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Stephen A. McNallen (born October 15, 1948) is an influential Germanic Neopagan leader and writer. Born in Breckenridge, Texas, McNallen has been heavily involved in Ásatrú since the 1970s.
McNallen attended Midwestern University in Wichita Falls, Texas. After receiving a degree in political science and his officer commission as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army, McNallen went on to become an Airborne Ranger. McNallen was stationed in Germany for the latter part of his active service, which ended in 1976.
After his discharge from the Army, McNallen hitch-hiked across the Sahara Desert, and worked as an adventure journalist. In this capacity, he travelled to Northern India and Burma to report on the military conflicts in the region, and later travelled to Africa and Bosnia to report on the wars in those regions in the 1990s. McNallen's articles have appeared in Soldier of Fortune magazine, amongst others.
McNallen worked for six years as a junior high school teacher in Nevada County, teaching science and math as well as having worked briefly as a corrections officer in Stephens County, Texas in 1986-1987. From 1987-1996, McNallen was in the California Army National Guard.
He married Sheila Edlund in 1997, in a ceremony officiated by Valgard Murray of the Asatru Alliance,[1] and currently resides in Nevada City, California.
McNallen was one of the earliest advocates of reconstructing Germanic Paganism in modern times. Much like Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson founder of the Íslenska Ásatrúarfélagið, Else Christensen of the Odinist Fellowship and Stubba of the Odinic Rite, McNallen founded a proto-Asatru group called the Viking Brotherhood in 1972 and began publishing a small periodical called the Runestone. The Viking Brotherhood later evolved into the Asatru Free Assembly.
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