Raven's Dispatch: Weekly Pagan & Norse Community News

Editor's note: This issue runs text-only; photos from the original sources are linked in the Sources & Citations footer rather than republished here.

FRONT PAGE

A king’s coin in Norway’s largest Viking Age hoard

A small coin can carry a king’s whole argument. Archaeologist Anne Skogsfjord at the Museum of Cultural History first classified the coin from the Mørstad Hoard as an English Æthelred II issue. Then she read the inscription, ONLAF R+ NORMANORV, and recognized Olaf Haraldsson, Olaf the Holy, king of Norway 1015-1028. Skogsfjord called the discovery “a special moment” and said “we had found a national treasure.” (Science Norway)

Found this spring by metal detectorists Rune Sætre and Vegard Sørlie on landowner Ole Erik Hørstad’s field in eastern Norway, the hoard has grown to just over 5,500 coins, making it Norway’s largest Viking Age coin hoard. The small Olaf coin was struck between 1024 and 1028. It shows the king in profile wearing a conical battle helmet; the reverse carries a cross and Christian tribute. Knife cuts on the coin are evidence of people testing its silver content in payment. (Science Norway: coin discovery; Science Norway: hoard discovery)

Only about 20 coins issued by Olaf Haraldsson have ever been found, most outside Norway. Before this find, only four examples of this specific type were known, just one of them in Norway. Coin expert and professor of numismatics Svein H. Gullbekk says Olaf himself decided what his coins looked like and may have been present when they were struck: “It is actually possible that the coin we have found was held in the king’s own hand.” Gullbekk calls it political branding, meant to legitimize the new faith and Olaf’s standing as a Christian king of European standard. NTNU numismatist Jon Anders Risvaag says an Olaf coin is “like finding a needle in a haystack.” Cataloguing and documenting the hoard will take more than a year. And let’s be plain: this is a Christian-era royal coin in a Viking Age hoard, not a pagan object. (Science Norway)

ARCHAEOLOGY DESK

Hunn: stone circles emerge from the ploughed field

At Hunn, one of eastern Norway’s spectacular burial sites, archaeologists found previously unknown stone circles hidden under topsoil at the northern end of the West Field, beside large burial mounds. Ground-penetrating radar revealed traces after the area was surveyed by Østfold County Municipality and NIKU; excavation is under way because the field is being drained. Archaeologist and professor Anne Lene Melheim says one circle shows traces of 15 stones that were removed. (Science Norway)

Visible South Field stones are arranged in odd numbers-9, 11, 13, 15-and nobody knows why. Circles measure between 10 and 20 metres across. The stones and graves date to the Bronze Age and Iron Age, roughly 3,500-1,000 years ago; impressive Roman-period grave goods from around 2,000-1,600 years ago have been found nearby previously. Excavation director Jakob Jan Edvin Kile-Vesik is “quite certain that standing stones were erected here,” pointing to small cairns that look like foundations. Melheim says circles were once read as assembly sites, but “first and foremost, I see them as burial monuments.” Children’s graves at the site were announced in 2024. (Science Norway)

Tiversky Gorodok: silver spanning the centuries

A hoard found in July 2026 and announced in early October at Tiversky Gorodok in Russia’s Leningrad region contains more than 2 kilograms of silver. The assemblage includes over ten large disc-shaped medallions with granulation and filigree, fine silver-wire chains, a large ornamented neck ring, a horseshoe-shaped brooch, a ring, a Karelian-type head ornament, coin pendants and a leather headband. Three coins stand out: an Arabic dirham provisionally dated 907-912, identified from photographs and therefore preliminary, and two extremely rare Swedish Uppsala-type bracteates struck between the late 11th and first half of the 12th century. Only two examples were previously known, both in Uppsala; the known total is now four. (Medievalists.net)

Stanislav Belsky, head of the expedition and senior researcher in the Kunstkamera’s Department of Archaeology, says the objects were mostly not produced locally. The work involved the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Kunstkamera) and St Petersburg research centre Actual Archaeology. The researchers have published no deposit date; what they have dated are the individual coins. The mix of periods is real, but reading the whole deposit as Viking Age silver surviving into a later medieval economy is our inference, not a published finding. One medallion shows two birds with an object between them. Researchers have tentatively suggested Huginn and Muninn, perhaps with Gungnir, but the assemblage also contains clearly Christian symbolism, so filing the whole find as a pagan treasure would be our error, not theirs. An earlier hoard was found at the site in 1890. (Medievalists.net)

