Dr. Flonkenstein wrote:
Bertie the Bunyip posted:

Snort! Fjukwit
Bertie

BTW, everybody with an alt.net account who posts in soc.culture.belgium
will be called Vladimir, isn't that strange?

This is in response to a response to a troll with the
handle Bertie. In many cases he has chosen several
newsgroups to crosspost this thread to.

Please don't feed the trolls. It only feeds their
sick little egos and pollutes the newsgroups further.

Also, be kind to the mentally ill. Don't get into
battles with them. Bertie isn't just a regular troll,
he's spent years attacking alt.religion.asatru
hurling personal insults and false accusations. He
has done so using several accounts, too. Here's one.
A glance at the number of postings shows that he is
obsessive and paraniod:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...:A%40a.aaaaaa+

Note that he crossposts to get as many people
involved as possible, another indication of mental
illness. To show his level of obssession, glance at
the sheer number of troll postings he has done on
news:alt.religion.asatru (ARA):

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...eligion.asatru

That search will take you back as far as 2001, and it
will show many accounts he posts from, accounts that
he uses to have conversations with himself, and so on.
He has been trolling ARA since 1999. The man needs pity
and medical help.

One of his maccabre twists is that he accuses folks on
ARA of being Nazis. There was a heathen revival in
Germany and Austria in the 1920s and 10930s. Those
people were among the first targets the real Nazis sent
to their deaths in the concentration camps. The Jews
were targetted when Germany and Austria ran out of
heathens. Asatru and Nazism are polar opposites much
like Judaism and Nazism because of this. Most of the
documentation I've read about the pre-WWII Asatru
revival has been in print, so I welcome web references
the the writings of those who were killed in the camps.
The Asatru Alliance's quarterly Vor Tru ran a series on
them for several years.

What is Asatru really about, then? I follow the old
gods and goddesses known in northern Europe in the times
before Christianity came through. Thor and Sif, Odin
and Frigga, Ull and Skadhi and so on. Their adventures
are recorded in the myths of the Norse, Saxons, Goths
and so on across the sprectrum of Germanic peoples.

Like any religion, Asatru teaches a moral code. It has
lessons that lead a person to be a better person. It
has Lore that was passed down from generation to
generation until it contains lessons of everyday life.

Dirk Buerre posts a large list of links to various
Asatru resources. To give a quick idea of what Asatru
is and who Asatruar, I offer a few of the ones I
recommend to newcomers. I'm in the US so I'm most
interested in US resources, especially ones that span
borders:

http://www.thetroth.org/ *The Troth
http://www.friggasweb.org *Frigga's web
http://www.irminsul.org/ *Irminsul Aettir
http://alliance.eagleut.com/ *Asatru Alliance

The starting point for read are the Poetic Edda and
the Prose Edda which are the best preserved Norse
myths, and Saxo Grammaticus which contains mainland
European versions of the old tales:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...049972-9079868
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...049972-9079868
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...049972-9079868
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...049972-9079868
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books

Hail Asgard!
Doug Freyburger