What are the Nine Noble Virtues?

The most famous attempt at developing an ethical code in Heathenry is the Nine Noble Virtues, originally developed by the Odinic Rite.

One of the founders of the Odinic Rite, John Gibbs-Bailey (“Hoskuldr”), had allegedly developed a code of eight virtues during his involvement with small, underground Odinist groups as early as the 1950s. When Gibbs-Bailey and John Yeowell formed what became the Odinic Rite in 1972, Yeowell added one to make the total nine, a number that is significant in Norse mythology (Heimgest, “Time to Honour an Unsung Hero,” p. 3).

1. Courage
2. Truth
3. Honor
4. Fidelity
5. Discipline
6. Hospitality
7. Self Reliance
8. Industriousness
9. Perseverence

Are the Nine Noble Virtues the true Viking Virtues? No, but then again, nothing is.

Hate to burst anyone's bubble, but the Nine Noble Virtues are not the virtues of the ancient Viking warriors. Nothing like the Nine Noble Virtues has ever been discovered in any of the data we have available about the Pre-Christian Germanic world. It's just not there. 

The Nine Noble Virtues are based on a modern interpretation of Medieval Germanic Heroic Literature.

This should not surprise anyone. Everything we read is interpreted by us.

We have our own biases and rhetorical goals when we read something or try to summarize something for someone else. Simply saying that the Nine Noble Virtues are a modern interpretation isn't saying anything special, because that's the case for everything. We are modern people and we are interpreting things.

What we need to do is ask deeper questions like: what were the rhetorical goals of the people who wrote the Nine Noble Virtues or the other attempts at codifying a "Norse Pagan Ethics" and do we agree with them? So we are going to get into it. We are going to show every single attempt that we know of and we're going to tell you where exactly they came from to the best of our knowledge.

Because of that, we need to acknowledge and confront the ugly past of our religion.

CW: to properly show the various attempts at ethics in Heathenry, it's necessary to confront Heathery's White Supremacist past (and present).

This article is going to contain citations from White Nationalists. We can't talk about the modern history of this religion without getting into the fact that for a long time, this religion was primarily shaped by the work of White Supremacists, White Nationalists, Nazis and their fellow travelers. And for a long time, there was a "tolerance" between groups that were ideologically opposed on issues of race. 

Today, The Troth and other Heathen organizations reject the ideology of White Nationalism categorically--it has no place here and will enjoy no tolerance from us.

However, we can't critique what they said unless we see what they said and examine why they said it. We must accept that our present circumstances as people and as a faith are shaped by our history. To admit and confront that history, and to work to change for the better, is part of our mission as an organization.

Please do be prepared, this can contain some difficult subject matter.

Variations on the Nine Noble Virtues

Nothing has approached the pervasiveness of the Nine Noble Virtues, but that doesn't mean others haven't developed similar lists. Other attempts at codifying Heathen ethics include: The Aesirian Code of Nine, The Nine Charges, Some Odinist Values, The Sixfold Goal, The Twelve Aethling Thews, the Three Wynns and the Reenheide.

Some of these codes were written by white supremacists as part of their greater rhetorical goals of inspiring a consciousness of "white identity" for the political goal of a white racial revolution but others are honest attempts by people to try to figure out a code of behavior from their interpretation of Germanic literature and life.

Twelve Atheling Thews, Three Wynns and Reenheide are all examples of the latter: just people trying to figure stuff out and having varying versions of what that looks like.

The Sixfold Goal seems to fall into a third category that has to do with something called a "hypothetical imperative" which is a "if you want x, then you do y" formulation. The "code of conduct" only applies relative to the achievement of an individual goal. If I want ice cream, then I need to work to get money to buy it. If I want to increase my magical prowess, I need to eat six spoonfuls of distilled water each morning. That kind of thing. Don't actually eat six spoonfuls of distilled water each morning, I just made that up.

Aesirian Code of Nine

The Aesirian Code of Nine first appeared in the Odinist Fellowship newsletter, "The Odinist" 53. The Odinist Fellowship and its newsletter were the property of Else Christiansen, a Danish expatriate and unrepentant former member of the Danish Nazi Party. The claim about the Aesirian Code of Nine is that it was based on an engraving found in a Danish cave that dated back to the pre-Christian period. 

As of this date there has been no verification of this supposed archeological find. The notion that this was found on the inside of a Danish cave is a hoax and the Code of Nine appears to be Christiansen's own invention.