Greenland: a Norse-Christian church, still under study

Announced September 24, 2026, the previously unknown Norse church ruin near Qinngua and Narsarsuaq is the first unknown Norse church found in Greenland in more than 60 years. A skeleton uncovered in August faced east, with hands along the body, described in the announcement as a typical Christian burial and evidence of a churchyard. Researchers propose a use date around 1100-1300 CE; the church is larger than earlier Viking Age churches, with a rectangular stone wall around a central stone building and hewn stones in the masonry. (National Museum of Denmark announcement; RUV report)

Two to three farmsteads lie nearby, RUV reports, and the region is now known to hold six Norse church ruins. A possible connection to the written name Kirkja undir Solarfjollum, “the church under the Sunny Mountains,” remains just that. A possibility. This is Norse-Christian history. Public reports so far do not provide radiocarbon results, a full excavation report or a complete architectural plan. (National Museum of Denmark announcement; RUV)

COMMUNITY DESK

Cherry Hill Seminary is mourning Dr. David Oringderff, known to students as “Dr. O,” who died October 6, 2026. He began teaching there in 2002, chaired Pastoral Counseling and Chaplaincy for about a decade, helped develop the Community Ministry Certificate and set curriculum standards for his department. He co-founded Sacred Well Congregation and helped establish a Wiccan circle at Fort Hood, Texas, drawing national attention and controversy over Pagan military religious rights. Seminary director Holli Emore said, “I remember him best for always making himself available to students, his colleagues, and to me.” Vivianne Crowley recalled knowing him as a U.S. Army major and serving as his Europe-based doctoral supervisor during a NATO posting. Dr. Margo Wolfe presented him the Hypatia Award for Excellence in Education in December 2025. Visitation is Thursday, October 15, 10:00-11:00 a.m. at Mullinax Funeral Home in Butler, Missouri; services follow at 11:00 a.m., with burial at Fort Scott National Cemetery in Fort Scott, Kansas. (The Wild Hunt)

Circle Sanctuary ministers Rev. Selena Fox and Rev. Becky Malke took part in the Madison, Wisconsin event on the morning of Friday, October 9, 2026, as the Wisconsin-based Pagan organization supported Interfaith Alliance’s 2026 national “The Vote Is Sacred” bus tour. It is a nonpartisan multifaith effort focused on election education, get-out-the-vote work, election protection and resources for faith communities. (The Wild Hunt)

AI has wandered into the tarot reading room. VICE reporter Luis Prada’s “Your Next Psychic Reading Might Secretly Come From a Clanker” discusses research presented at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, based on interviews with 12 tarot practitioners in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Some participants used ChatGPT to interpret card combinations, explore alternatives or speed readings; some said they lacked confidence in their own interpretations. The study was small and exploratory, and some online tarot communities have banned AI-related content over concerns about intuition. Author Yvonne Aburrow’s anonymous survey on AI and Paganism remains open for anyone with opinions on machine-made liturgy. (VICE; survey)

On October 8, Anika Gupta’s Harvard Independent article “Which Witch Is Which?” examined race, colonialism and popular culture in perceptions of Witchcraft. Gupta notes that 1692 records identify Tituba, enslaved in Rev. Samuel Parris’s household, as Indigenous; later portrayals recast her as a Black woman tied to malevolent magic, a picture cemented by Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible. The piece distinguishes Vodou, an established religion, from Hoodoo, an African American tradition of folk magic and healing, and questions the #WitchTok-era repackaging of marginalized communities’ practices as wellness trends. (Harvard Independent)

LEGAL & CIVIC DESK

Pentagon: who defines “spiritual readiness”?

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced a new Office of Religious Affairs in his September 30 “State of the Force” address at Quantico. A September 30 memorandum makes its director a Principal Staff Assistant and the secretary’s principal adviser on religious affairs, reporting directly to the secretary and deputy secretary “without intervening authority.” Its remit includes advocating funding for ministries, facilities and infrastructure; chaplain training; chapel youth programs; faith-based homeschool support for military families; suicide-reduction initiatives; and contracts with faith-based organizations. It will oversee research and analytical tools intended to assess “spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness, and spiritual resilience.” The Armed Forces Chaplains Board and its executive director fall under the director; the director can issue policy on the secretary’s behalf and represent him before Congress and civilian religious endorsing organizations. Hegseth directed military departments to report all unfunded and underfunded religious-affairs requirements within 90 days. (The Wild Hunt)

