An ethnic religion is generally meant to be a religion, spirituality, and cosmology that is firmly grounded in a particular people's Traditions and unique cultural views. It represents a religion that co-developed with a particular ethnic group. In this way, particular ethnic groups can carry their religion with them through time.
In other ways, ethnic religions are wrapped around ethnic groups so that they become justifications and explanations for that folk’s ethnic existence. By providing a common cultural outlook among a folk, an ethnic religion builds and reinforces the distinctions of that people from others as they interact with outsiders who don’t share those views. An ethnic religion embodies the ethnic identity of a particular folk. In this way, ethnic religions sustain and promote the ethnic identity and the culture of a people.
Asatru, most especially, Folkish Asatru, is an ethnic religion. It has developed among the Northern peoples of Europe and expresses their unique cultural outlooks that developed throughout the millennia. It does not offer a universalizing Worldview applicable to all peoples. Its stories and sagas are geographically limited to Northern Europe. Stories of ice and snow goddesses make little sense to people who’ve never experienced ice and snow. Asatru, as an ethnic religion, embodies the unique outlooks, ideals, behavior patterns and values of the Nordic and Germanic peoples of Europe as they developed through history. It developed as they developed and speaks of their unique spiritual way of seeing and explaining the universe.
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