1. The Code is to Honor
2. The Code is to Protect
3. The Code is to Flourish
4. The Code is Knowledge
5. The Code is to Change
6. The Code is Fairness
7. The Code is Balance
8. The Code is Control
9. The Code is Conflict

The Nine Charges

A modern attempt to create a more useful “warrior code” was developed by the Odinic Rite. This is the Nine Charges, which are not well known outside of Odinic Rite circles. Most of these are based on the Hávamál and Sigrdrífumál. The charge to care for the dead is based on Sigrdrífumál 35, the charge to respect the elderly is based on Hávamál 134, the charge to disregard stupid things that drunks say is implicit in several verses of the Hávamál; and so on.

1. To maintain candour and fidelity in love and devotion to the tried friend: though he strike me I will do him no scathe.
2. Never to make wrongsome oath: for great and grim is the reward for the breaking of plighted troth.
3. To deal not hardly with the humble and the lowly.
4. To remember the respect that is due to great age.
5. To suffer no evil to go unremedied and to fight against the enemies of Faith, Folk and Family: my foes I will fight in the field, nor will I stay to be burnt in my house.
6. To succour the friendless but to put no faith in the pledged word of a stranger people.
7. If I hear the fool's word of a drunken man I will strive not: for many a grief and the very death groweth from out such things.
8. To give kind heed to dead people: straw dead, sea dead or sword dead.
9. To abide by the enactments of lawful authority and to bear with courage the decrees of the Norns.

Some Odinist Values

Early Ásatrú in the US was very much influenced by a Romantic view of the Vikings as rugged individualists who lived and died by their own warrior code and fought for freedom and glory. This is a typically American trait; we tend to idealize the rugged individualist, the stoic, superbly competent lone wolf, the lovechild of Ayn Rand and John Wayne.

Steve McNallen’s writings in the early days of the Viking Brotherhood are typical of this attitude, and later resulted in him publishing this list of "Odinist Values":

1. Strength is better than weakness
2. Courage is better than cowardice
3. Joy is better than guilt
4. Honour is better than dishonour
5. Freedom is better than slavery
6. Kinship is better than alienation
7. Realism is better than dogmatism
8. Vigor is better than lifelessness
9. Ancestry is better than rootlessness

The Six-Fold Goal

Edred Thorsson argued for individualist consequentialist Heathen ethics in A Book of Troth, writing: “To have a true set of ethics a clear set of goals or aims must be laid out. . . if we are to gain and grow, and be able to hold and harness that which we have built, a true set of ethics drawn from a set of high goals must be established” (p. 114).

Thorsson’s called his formulation the Sixfold Goal, consisting of six "goals" (which is actually one overall goal of leading an ethical life with six facets, but who's counting) to anchor orient Heathen ethical life. According to Thorsson, the best undertakings are those that defend these goals and maximize:

1. Right (justice and rationality)
2. Might (strength)
3. Wisdom (inspiration, depths of memory)
4. Harvest (abundance; reaping the bounty of natural cycles)
5. Frith (reciprocal peace, freedom, and security)
6. Love (all forms, including pleasure)

Twelve Atheling Thews

Originally published by Theodish leader Swain Wodening in a booklet called Beyond Good and Evil, and developed in his later writings (e.g. Hammer of the Gods, pp. 44-60). The Twelve Thews overlap considerably with the Nine Noble Virtues.

1. Boldness
2. Steadfastness
3. Troth (trust in kin, friends, and gods)
4. Givefullness (generosity)
5. Guestliness (hospitality)
6. Sooth (truth, honesty)
7. Wrake (willingness to see justice done and avenge wrongs)
8. Evenhead (equality of the sexes)
9. Friendship
10. Freedom (self-reliance)
11. Wisdom
12. Busyship (industriousness)

The Three Wynns

Garman Lord, the founder of Theodish Belief, developed a much shorter code, (The Way of the Heathen, pp. 21-22). Note that wynn is both Old English for “joy” and the name of the w-rune, ᚹ.

1. Wisdom (OE wīsdōm)
2. Personal Honor, or Worthmind (OE weorþmynd)
3. Generosity, or Wealthdeal (OE wela-dæl)

Die Reenheide

Finally, Urglaawe has a list of eighteen virtues (die Reenheide). Nine of them are equivalent to the Nine Noble Virtues: der Mut (Courage), die Waahrheit (Truth), die Ehr (Honor), and so on. To this number Urglaawe adds its own “new virtues,” die Newwereenheide (Schreiwer and Eckhart, Dictionary of Urglaawe Terminology, pp. 50-51):

• der Edelmut (Generosity)
• die Geistlichkeet (Spirituality)
• es Mitleid (Compassion)
• die Neigierheit (Curiosity)
• der Selbschtreiguck (Introspection)
• die Selbschtverbessering (Self-Improvement)
• die Verwalting (Stewardship)
• die Verwandschaft (Kinship)
• die Weisheit (Wisdom)

Do Norse Pagans have to follow the Nine Noble Virtues?

