Alright - I was definitely expecting to elaborate. In the medieval era, there was no concept of a "white race". Divisions between peoples were based on culture, religion and political loyalty. The Vikings were among the most cosmopolitan of their time, raiding and trading in pagan, Christian and Muslim lands alike. They loved to adapt and incorporate elements of the cultures they found in their travels and conquests - which unfortunately left them susceptible to Christian missionaries. These missionaries gained the peoples' trust and then later betrayed their trust, violently suppressing native spiritual practices. It's very similar to what happened in the Americas - in fact, it strikes me as the beginning of the colonial mentality. Eventually, all of Europe was subjugated into an overarching Christian culture, used as a weapon against infidels in the Crusades. When colonialism began, Christian Europeans started dealing on a regular basis with people of vastly different cultural backgrounds and physical features, often in ways involving much bloodshed and moral condemnation. The concept of "race" emerged in this context, as a justification for colonialism. "White" people were branded superior, and as such the world needed to be enlightened by "white culture". This was accomplished by enslaving, massacring and culturally suppressing millions of polytheistic and animistic people worldwide, with their "savage" religions used as evidence of their racial inferiority.
Heathenry, to me, is a way that Europeans and settler-descended folks can reconnect with an indigenous and land-rooted worldview without having to intrude on the closed native traditions of other peoples. The whole concept of racial divisions is rooted in the colonial mentality, and not part of a pre-Christian ancestral worldview. I strongly support the preservation of folk customs and endangered languages, and I respect people being proud of being Norwegian, Irish, Russian etc. and wanting to explore the culture of their ancestors. However, that's ethnicity, not race. That broader category has a far uglier legacy.
