Feel free to pass this on to other pagan friends, as long as you acknowledge me as the original author.

Long before Christianity came to northern Europe, the people there - our ancestors - had their own religions. One of these was Asatru. It was practiced in the lands that are today Scandinavia, England, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and other countries as well. Asatru is the original, or native, religion for the peoples who lived in these regions. Simply put, you might think of it as ''the religion of the Vikings'' since they were its main followers in the years just before our ancestors were forced to adopt Christianity. Asatru is unlike the better-known religions in many ways. Some of these are:

- We are polytheistic. That is, we believe in a number of deities, including Goddesses as well as Gods. (We have a tongue-in-cheek saying that a religion without a Goddess is halfway to atheism!)

- We do not accept the idea of ''original sin,'' the notion that we are tainted from birth and intrinsically bad, as does Christianity. Thus, we do not need ''saving.''

- We do not claim to be a universal religion, a faith for all of humankind. In fact, we don't think such a thing is possible or desirable. The different branches of humanity have different ways of looking at the world, each of which is valid for them. It is only right that they have different religions.