No, no one does. If you're looking for how to practice Asatru you'd want to start here.

That doesn't quite answer the question. Because it's one thing to think about the rituals in Asatru or the Holidays in Asatru but another thing to thing about our spiritual standards of conduct or behavior. 

That's where we run into the big problem with the Nine Noble Virtues. There is absolutely no compelling reason to follow them. 

The Nine Noble Virtues lacks precisely what medieval Christian theologians discarded from ancient philosophers: a justifying metaphysical and ethical system. Christian Theologians like St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas re-interpreted Classical Ethics through a Christian Metaphysics and Christian assumptions about the good life. This re-interpretation became the basis for ethical study going forward.

Which might lead someone to believe that Pagans just kind of believed stuff without any justifying ideology. And Neo-Pagans have worked off that assumption. Pre-Christian people just did stuff. Made lists. Just thought some things were good without having any reason for why.

Which makes for the Nine Noble Virtues ending up just a list of words. The general argument for them being virtues is that there isn't a compelling argument against them being virtues. That kind of justification reveals just how shallow the ethical understanding is. 

Ultimately, it's a list of words and phrases. Nothing more.

The Nine Noble Virtues were written by British Fascists, but there's a better reason to reject them.

There is an argument about discarding the Nine Noble Virtues which cites John Yeowell's membership in and continued association with Oswald Mosely's British Union of Fascists and National Socialists as the reason they should be rejected. That's certainly an unpleasant fact, but it's also a generative fallacy. It says that the virtues themselves are wrong because of something about the person who created them. 

You can certainly do it, but it's not a genuine critique of them. 

The reason we reject the Nine Noble Virtues is because they have no grounding in any greater ethical theory. 

There is no reason to follow them as opposed to any other list of virtues.

But that's only the beginning. Let's keep going. Get ready for a ride.

Rejecting the Nine Noble Virtues is the beginning, not the end, of a Heathen Ethical inquiry

The truth is that our forebears did in fact spend time thinking about moral principles and values, and about how to make ethical choices and live good lives. As John Michael Greer points out (A World Full of Gods, p. 143), the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Indians, Irish, and other polytheistic cultures produced plenty of sophisticated treatises on ethics and morals.

The ancient Scandinavians were no exception: the Hávamál is an old poem where Odin in the disguise of a wandering old man gives his unwitting host a gift of wisdom in exchange for hospitality, beginning with wisdom for living a good life.

The Icelandic sagas are full of characters of various ethical leanings, who succeed or fail in various situations based on their actions. Before the 20th century, most Icelandic children grew up hearing the sagas read aloud, and many of them learned ethics that way. A man who was born in 1861 reminisced about hearing the sagas recited in his childhood (quoted in Jón Karl Helgason, “Continuity?,” p. 71):

Both the older and younger members of the audience paid close attention to what was being read, and at intervals people would talk about the subject; they would often have different opinions, and when the sagas were read people favored different characters. Some people even made excuses for the evil deeds and flaws described in the sagas and tried to argue that this was inevitable, while others contradicted them, and often there was heated debate. This discussion would sharpen our sense of the personalities of individual characters; we could see how they wove their thread of destiny towards fame and valor, happiness and success, or towards disgrace and a fall, life or death. My heart was burning and my eyes were often filled with tears of happiness or sorrow.

There would have been children like him all the way back to the Viking Age, and probably all the way back to the Stone Age. Humans have always passed on the rules of their society by teaching and learning the old stories of the tribe.

The deceased and sorely missed Troth leader, godman, seiðmaðr, gadfly, and friend Rod Landreth was often known to give the advice: “Simply be Heathen in all things.”

This might seem easy to follow when “all things” involves downing horns of mead. But what to do when “all things” includes a modern office job, a home in the suburbs, or other situations and roles that our forebears could never have known and might not have liked? 

Did the Vikings have a Code of Ethics?

The legendary sagas do present several “Viking codes”: lists of behaviors that are binding on all members of a particular warband.

