| Name | Odinist Fellowship |
|---|---|
| Tags | Far-Right Heathens |
| Categories | Organisation |
| Related People/Groups | Tom Rowsell (AKA Survive the Jive) |
| Years Active | 1990s – Present |
| Active Areas | UK |
The Odinist Fellowship (OF) is a registered charity that follows a “folkish” version of Heathenism.
The OF, which emerged from the Odinic Rite in the 1990s, is headed by Ralph Michael Harrison, a longstanding far-right activist and original editor of the now-defunct Right Now! Magazine.
In 2014, the group bought a 16th century chapel in Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire for £42,000 and converted it into its temple. The group is now raising funds in the hopes of opening a second centre.
The group claims to be apolitical, and Harrison has rejected accusations of racism. Nonetheless, OF describes its faith as “ethnospecific”, continuing: “were we to receive a request to administer the Odinist Pledge of Faith to, say, a Japanese or a Nigerian, we would encourage that person to embrace his indigenous form of heathenism”.
Unsurprisingly, the group has attracted a number of far-right activists. This includes members of the neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative (PA) and its splinter groups, the Homeland Party and National Rebirth Party, as well as the longstanding and extreme British Movement and land-buying scheme The Woodlander Initiative. Former members include the well-known YouTuber Tom Rowsell (AKA Survive the Jive).
Harrison has himself remained active in the far right, for example attending a series of demonstrations headed by the fascist organiser Alek Yerbury in Lincolnshire in 2023 – one of which was advertised to OF members via its official Telegram chat group. He also travelled to Birmingham for Britain First’s “March for Remigration” in March 2025.
It is therefore concerning that, as authors Dominic Alessio and Robert J. Wallis have highlighted, the OF has also hosted school visits to the Newark temple. The group reported on its website following one visit: “I think we have planted some seeds in their little minds and – who knows? – in years to come some of them may well become Odinists”.
Following the inclusion of OF in previous editions of State of Hate and a series of articles in Nottinghamshire Live last year, the group was investigated by the Charity Commission and handed new guidance.
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