The memo says the department remains committed to constitutional free-exercise rights and that nothing compels religious participation or diminishes the rights of anyone “of any faith or no faith.” Hegseth’s remarks were explicitly Christian: he said the department was “putting on the full armor of God,” referenced Ephesians 6:11 and Psalm 33:12, and said “God is good, evil is not, and America’s military must understand the difference.” Military Religious Freedom Foundation founder Mikey Weinstein said his organization “condemns in the strongest terms” what he called Hegseth’s “immoral, unethical and unconstitutional actions,” objecting specifically to the use of the word “establishment” in creating the office. Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said it imposed Hegseth’s beliefs on others. Americans United also criticized the earlier reduction of military religious-affiliation identifiers, which eliminated individual identifiers for Wiccans, atheists, humanists and others. The memo’s protections and the Christian framing sit awkwardly together; how “spiritual readiness” gets defined and measured is the open question. Disclosure: this section draws on reporting by The Wild Hunt, whose editor-in-chief, Manny Tejeda y Moreno, is National First Officer of the Covenant of the Goddess. Earlier changes: in March chaplains kept rank but stopped displaying rank insignia while performing chaplain duties; in April Maj. Gen. William Green Jr. was removed as Army chief of chaplains without public explanation. (The Wild Hunt)

Supreme Court: land-use rules reach beyond the parties

The Supreme Court’s 2026-27 term opened October 5. In Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist v. Frederic, a Kentucky religious land-use dispute, a Catholic church sought a Marian shrine, grotto, plaza, walking path and retaining wall next to Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Park Hills. Neighbors Joel and Elizabeth Frederic challenged zoning-board approval; Kentucky appellate courts held the board lacked authority. The federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), enacted in 2000, bars land-use rules that substantially burden religious exercise unless strict requirements are met. Kentucky’s Supreme Court found no substantial burden, noting a smaller shrine could go elsewhere on church property and the property was bought with zoning restrictions in view. The U.S. Supreme Court granted review October 1, limited to the “substantial burden” question. Same law, same stakes for Pagan and Heathen groups seeking temples, sanctuaries, ritual grounds or retreat centers. (SCOTUSblog; The Wild Hunt)

Also on the docket: Suncor Energy v. Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County, involving climate-related corporate liability, nearly 60 similar suits nationwide, and Justice Samuel Alito’s recusal; and St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, scheduled for argument in November, on whether religious institutions taking public-benefit money must comply with anti-discrimination conditions. (The Wild Hunt)

Prison cases: religious objects, fought over one at a time

In Ditona v. Nutt, decided in August 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (Tampa), a prisoner’s First Amendment Free Exercise claim over confiscation of a Wiccan sigil was allowed to proceed against a prison official in his individual capacity. His RLUIPA claim was dismissed because that statute does not allow monetary damages against officials in their individual capacities. Separately, in August 2026 the Ninth Circuit reversed a summary judgment, allowing a Wiccan prisoner’s claims about confiscated religious items to proceed. Hammers, sigils, oils, books: the fight is still case by case. (Ditona v. Nutt; Ninth Circuit memorandum)

SYMBOLS & CONTEXT

Othala: a letter first, a contested symbol now

Othala, also spelled Othal, Othila or Odal, is a rune of the Elder Futhark, transcribed as O and connected with the Old Norse word odal: inherited property, ancestral estate, family land that stays in the line. It is a letter in a writing system; it appears in inscriptions and on runestones because people wrote with runes. In modern Heathen practice it can stand for home, inheritance, lineage and belonging. (ADL, Othala Rune)

In the 20th century, Nazis adopted the rune while trying to reconstruct a mythic “Aryan” past; its uses included insignia for two Waffen SS divisions during the Second World War. White supremacists later adopted it, and it appears today in tattoos, flags, banners and group logos. Our read: this is a gray symbol, contested by how it is used rather than hateful by origin. That is our editorial assessment, not the ADL’s, which does not grade symbols. The ADL lists Othala as a hate symbol while warning that it also appears in non-extremist runic writing and on runestones used by non-racist pagans, and that context should decide. The same caution applies to Algiz, which extremists sometimes call the “life rune” (ADL), and to Tiwaz. Neither was invented as a hate symbol. (ADL, Othala Rune)

The Sonnenrad, or Black Sun, is a different category: no runic inscription, no medieval attestation and no archaeological Norse context. Its twelve-ray design was created by the Nazis in the 1930s, linked to the SS at Wewelsburg, and remains a documented hate symbol born inside extremist ideology. Modern Heathenry and Ásatrú are not one movement: the spectrum runs from universalist reconstructionist practice open regardless of ancestry, through anti-racist organizing such as Heathens Against Hate, to folkish or racialist factions tying belonging to bloodline or ethnicity. That dispute decides who is welcome at ritual and what symbols communities use. Naming it, and refusing to let extremists set the terms, is the work. (ADL, Sonnenrad; Old Norse News)

EVENTS DESK

Before travelling, confirm dates, admission, lodging and accessibility. Organizers are human; calendars change.