It’s hard to be sure whether any actual Vikings followed such codes, as these sagas were written centuries after the fact and have probably been “spiced up” to be more exciting.

• The most famous “warrior code” is probably the code of the Jómsvikings.  No man could flee from any opponent; each member had to avenge any other member; no one could speak words of fear or bring a woman into their fortress; and so on (transl. Hollander, Saga of the Jómsvíkings, pp. 63-64).
• In Ǫrvar-Odds saga 9, Hjalmar explains the “Viking laws” that he lives by: never to eat raw meat, never to rob merchants and farmers unless he really needs to, and never to rob or abduct women (transl. Waggoner, The Hrafnista Sagas, p. 65). I
• n Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka 10, the members of Hálf’s famous warband live by a code that makes fighting more dangerous, and thus victory more glorious: “they could not have swords longer than one ell [about 18 inches or 45 cm], so that they would have to come close to their enemies. They had knives made so that their blows would have to be more powerful. . . . They never took women or children captive. None of them was allowed to bandage a wound until an entire day had passed. . . . It was another of their customs never to put up awnings over their ships, and never to reef sails before a gale.” (transl. Waggoner, Sagas of Imagination, p. 12)

Unfortunately, codes like this aren’t generally applicable to life outside of a warband or a pirate ship.

Deliberately handicapping yourself makes sense in golf, bowling, and chess, but it’s hard to imagine applying the principle to, say, modern business.

There is no Asatru Ten Commandments: The Problem with Divine Command Theory and Asatru

The Ten Commandments stem from the idea that the God of Israel told His people through His Prophet exactly how to live a good life and build a good society. There is no such analogous story in all of Heathenry. We simply do not have the same relationship with our Gods. 

But do the Gods command us to do anything at all?

If our gods really exist, they should be capable of telling us things that we don’t already know, and asking us to do things that we aren’t already doing.

There are Heathens who experience the gods as personal beings and feel strongly that the gods communicate with them. Sometimes these communications include advice, suggestions, or commands. Having said that, Heathens are not required to follow these blindly. In the lore, the gods rarely give personal orders that people were obliged to obey.

One of the few examples appears in Flóamanna saga 21 (ÍF 13, pp. 278-279), in an episode where Thor appears to Thorgils, who has converted to Christianity, and threatens him several times, culminating with his appearance in the middle of a storm at sea:

Síðan þótti honum Þór leiða sik á hamra nökkura, þar sem sjóvarstraumr brast í björgum,—“í slíkum bylgjum skaltu vera ok aldri ór komast, utan þú hverfir til mín.”

“Nei,” segir Þorgils, “far á burt, inn leiði fjandi! Sá mun mér hjálpa, sem alla leysti með sínum dreyra.”52

Then it seems as if Thor led him to a certain cliff where the currents were crashing on the rocks, and now Thor said, “You’ll be in storm waves like these and never get out, unless you turn to me.”

“No,” said Thorgils, “go away, you loathsome devil! He who redeemed all with his own blood will help me.”

But this passage does not reflect pre-Christian ethics; it is clearly based on the Biblical episode of Christ’s temptation by Satan (Grønlie, “Saint’s Life and Saga Narrative,” pp. 18-21).

If you feel that a god is asking you do to something, it is perfectly acceptable, and indeed strongly encouraged, that you get a second, third, and fourth opinion. You’re also allowed to evaluate the divine request and negotiate with the deity. If you feel that Freyja is telling you that she’d really like to have a nice chunk of amber on her altar in your room, that’s probably reasonable.

If you feel that she’s ordering you to commit a crime or do something dangerous to your life, health, autonomy, or dignity, that’s quite different. This is not the way the gods usually dealt with humanity in the old days, and any such command today should be viewed with suspicion.

Nor do we have a strong tradition of the gods carefully watching people’s behavior and punishing them for moral lapses.

One of the few times this happens is in Grímnismál, in which Odin punishes King Geirrod with death, after coming to Geirrod in disguise and being tortured for nine nights.

Even this is not a great example—Geirrod acts unhospitably because Frigg has told him to be suspicious of this stranger in disguise. He is not a wicked man; rather, he has been caught up in a dispute between gods. An anecdote from Kristni saga 12 makes an important point: As pagans and Christians are arguing at the Althing, a messenger reports that a volcano has erupted. The pagans mutter that the gods must be angry.

