What is Neo-Saxon?

Neo-Saxon is a conscious – one might say skaldic – attempt to shape for ourselves an authentic cultural vocabulary based largely on Anglo-Saxon roots. Its major premise is: if our ancestral religious vocabulary had survived to the present day (as most of it did not) and had undergone all the usual sound-changes, what form would it have today in Modern English?

Why do we need Neo-Saxon?

The founders of the Younger Heathenry perceived early on that an important part of embracing cultural integrity was to replace the rag-tag, Latinate vocabulary of Neo-Paganism (altar, ritual, incense, sacrifice, temple) with Germanic vocabulary instead. This principle was implemented largely in two ways: firstly, by importing (mostly Icelandic) words wholesale (blót, góði, dísir), or by reverting to full-blown Anglo-Saxon per se (as in Þéodism).

I find both these approaches ultimately unsatisfying. Goths prayed in Gothic, not Swedish. Danes made blout (that's blót in Neo-Saxon; it rhymes with "trout") in Danish, not Old High German. Liturgical languages are a creation of monotheism. For our Northwest European ancestors, sacred language was distinguished from everyday language only by its elevation and compression, by its skaldic intensity, and (to a certain degree) by its archaic vocabulary.

As English speakers, our natural language of religion should be English. But to speak to the gods only in Old English, as if the intervening centuries had never taken place, is to reduce our heathenism to the level of a SCA group, a religious Ren Faire. It's King James Biblish to the nth degree.

How does neo-Saxon work?

Let's take the word "temple" as an example. This is a useful and needed term, but its Latin origins and connotations make it inapt for heathen use. Anglo-Saxon had a number of words that could translate this one, but not all of them modernize well. Hearg is a good example. If this word had survived the centuries and undergone the usual sound changes, it would today be "harrow." Unfortunately, "harrow" already has two meanings in modern English. The noun "harrow" is a farm implement, and the adjective "harrowing" means "distressful, excruciating." This disqualifies what would otherwise be a good choice.

Better is "blout-stead" (Neo-Saxon for blót-staðr). But let's face it, it's a cumbrous word and an ugly one. Sorry, no skaldic seal of approval for "blout-stead" from me. Nor for "godhouse." (Quite frankly, it sounds simple-minded.)

In my opinion, the best OE prototype for our use is hof. This modernizes very nicely to "hove." It's short, it's sweet, and it doesn't already mean something, or mean something inappropriate. If the Elder Heathenry had been handed down to us as by rights it should have been, today our temples would be called hoves. (Bees by the hive, heathens by the hove. Hove is where the heart is. There's no place like hove.)

How do we modernize Anglo- to Neo-?

We commit ourselves to learning enough about the phonology of Old English and the operative sound-changes over the centuries, that's how. (You didn't really think this would be easy, did you?) Here J. R. R. (hol-bytla<hobbit) Tolkien has much to teach us. Why should we call Midsummer Líþa when, if the word had come down to us directly (as it should have) it would today be "Lithe"? Surely no one prefers Géola to "Yule"?

A couple of short-cuts are available to non-linguists. Having identified an appropriate Anglo-Saxon term (there are a number of online Modern-to-Old English word-lists), we proceed to check the OED to see if there were, indeed, any survivals of the term into Middle or dialectal Modern English. If so, this is the form we want. The second is to check out English place-names, which often preserve Anglo-Saxon vocabulary that hasn't otherwise survived ("harrow" is a fine example).