About Stav

From Ivar: "Put simply it [Stav] is my family's educational system. The real purpose of it is to learn to see reality. Anything else is a by-product; extremely useful at times, but still by-products. To learn to see there are some well-established teaching methods, the main one being the Stances which is meditation that tones the body, the spirit and the mind. Next to teach the lines we use either Martial, healing or craft methods, usually all three, though the family has tended to use the Martial aspect more. We have always used 2 weapons to teach the lines, the Staff and the Stick. Once one understands these two, (and that takes some time) one can experiment with any weapon of one's choice if one is so inclined.

Now having mastered a Martial Art, a Healing Art and/or a Craft one is well equipped to make a living to sustain body and soul during further training which will take you the rest of your life (and beyond?). Now one of the problems with Stav is that because we use the Runes, and our connection with the Norse Mythology, it is in many peoples mind stuck in the Viking Age, while in fact Stav stretches from the Migration Period to the Present Day. One has to realize that Stav is not a branch of Asatru or Fornsed, nor is it a Re-enactment Society, but a living philosophical and educational system that has adapted and evolved over 1,500 years based on North-European thought.

To repeat the ultimate purpose is to be able to see reality and to reach this purpose we use different tools like the runes, weapons, some rituals and what have you, but they are just tools that can be discarded when they are no longer useful. (Do you still use your first ABC-book?) Personally my training these days consists of doing the stances once a day plus around a 1,ooo cuts with the Staff and/or Stick. Otherwise I teach occasionally, make a few Staffs and treat people suffering from depression, all by-products of my former training."

For more information go to: http://www.stavinternational.org