Snorri the Goði retorts with a famous quip: “What were the gods enraged by when the lava we are standing on here and now was burning?” (transl. Grønlie, Íslendingabók, Kristni Saga, pp. 48-49). Iceland owes its existence to millions of years of volcanic eruptions that have built every inch of the land. To single out one of them as divine punishment for wrongdoers seems to lack perspective.

The one exception to the rule that the gods are not moral enforcers comes when humans directly ask them to be.

Specifically, this refers to formal oaths, which are sworn asking the gods to witness. The implication of an oath sworn by the gods is that if you break the oath, the gods are free to punish you for it. According to Snorri (Gylfaginning 35), Frigg’s handmaiden Vár is said to hear oaths:

hon hlýðir áeiða manna ok einkamál er veita sín ámilli konur ok karlar. . . . Hon hefnir ok þeim er brigða.

“She hears the oaths of men and the personal agreements that women and men offer each other. . . She also takes vengeance on those who break them.”

Thus Did My Ancestors: The Problem of Using History to Justify Present Ethics

Another way that has been proposed to judge the worthiness of deeds is to look at the ethical codes of pre-Christian societies: “thus did my forefathers and thus do I!” When the 7th-century Lombards rejected the preaching of the missionary Barbatus, they allegedly “professed that the best form of worship was to respect the law of their ancestors, who they asserted were the greatest warriors and whom they could name one by one” (Life of Barbatus 2, transl. Everett, Patron Saints of Medieval Italy, p. 51).

Should we do the same?

Ethical codes that derive their authority from tribal tradition are often called thew by Heathens.

Thew is not codified; it is simply “the way things are done around here.” Thew can encompass everything from the most minor details of daily life to major ethical premises. Heathen groups that are inspired by specific historical tribes, notably Theodish groups, often consciously try to develop their own group thew based as much as possible on the old tribal values and norms of behavior, to the extent that those can be known. These are supplemented with thews drawn from the collective experiences of the group in modern times, and so thew can evolve over time.

To some extent, this appeal to ancient tradition is implicit in the very foundations of Heathenry. We worship the old gods, inspired by the old ways, because we find that our forebears’ custom, as we understand it, is fundamentally a better thing for us to do than to worship the Christian god, or another god, or no god at all. 

We know that thews varied through space and time; there never was One Arch-Heathen Way of Living.

We also cannot know all the details of ancient thew. Many norms that our forebears knew have been lost forever.

Many of the texts that present ancient thews are biased to some degree; Tacitus, for example, called the Germans chaste and faithful because he was making a rhetorical point about how he felt Rome had lost its traditional family values—not because he’d actually observed the Germans first-hand. Adam of Bremen’s claim of sex-crazed Swedes, written for a Christian audience, may well have been biased in the other direction, emphasizing the depravity of paganism and the superiority of Christianity.

Perhaps most obvious of all: many of the things our forebears routinely did would and should get us arrested today.

The sagas relate exciting tales of Viking derring-do in quest of gold and glory—but we have to admit that the modern equivalent would be a gang of Old West gunslingers shooting up a town and robbing the bank: exciting, thrilling, great for movies, but not a sustainable way of life. Viking Age Scandinavians also practiced infanticide, traded slaves, and sacrificed humans.

There is no realistic way that we will ever be able to do these things legally and no compelling reason why we should ever want to. Most Heathens today would say that the fact that some of our forebears sacrificed humans, raped slaves, and skewered babies on spears, doesn’t make such practices acceptable for us.

Understanding our forebears’ ways, and the reasons for them, is important.

But following them blindly, for no better reason than “that’s how it was done,” is of limited use. We still have to come up with principles for why some ancient thews should be revived and embraced today, and why some should be left alone.

What principles help us choose?

Heathenry and Community-Based Ethics

The Nine Noble Virtues and the various other modern codes apply mostly to what an individual is supposed to do.

Every person is supposed to be courageous, true, honorable, faithful, disciplined, hospitable, self-reliant, and industrious. This is all very well, but notice that the focus is placed entirely on the individual. 

But in the sagas, the only people who lived for themselves, on their own terms, relying entirely on their own true grit, were. . . outlaws.

Like legendary lone cowboys and gunslingers of the Wild West, their stories make entertaining reading. But as wild and free as Grettir the Strong was, few people would want to be him, given that he spent much of his life on the run and ended up dying a long agonizing death. Saga-era Icelanders lived embedded in a family and in a larger community, with mutual obligations, but also mutual benefits. To be expelled from that community wasn’t a welcome chance to break free from mindless conformity—it was the most serious punishment possible, tantamount to a death sentence.

