Modern heathenry work often includes an aspect of ancestor work. As heathens we can look into the past with varying degrees of intensity and focus – everything from a healthy level of postively acknowledging our connections to the past and each other, to using ancestor veneration to justify exclusive heathen practices. Taking ourselves as this generation, going back 10 generations will give us each a minimum of 1024 ancestors in a direct line. Many of us researching our family history won’t even get back that far: head back 2 generations and the remaining records begin to fragment, with 20-30 years per generation, going back 100 years leaves us searching very different types of records than those we keep today. Names in census, birth certificates, death certificates, occasional letters and official documents are oftentimes the factual and scant evidence we can find of a full life.