gymnastics to inspire my routines. I hope you enjoy them and I hope they inspire you as well!
   
    
    
    
    
    
    
   

With all the modern talk of cultural appropriation the practice of yoga, which has gained rapid mainstream popularity over the past generation, tends to get hit from all sides.
Some Christians claim that Yoga is too Hindu, that the health poses and stretching forms cannot be removed from their Hindu roots and thus the practice is unChristian at best and sinful at worst. Alternatives such as Praise Moves and Christian Yoga have sprung up in response to this idea.
On the other hand some claim that Yoga is an ancient and traditional practice of Indian origin and that white Westerners have committed the ultimate sin of cultural appropriation by taking Yoga, modernizing it, and setting up a white owned Yoga business on every hipster street corner in the Western world.
It turns out that both outlooks may be very wrong. Yoga is neither anciently Hindu, and thus inextricably linked with a non-christian theology, nor has it been culturally appropriated from Indian culture, in fact, evidence suggests the reverse may have happened. 
In 2010 author and researcher, Mark Singleton wrote the book The Yoga Body (published by Oxford University Press) After much research he discovered that a few a yoga poses can be found in Hindu sacred texts but they are nothing like the Yoga we know today which is a physical practice. Nothing resembling a physical practice can be found in Hinduism.
So where then did Yoga as we know it today come from? Singleton tells us that in the middle of the 19th century a man named Per Henrik Ling had a system of Swedish gymnatics which quickly spread throughout England and Europe. Ling’s approach was not dissimilar to that of the YMCA’s, that is to say, that it was geared toward the developing of the “whole person,” as opposed to just the body. It became a popular system for exercise because it required no weights or machines and could be practiced anywhere at land or sea. 

  
When Swedish gymnastics met Dane Niels Bukh’s rhythmic exercises at the YMCA in India, along with some Hindu pose names, it seems Yoga, as we know it, was born. Singleton is clear in his research that when the YMCA brought its message of social transformation through bodily transformation to India, they found “no “system” or “brand” of physicalalized yoga that could satisfactorily meet India’s need.” So they simply created one from a fusion of a few posture-based practices found in India at the time, along with gymnastics, calisthentics, and body building. 

But how much influence did the ancient Hindu poses have on what is modern day Yoga? It seems they had very little influence. Many of the postures and practices similar to our modern yoga were very popular in Britain, but we’re derived from the Scandinavian systems of gymnastics. In fact, when one reads Niel Bukh’s Primary Gymnastics (1925) they will find that “at least 28 of the exercises in the first edition of Bukh’s manual are strikingly similar (often identical) to yoga postures occurring in Pattabhi Jois’ Ashtanga sequence or in Iyengar’s Light on Yoga.” 

Does that mean that those early Hindus who claimed to be teaching first, the Indian Royal Court, and then the Western world “Yoga” knew they had culturally appropriated Scandanavian Gymnastics? Most likely not. In that day and age the trail of how information was spread and adapted was not easily traced by the average person and it’s reasonable that Jois, Iyengar and other Yoga pioneers honestly thought Yoga was an ancient cultural practice of their nation. 

So where does that leave us today now that we know the true origins of Yoga? First, I think we can rest assured that removing the Hindu names and using the English names for poses erases that stigma that may have been preventing Christians from partaking in the practice. Second, I think it leaves us Europeans with a wonderful legacy of Scandanavian Gymnastics to research, explore and revitalize. Lastly, the next time you’re headed off to Yoga class you can tell everyone you’re actually headed off to Danish Gymnastics class and watch everyone furrow their brows. 
Additional Resources and Sources Cited

Mereorthodoxy

Neils Buhk 

Transitional Exchange and the Genesis of Modern Postual Yoga Asa

Yoga Journal, Roots of Yoga

Most Yoga Asanas Are 120 Years Old (and European)

  
The legend of Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, or just plain Santa is a collection of several different European traditions.

The Saami people (additionally spelled Sámi or Saami), also called the Lapps or Laplanders, are the indigenous inhabitants of Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Kola Peninsula of Russia, and the border area between south and middle Sweden and Norway. 

The Saami traditionally celebrated the winter solstice by having a reindeer driving shaman, wearing a furry red and white outfit, climb through the smoke hole in their tents and leave gifts. 
  
The name Santa Claus originated with a Greek Saint named Nicholas who is credited with leaving gifts of gold coins in stockings. Also the Germanic God  Odin had a midwinter flight, called the a Wild Hunt, which was part of the tradition of Yule. 

Either way you slice it, Santa is European, so why the recent push to make him multicultural? Are other legendary figures from other cultures appropriated and made different races? Can you imagine Whites claiming that Buddha was white? Or how about Americans creating a white version of Saint Augustine or Saint Monica, well known African saints? 

Why then has it become popular to take a Greek Saint, a Germanic God, and a Scandanavian shaman and make him multicultural? 
  

  
Be aware, resist, speak up. Our traditions, our people are valuable and precious. We are happy to share them but we won’t let them be stolen. 

  
Found in Viking Age Dublin, these are some of the everyday items our Viking ancestors used. I have a few hand carved wooden spoons amoung my kitchen tools and I highly recommend them, they really come in handy around the kitchen when making things like homemade sourdough bread and sauerkraut. 

The needles make me think about how much time I devote to sewing and knitting and I come away thinking -not nearly enough. They certainly aren’t part of my everyday items but they really should be. I should be spending a little time each day in the domestic arts; sewing, knitting, crochet, needle point, felting, embroidery, or weaving. 

It looks to me like a few of those needles may very well be hair pins, what do you think? I know keeping my hair back off my face when cooking and cleaning is a must for me and I can imagine it was also that way with our foremothers. 

This small collection is a reminder of how simple a life they lived, how few possessions even the most wealthy of their tribe would have possessed in comparison to our day. It makes me feel both grateful for what I have and sad for what I also lose in the having of it. 

~Kinder, Küche, Kirche~Children, Kitchen, Church