By the Gods: The Linguistics Roots of the Word “Bigot” in Heathenry

By the Gods: The Linguistics of the Word “Bigot” in Heathenry

The Heathen religious community has struggled since its beginnings with perceptions of its symbols, terminology, and even its practitioners.  For those who are unfamiliar, Heathenry is the word commonly used to describe Germanic polytheism. The word “Heathen” itself is believed to stem from the Gothic word “haiþi”, meaning “dwelling on the heath.”  As the Goths and other Germanic peoples had many gods often worshipped their deities outside (on the heath), they were not kindly described by Christian chroniclers at the time, leading to the word “Heathen” having negative connotations.  Modern Heathens have not only had to contend with the negative connotations affiliated with their name, but also struggled to maintain the meaning of sacred Germanic symbols, many of which were misappropriated by Nazi Germany.  As such, a number of racially motivated groups currently use symbols held sacred to Heathenry. While bigots seem determined to use Heathen imagery, the linguistic history directly related to the word “bigot” is itself first antithetical to Heathenry.

Heathens have an unfortunate stereotype attributed to some of their members –the character of the beer-swilling, swastika-tattooed Nazi-wannabe who cares more for a hatred of other peoples than understanding the customs of his own ancestral line. White supremacists have a long history of (mis)using symbols considered sacred to Germanic polytheists, such as the Valknut, the Othala rune, and the double-S rune. Those who espouse racist ideologies have often looked to religion for justification of their bigotry. While Christian fundamentalists are the largest group of white supremacists in America today, many bigots have also tried to infiltrate Heathen circles.  There is a cruel irony to this, given the philological context by which the word “bigot” entered into the English language as arising literally in opposition to Heathenry.

The word, as it is now used, entered English by way of the French in the 16^th Century, and according to Oxforddictionaries.com (as of April 2014) was used for “a superstitious religious hypocrite.” In French, bigot can be traced back to the Middle French word of the same approximate meaning and spelling which was first used to insult the Normans, as recorded by Ephraim Chambers his Cyclopædia (1728).

The word “bigot” originally comes from “by god!”—an exclamation of outrage. This can be traced back to a specific anecdote in early medieval French history in which the Norse/Norman leader Duke Rollo met with the Christian king of the Franks. As recorded by Chambers, Rollo , “refused to kifs the King’s Foot in token of Subjection, unlefs he would hold it out for the purpofe: and being urged to it by thofe prefent, anfwer’d fahtily, No by God; whereupon the King turning about, call’d him Bigot; which name pafs’d from him to his People” (Chambers, Cyclopædia, 1728, p. 101).

Chambers’ 18^th Century grammar may sound archaic and lispy, but he makes an interesting point in his etymological narrative about Heathenry. After all, Rollo was the leader and founder of the Normans, which at the time were a group of Norse Heathens.

Unlike his fictional counterpart who is portrayed by Clive Standen on the TV show Vikings as the brother of the legendary Ragnar Lothbrok, the historical Rollo likely was born long after Ragnar’s death. The actual facts and specifics about Rollo’s identity are debated, and given he seems to have lived in a time of widespread conversion it is possible he could have held worship with the old Germanic gods, the newer Christian faith, or a mixture of both throughout his life. Whatever the case, he seems to have upheld the ideal often espoused in Heathenry of not bowing to another man. He was called a bigot, or sacrilegious man, because—by god!—he would not kneel to kiss the foot of the rightful and godly king.

Now, for transparency’s sake, here I should say that I have heard that this routine of kissing the king’s foot was seen as normative at the time among French royal ceremony, but my research has not confirmed or disproven this fact.

For historical context, it is important to remember that the Viking Age is usually chronicled as beginning in 793 during the historical attack on Lindisfarne Abbey, but that the French kings had been declaring genocidal wars on their Heathen neighbors for generations prior to the start of the Viking Age. In the early ninth century, Viking kings began sending organized offensives against King Charlemagne, the head of the Carolingian Dynasty of Frankish kings. There should be a distinction made between the independent raids for plunder that constituted Viking attacks and the political wars organized by Viking Kings. Raids were common and might strike religious sites like churches for wealth.   However, the wars were politically motivated, with notable examples including one campaign in 810 when King Godofrid of the Danes launched two hundred ships to invade the Carolingian-controlled lands of Frisia (Carolingian Chronicles, trans. Bernard Scholz, p. 91). Frisia was a key strategic point in the North Sea, but had been the sight of another forcible conversion and the place where Saint Boniface, who attacked sacred Heathen sites, was martyred.

When Rollo began a series of raids throughout France in the year 911, including a failed attempt to sack Paris, there had been over a century of history in which the French had been subject to political wars and raids by the Vikings, and an even longer period in which the French had been inflicting violence upon the Heathen Germanic peoples who eventually became Vikings . It was after Rollo sallied into France that the French King Charles the Simple (a descendant of Charlemagne) ceded lands to Rollo to stop these raids (“The Founding of the Normans,” Durham World Heritage Site). The lands are today called Normandy, named because Rollo was a Northman.

