It is not a mighty feeling among other feelings in these people, but the very core of the soul, that gives birth to all thoughts and feelings, and provides them with the energy of life - or it is that centre in the self where thoughts and feelings receive the stamp of their humanity, and are inspired with will and direction. It answers to what we in ourselves call the human.

                                                   - Vilhelm Grönbech - The Culture of the Teutons

Frith was the cohesive principle that held the ancient society together. It was not only the binding agent of interpersonal relationships and marriage but was also the substance which held together the principles of freedom, law, vengeance and courage based on the bonds of kinship and the link between men and the gods. Any man castigated from society was a man without frith, and therefore without any of the societal and personal products of it. To the ancient Teutonic clans, the man without frith was a niðing; a ‘wolf-man’ stripped of the very core components of humanity and left as a soulless thrall or wild beast doomed to destruction, like Grendel, far from the warmth of the mead hall, or like the young fir tree that dies standing alone ‘sheltered by neither bark nor needle in the field’.

The essential core of humanity that is found in the concept of frith is one that is built on the vital connections between man and his kin, his tradition, his culture, his homeland and his gods. Frith is also strongly entwined with the concept of love and freedom. Etymologically, ‘frith’, ‘love’ and ‘free’ all stem from the Proto Indo European word *prijos, meaning ‘dear, beloved’, of which one variant was *pritu, ‘peace’, which eventually became the Old Norse ‘friðu’ and the English ‘frith’. The Proto Germanic adaptation of *prijos was *frijaz, ‘free’, which was a linguistic and conceptual extension of the term ‘beloved’. To be a kinsman, one had to be a free man (that is, not a thrall or an outlaw), and to be a kinsman made one beloved to other kinsmen. Other derivatives of *prijos pertinent to the understanding of frith are Old English ‘freond’ - the precursor of the modern English ‘friend’, the Old English ‘freogan’ - meaning ‘to love, favour’ and the name of the goddess Frigg, which also derives from *prijos and *frijaz. Being the goddess of love and domestic relationships, Frigg is an apt representative for the concept of frith. On noting how the atomised individual - the thrall - is essentially a man without frith, and therefore without a soul and without deep and genuine humanity, the importance of reintegrating with the ways of frith becomes clearer and more appealing.

In the clan community we see the truest expression of the concept of fraternity. This kinship, rooted in frith, has been emulated as the model for fraternal societies in Western Society ever since. In the Gemeinschaft, the principle of obligation was perhaps the most vital manifestation of this brotherhood. The clansman’s innate sense of place amongst and duty towards his fellows made the reciprocal relationships on which such communities were based a matter of natural fact; quite unlike the pecuniary and self-centred motivations that polarise man against folk-spiritedness in today’s society. Although the root of such duty and obligation lay in frith, the state from which frith emanated was the initial kinship found in a society based upon universal commonality and connectedness rather than imposed diversity and separation. One’s kinsmen, being of like nature, blood and creed, were one’s natural, rather than imposed, peers. And thus, like a family, one found the deepest bonds of trust and respect directed towards those that were their brothers in blood and in essence.

To look at the societal traditions and values of the ancient clan is to take an important step towards regaining our core humanity. If one is inspired enough by the thought of living according to the inherently clannish virtues of frith, kinship and tradition rather than the modern values of vapidity, consumerism and social atomism however, the way to a better and more holistic, satisfying and sacred mode of existence could be within reach.