  • Ardantane, “For the Love of Books”: Online Saturday, October 17, starting 10:00 a.m. Mountain Time (9 Pacific, 11 Central, noon Eastern), wrapping about 4:30 p.m. MT. Workshops cover Seshat, Enheduanna, ancient hymns, manuscript art and illumination, making a Book of Shadows, library care, writing and publishing with Amber K and Azrael, and book-ban activism. $15 benefiting Ardantane, a non-profit Pagan school and retreat center in New Mexico. Registration closes 5:00 p.m. Mountain Time Friday, October 16. (Ardantane)
  • EarthSpirit Ancestor Ritual and Sacred Land Walk: October 25, 1-5 p.m. at Glenwood in western Massachusetts; ritual walk at 1 p.m., Ancestor Ritual at 3 p.m. EarthSpirit Samhain Ritual: Friday, October 30, 7:30-9 p.m., Williamsburg Grange, Main Street, Williamsburg, Massachusetts. (EarthSpirit)
  • Circle Sanctuary Samhain Festival: October 30-November 1, Wisconsin. (Circle Sanctuary)
  • Samhainfest: October 31-November 1, Havre de Grace, Maryland. (Samhainfest)
  • Hekate’s Sickle Festival, Aquarian Tabernacle Church: November 6-8, Camp Moran State Park, Orcas Island, Washington. Weekend all-inclusive registration is $299; camp cabins are limited and not ADA-compliant. ATC points attendees to Doe Bay Resort (about 12 miles) and Rosario Resort (about 9 miles), and can help coordinate pickup and drop-off. Archpriestess and CEO Belladonna LaVeau said, “Witches want to be in the wild woods, under the moon, with firelight, and drums.” (Aquarian Tabernacle Church)
  • Hekate’s Torch and Key Retreat: November 13-15 at the Ardantane campus, Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico. Workshops and discussions cover Hekate’s history and aspects, with a service project, feast and ritual at Hekate’s Circle near a crossroads. $150 off-campus; $180 in limited, shared on-campus cabins, first-come basis. (Ardantane retreat page)
  • Three Corners Pagan Circle Yule ritual: December 19, doors 6 p.m., ritual 7 p.m. sharp, Burdette Park, Shelter House #18, Evansville, Indiana. Free, ages 16+, with craft, potluck and optional Witchy gift exchange valued $10-20. (Three Corners Pagan Circle)
  • Stone Creed Grove (ADF) Yule 2026 Ritual: December 20, 3-9 p.m., River Grove Chestnut Shelter, Willoughby Hills, Ohio. The grove’s biggest Norse rite of the year; heathen folk welcome, with personal oaths on the grove’s oath ring, a $10-15 gift exchange (label age-appropriateness and 21+ beverages separately), potluck feast, caroling and wassailing. Arrive after 2 p.m. for fellowship and setup. (Stone Creed Grove)
  • Coreopsis Journal’s “Spellbound” anthology: First volume of a three-book fantasy anthology inspired by Ukrainian artist Inna Vjuzhanina’s The Coven paintings. Worldwide submissions: fiction up to 15,000 words, poetry up to 50 lines; token payment. Optional priority-reading track for Ukrainian and Ukrainian-diaspora writers and writers living in or displaced from war zones. Submissions close December 1 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time. (Worldsmyths)

SKY THIS WEEK

The Draconids peaked October 8-9, best viewed in the evening rather than after midnight, with roughly five meteors an hour under nearly moonless skies. October 11 brings the faint Delta Aurigids peak. Fewer than one meteor an hour expected. On October 12, a slender crescent Moon passes near Venus and Mercury shortly after sunset, and Mercury reaches its greatest eastern elongation. October 13-14 brings the early Southern Taurids peak, with slow meteors and occasional bright fireballs. On October 14 the crescent Moon passes very close to Antares, the reddish heart of Scorpius; parts of South America and the South Atlantic may see the Moon briefly obscure the star. Most of it needs no equipment, just clear skies and a spot away from artificial light. (The Wild Hunt)

EDITORIAL

Ancient objects and living religion are not the same story. Neither is extremism borrowing the imagery. This week runs from a Christian king’s coin buried in a Norwegian field, to stone rings under a ploughed field, to a silver hoard on the Vuoksi, to a funeral for the man who built Pagan military chaplaincy, to a Pentagon office deciding what “spiritual readiness” means, to a rune that is a letter of an alphabet before it is anything else.

Read past the headline. Check the source. Confirm event details. Keep your judgment sharper than your spear.

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