Chambers does not say if the king who demanded that Rollo kiss his foot was Charles, though it seems likely. However, Rollo appears in enough sagas and chronicles that it is a challenge to pinpoint this specific fact from more generalized and exaggerated accounts. What I am comfortable saying is that if the king in question was Charles, this should demonstrate a level of kingly arrogance that is stunning—that the king needs to bribe Rollo with lands to stop Rollo’s incursions into France, and yet Charles feels he can make a man such as Rollo bow and kiss his foot when he can’t even get Rollo to make peace without ceding a huge territory to the Northman. This would have been seen as a colossal insult. Even if it was another king, Rollo had clearly established himself as a respectable and capable leader so such a demand would be no less demeaning.

It should be noted that this sort of insult-slinging is not a new or unique phenomenon in the transgermanic Christian-Heathen relations of medieval politics. The Royal Frankish Annals make numerous references to the Heathen Saxons, who were forcibly baptized under threat of genocide, as “faithless” and “treacherous” when they continued their worship of their ancestral faith—despite the fact that within a Heathen context the rite of baptism has little to no meaning (p.73-74). The chronicler Einhard also called the Saxons “faithless” because of their refusal to submit to forced conversion (Two Lives of Charlemagne, p. 23). And in all of these examples, the words “treacherous,” “faithless,” and “bigot” seem to have the same implication—being unwilling to submit that the Christian culture being forced on these folk was somehow better than their own culture.

The Vikings and earlier Heathen peoples were by no means paragons of peaceful acceptance. Indeed, the 793 attack on Lindisfarne occurred when a group of Scandinavian seamen discovered that Christians kept their wealth in churches and decided to target churches as a primary place of pillage—clearly caring more for their own financial gain than the sacredness of another’s holy sites. The polytheistic Vikings saw little more than wealth in these sites. However, Christian European attacks of the time specifically targeted non-Christian peoples’ holy sites for destruction and the peoples themselves for conversion or genocide because they were not Christian. Examples can be seen in Charles Martel’s attack on the Thor Oak (“Willibald: Life of Boniface”), Charlemagne’s destruction of the sacred Irminsul, and his other genocidal war against the nonchristian Avars (Carolingian Chronicles, p. 48-49, 73-75).

Why then should the story of Rollo and the French king be any different? In the case of Rollo, the French king’s insult was not given amidst religiously-driven wars, but during a diplomatic meeting to make peace. When Rollo was told to bow to kiss a Christian king’s foot, the Frankish king declared Rollo’s own cultural and political value to be insignificant.

Here we see an interesting bit of linguistic nuance. Rollo was not called a bigot in the modern sense. The other king exclaimed “by god”—because Rollo had the audacity to stand rather than bow before this Christian king. Christian kings at the time traced their lineage back to divine appointment so in this story we see Rollo being told to literally bow before the other man as though bowing before a god. Rollo stood before the king and looked on him as an equal, both powerful leaders. Yet just as Charles’ ancestor Charlemagne had looked on anyone who was not Christian as inferior and worthy of being converted or killed, so too did this Christian king look at Rollo as inferior and worthy only of kissing his boot. The bigot was the French king, and so the first contextual use of the word “bigot” was actually an act of bigotry.

Rollo, the Northman king from Heathen lands, literally stood in opposition to bigotry.

Bigotry has taken many forms since that meeting. Attempts to legitimize it have been an aspect of the most destructive government policies of recent centuries, including the Holocaust and other notable genocides. Hitler’s use of pre-Christian Germanic symbols to promote his own bigoted form of nationalism one of many ways people were manipulated into rallying around racist ideology. Modern white supremacists still cling to those symbols in emulation of the Nazi brand of nationalism.

But it should be remembered that the first use of the word “bigot” was in fact a Heathen leader being targeted by such bigotry and taking a stand to resist. He literally declared he would not lower himself to tolerate such an affront. Rather than kneel in submission, he took a stand—by gods!—against bigotry.

And that is the value to remember. Like Rollo, as we stand for our own worth and deeds, the stand should be in opposition to bigotry, which itself is anti-Heathen in nature.

Bibliography:

Carolingian Chronicles. Royal Frankish Annals & Nithard’s Histories. The University of Michigan Press, Michigan, 1998. Translated by Bernhard Walter Scholz.

Ephraim Chambers. Cyclopædia, or, An universal dictionary of arts and sciences : containing the definitions of the terms, and accounts of the things signify’d thereby, in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical, and the several sciences, human and divine : the figures, kinds, properties, productions, preparations, and uses, of things natural and artificial : the rise, progress, and state of things ecclesiastical, civil, military, and commercial : with the several systems, sects, opinions, &c : among philosophers, divines, mathematicians, physicians, antiquaries, criticks, &c : the whole intended as a course of antient and modern learning. 1728. <http://web.archive.org/web/20090126081922/http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/HistSciTech/HistSciTech-idx?type=turn&entity=HistSciTech000900240251&isize=L&gt;.

Einhard and Notker the Stammerer. Two Lives of Charlemagne. Penguin Classics, 2008. Translated by David Ganz.

Willibald. “Willlibald: The Life of St. Boniface.” Fordham. Internet Medieval Source Book. <http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/willibald-boniface.asp&gt;.

The Founding of the Normans,” Durham World Heritage Site. < https://www.durhamworldheritagesite.com/history/normans/founding-normandy&gt;.

UPDATE: Someone observed that kissing the foot of a king seems to have been a common display of fealty in France at this time. and thus might not have been an insult. It would have been perceived as an insult to a Viking at the time.