By RFU Männerbund Dróttinn
"Bare is the back of the brotherless man" it says in the Hávamál.
A single man cannot fill a shield wall. A single man cannot watch his own six. A single man cannot protect himself and his family on all sides, so what should a man do to secure a future for his family? He must find brothers; he must find a warband that can protect him and his family from any danger they may face. To gain anything something must be given; gifts are bought with gifts. In order to gain brothers a man must be willing to give them something and what could he give that would be worth the safety and security of his folk? The answer is simple, loyalty.
Loyalty is defined as faithfulness to some person, cause, or nation. To be faithful to your brothers requires that a man put his brothers before himself, before his own safety, before his own skin. A coward has no loyalty and earns no brothers. "The coward thinks he will live forever, if he flees from the fight, but old age will give him no peace though the spears have spared him." Peace is earned through war, and war is fought by tribes, by brothers bought with loyalty. Loyalty then is the path to peace and being willing to fight as a consequence of that loyalty is non-negotiable. A man must be willing to give even his life so that his warband may live and go on to protect his family for him. To give yourself for something which is more than yourself is really what that loyalty could mean.
Now let's define that loyalty and qualify it. If we are willing to give our lives, willing to see our brothers give theirs, and willing to care for the families of our brothers just what type of loyalty is that? Let's call it fanatical loyalty. To be fanatical is to be marked by excessive enthusiasm for and intense devotion to a cause, idea, or people. To be willing to give your life is intense devotion to be sure; to be willing to care for another man's family after he is gone is likewise. It’s not for no reason that the root of the name Wōden, is Wód meaning madness, but madness in this sense is fanaticism. Wōden shows us that madness is present in war, and he shows us also that madness is present even in the idea of a warband or a band of brothers. A warband must have madness or at least a little if they are to successfully engage in war, and also if they are to have the loyalty that's required of each man in order to form the needed bonds which create the warband in the first place. This means then that the thing which will bind together the band is fanatical loyalty to the band itself and to the cause they share.
For our Männerbund, our warband, men are expected to be protected and to have their families protected. This comes with the necessary price of fanatical loyalty. If a man joins us this is what he's expected to pay. Each man pays, and we all get the benefit; any man refuses and they are not bonded to us and therefore they again becomes a man whose back is bare; he is alone. If you think this sounds like a steep price, think what you'd pay to gain security and safety for your family. To us, loyalty seems cheap enough.