The Life and Thoughts of a Modern Day American Heathen
The Life and Thoughts of a Modern Day American Heathen
Hrafnkell Haraldsson is the author of A Heathen’s Day, which since 2005 has addressed the life and thoughts of a modern day Heathen. He maintains a second blog, Digital Gods (www.digital-gods.com) which focuses on polytheism for the digital age. He is also the founder of the Mos Maiorum Foundation (www.mosmaiorum.org) which is dedicated to the study and support of Paganism as ethnic religion. 
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Interestingly, in Canada we use the metaphor of a mosaic rather than a melting pot. Rather than taking a view that all Canadian residents, from whatever place and whichever culture, should go through a homogenizer and be assimilated, we tend to pride ourselves on our diveristy–cultural, religious, ethnic, and so on.
Makarios, I like the “mosaic” idea better than “melting pot” but I have to wonder at what point in American history the idea of assimilation into good little WASPs took hold. As I said, my own ancestors spoke their native language when they came over, though they did assimilate quickly, given the names seen in the family tree. But at he same time, distinctions remained, from what my grandmother told me when I was young. There were the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Germans (and I’m talking about Minnesota here). Just as one example, early on, the Germans settled in New Ulm (the place the Dakota attacked in 1862). There were also colonies of Germans in Texas. Apparently they had a real old world charm, with European architecture, etc.
How much expectation was there that these people become “like us”? And if so, when did it come about?