1. Else Christensen was a Danish proponent of the modern Pagan new religious movement of Heathenry.
27 Facts About Else Christensen
1. 2.
Else Christensen established a Heathen organisation known as the Odinist Fellowship in the United States, where she lived for much of her life.
3.
Else Christensen believed that Jews control the Western socio-political establishment, and felt that this would prevent the growth of any explicitly political movement to spread racial consciousness among those she deemed to be Aryan.
4.
Alex died in 1971, and Else Christensen continued her work, relocating to the United States.
5.
Else Christensen exerted a significant influence over the racially oriented Odinist movement, gaining the moniker of the "Folk Mother" within that community.
6.
Else Christensen became a professional handweaver and in 1933 moved to Copenhagen.
7.
In 1937 she married the woodcarver and unionist Aage Alex Else Christensen, who had served as the top lieutenant of the DNSAP leader Cay Lembcke.
8.
Else Christensen was released after three days' interrogation, but Aage was convicted of illegal weapons' possession and detained for six months.
9.
At that point, Else Christensen convinced her father's cousin, who was Minister of Justice, that Aage should be released.
10.
Else Christensen read Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West; however, she rejected Spengler's pessimistic view that this decline was terminal, instead opining that the Aryan civilization could be rejuvenated through its adoption of a new religion - Odinism.
11.
Else Christensen established the Odinist Fellowship in 1969, then based from her mobile home in Crystal River, Florida.
12.
The academic specialist in the far right Jeffrey Kaplan termed it "the first organizational expression of racialist Odinism in the United States", while the religious studies scholar Stefanie von Schnurbein noted that Else Christensen created her version of Odinism as "a discrete vehicle to establish her cultural pessimist, anti-Semitic, and radical racial agenda in a religious cloak".
13.
Else Christensen began touring North America to promote Odinism, and in August 1971 released the first issue of her own magazine, The Odinist, which opened with the banner of "New Values from the Past".
14.
In 1993 Else Christensen was arrested, tried, and sentenced to five years, four months imprisonment for trafficking marijuana and heroin.
15.
Else Christensen claimed that she had been driving a car from Texas to Florida as a favor to friends, and had no knowledge that she was being used as a drug mule by them.
16.
Else Christensen herself did not endorse the claim that the charges were politically motivated, instead blaming her own naivete at being exploited by drug dealers.
17.
However, after personal and political differences surfaced, Else Christensen left Hyatt's home and moved into an RV park in Parksville, Vancouver Island, where she lived in a small trailer.
18.
The scholar of religion Jefferson F Calico noted that Christensen pursued "a political, racially based Heathenry", while the historian of religion Mattias Gardell believed that Christensen's Odinism represented a separate Heathen tendency to McNallen's Asatru, characterising Christensen's version as "a more political and racial interpretation with notable national socialist influences".
19.
Else Christensen noted that Christensen viewed the religion as a means through which to bring about "racial unification and rejuvenation".
20.
Else Christensen believed that the present power structure of society was going to collapse, and that racial-oriented Odinists should be prepared for this.
21.
Else Christensen expressed the view that Hitler's regime did not reach its "true potential" and that instead it should have retained its "original, socialist and folkish agenda".
22.
In espousing an anti-totalitarian and anti-capitalist attitude that favored a de-centralized societal organization, Else Christensen reflected her anarchist values.
23.
Else Christensen believed that the societies of ancient Northern Europe had been similarly anarchistic in nature, expressing the view that this anarchist emphasis on freedom was intrinsic to the "nature" of Aryan people; in this way her attitude differed strongly from the anti-racist perspective of most anarchists.
24.
Else Christensen expressed the opinion that these communities should be racially homogenous and should exhibit "racial consciousness", opining that in a voluntary social order, no one would want to live alongside those of a different race.
25.
Else Christensen argued for a ban on inter-racial marriage, with the intent on keeping the 'Aryan' race "pure".
26.
Else Christensen rejected capitalism, consumerism, and materialism, believing in the need for ecological awareness, a back-to-the-earth ethos, and sustainable production.
27.
Else Christensen came to be known as the "Grand Mother" among racially oriented Odinists, with many paying homage to her even if they had sought out a more aggressive approach to racial issues than that which she adopted.