Much the same was true in England; one of the great themes of Old English literature is the joys of life in a community, and the misery of losing one’s place in a community.

The Wanderer is a lament spoken by someone who has lost his lord. He is a completely free, independent individual—and he is miserable without the joys of his old community (29-36; ed. Krapp and Dobbie, The Exeter Book, pp. 134-135):

Wat se þe cunnað,

hu sliþen bið sorg to geferan,

þam þe him lyt hafað leofra geholena.

Warað hine wræclast, nales wunden gold,

ferðloca freorig, nalæs foldan blæd.

Gemon he selesecgas ond sincþege, 67

hu hine on geoguðe his goldwine

wenede to wiste. Wyn eal gedreas!

 

He who has tried it, knows

how cruel a sorrow it is to wander

for him who has few beloved protectors.

The track of exile holds him, not twisted gold,

a frozen heart, not the bounty of the earth.

He remembers retainers and receiving treasures,

how his gold-friend accustomed him

in his youth to feasting. All joy is gone.

Heathen Deontology? The Good Life comes from the Good Community.

The ethics presented in such codes like the Nine Noble Virtues lacks precisely this "why" of ethics. Why must we behave in certain ways and not others? In Heathen terms, the answer is more likely to be "because a community that embraces these ethics will be a good one and one we want to live in."

In simplest terms, it becomes a variation of Kantian Categorical imperative, or a reformulation of various Golden Rules: Act in such a way where you would want the principle behind your action to become the law for your community. Do not act in such a way where you would not want the principle behind your action to become the law for your community.

Would you want to live in a community of outlaws? A community that embraced an ethos of rugged individualism where they'd just as soon kick you when you're down as give you a hand up? Or do you want to be a part of a community that regards those in distress with compassion and care? What sorts of ethical principles would need to hold if we were to have such a community?

Think about that.

"Hóf" and the Heathen Golden Mean

The concept of the Golden Mean derives from Greek philosophy, and similar concepts appear in Buddhist and Confucian thought: Virtues lie at the midpoint between opposing vices.

Courage lies between cowardice at one extreme and foolhardiness at the other; generosity lies between stinginess at one extreme and wastefulness at the other; industriousness lies between laziness at one extreme and karoshi at the other.

The Golden Mean may not be named in the Heathen lore, but the ancient Heathens would probably have understood it, because the Hávamál articulates it at several points:

• It’s possible to be too wise (54-56);
• You’re not obliged to be truthful with someone who’s lying to you and wants to see you harmed (45-46);
• Even generous and hospitable people sometimes have to be able to shut their doors to those who would take everything and beg for more (136).
• Courage (OE mōd, OHG muot) is a great virtue, but “excessive courage; over-courage” (OE ofermōd, mG Übermut) means “recklessness; pride; arrogance,” and it is not depicted as a virtue in the lore.

One could argue that the “Golden Mean” does in fact appear in the sagas, under a different name: the Old Norse word hóf.

Another point where hóf is important was pointed out by none other than Socrates in his dialogue Laches, which is a discussion of how to define courage.

Socrates points out that courage does not exist if it is not turned towards a wise and proper goal. An utter incompetent might need daring and nerve to attempt some feat far beyond his abilities, but Socrates argued that in such cases, daring and nerve were not courage, because they were not being used with wisdom.

By the same token, a brazen criminal might need daring and nerve to carry out a great crime, and Nazi soldiers showed daring and nerve when they faced the Polish Army with the aim of clearing some Lebensraum—but these somehow don’t seem to qualify as real virtues (Laches 192-193, transl. Lamb, Plato, pp. 50-57; Pence, “Virtue Ethics,” pp. 249-250).

Working hard in the service of a great cause is a virtue; working hard to accomplish something useless seems less virtuous. Being generous may seem a great virtue, but if it’s done with a nefarious purpose—say, to distract people from looking too closely at vile deeds you’ve committed, like the generous philanthropists Jimmy Saville and Jeffrey Epstein—it loses something.

Clearly, it is not enough just to follow the Nine Noble Virtues, the Three Wynns, or any other list of Heathen virtues, without some means of judging how to apply them and what should be accomplished with them.

This article would not have been possible without the work of Troth Publications and borrows heavily from the original text in Our Troth Volume 3 which was generously donated by the Publisher for the enjoyment and education of all Heathens. This text has been heavily edited and cut for reading on the internet. For the uncut and full version along with more sources and a reading list, please see our Books and Publications page.

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