Freya Aswynn


Elizabeth Hooijschuur, known by her pen name Freya Aswynn, is a Dutch writer and musician. She is primarily known for her activities related to modern Paganism in the United Kingdom.

Pagan revivalism

Freya Aswynn was born in Zaanstad in the Netherlands as Elizabeth Hooijschuur. She became involved in modern Paganism in the 1980s after having moved to the United Kingdom. She was first active in Wicca, then in Edred Thorsson's Germanic neopagan Rune-Gild until 1995, and initiated the British branch of the Ring of Troth, later renamed Ring of Troth Europe, in 1993.
Aswynn's experiences from Wicca left a lasting impact on her construction of rituals. She proclaimed herself a "priestess of Wodan" and was an early exponent of a female-centred version of Germanic neopaganism focused on seiðr, a practice which in the Old Norse sources is associated with the goddess Freyja. Aswynn describes her version of seiðr as magical and shamanic. During a wave of interest in rune mysticism in the 1980s she developed her own approach to runic divination. In the 1980s she maintained that runic divination only could be practiced by someone of Germanic ancestry, but in 1990 she abandoned and publicly retracted this position.
Her book Leaves of Yggdrasil had a significant influence on the practice of Germanic neopaganism on an international level. It was revised and republished in 1998 as Northern Mysteries and Magick, accompanied by a CD with recordings of Aswynn's incantations, inspired by poems from the Poetic Edda.

Music

In the mid 1980s Aswynn became involved in the emerging neofolk music scene in England. Her house in London was a meeting point for musicians such as Douglas Pearce of Death in June, Tony Wakeford of Sol Invictus, David Tibet of Current 93, Boyd Rice of NON and Ian Read of Fire and Ice. She appears on recordings by several of these artists, performing her own rune chants. The Current 93 album Swastikas for Noddy can be understood as an expression of the jocular Final Church of the Noddy Apocalypse, created by Tibet and Aswynn in her house.

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