the importance of NorsePlay.
NorsePlay: Creative explorations, variants, and additions to Norse Lore & Myth.
The Lore's been a sandbox since hearthfires and skalds in the hall, and once Tolkien got ahold of it with the intention of making an open-source world, it's also been fair game in modern days. Our Lore's stories attract creativity because they are the ur-stories, our Gods are bad arses, the adversaries are felt as a real/metaphorical yet inevitable threat, and all that carries a useable weight that narratively, artistically, musically, and cinematically cannot be ignored.
To acknowledge the historicity of this concept, Norse Language expert Jackson Crawford states that NorsePlay in terms of variation & fanon started pretty much from the get-go. As we desire & request more Norse-inspired narratives, so did the arch-Heathens & subsequent generations ask the fireside skalds for sequels & team-ups, and they delivered audience-satisfying new stories, very much like comics giving us major superhero crossovers.
Also, as a verbal antecedent to NorsePlay pointed out by archaeologist/researcher/artist Arith Härger, there's "fróðleikr", a skaldic saga word meaning to play with wisdom or learning.
So why is NorsePlay important?
As per Huginn’s Heathen Hof's 2016 Demographic Survey, 4% of practitioners come to Heathenry via fiction or music. Partly in line with this, the entertainment industry, authors, creatives, theme park investors, videogame designers, and many others are exponentially producing alot of Norse Mythology-based materials, which will only increase these interested parties.
NorsePlay leads people to us. We owe NorsePlay, and we should embrace it.
For the other 96%, NorsePlay is still important. Odds are you didn't arrive at Heathenry from your great-grandmother passing on her praxis to you in an unbroken line. Fact is only since late 1970-something have Reconstructionist Heathenry groups decided to investigate how to re-establish the polytheism of the Norse.
If the remaining source materials or existing archaeology was enough for successful reconstruction we would be done. But that isn't enough. The truth is everybody then must make educated guesses, form theories, infer, integrate comparatives, and hypothesize. Yet this also introduces bias, holds fantasies, wishfully thinks, uses instincts, romanticizes, and ultimately subjectivises in some degrees. In such reasoned but uncertain suppositions, there's alot of play. Ergo, NorsePlay.
Like a mental experimental archaeology, NorsePlay can take the tools we have and extrapolate, help us overlay the arch-Heathen Worldview onto our contemporary mindset, and shake perspectives up a little or alot. When we think about things differently from different disciplines, angles, fields, or approaches, this reframing of the things we're so familiar with can often reveal other aspects.
To address religious reservations about that, the idea of blasphemy's more Christian baggage, and our Gods are bigger than that, enough so to take it. The intent is not to reductivize or mock, but to celebrate & figure things out. In no way could anyone ever remove the simultaneous holiness of awe, terror, and fascination of the Gods. Yet in trying to examine their numinous supernature, perhaps we need to draw on other artful processes to perceive and understand the divine.
If we apply well-considered & measured doses of imagination & lateral thinking, we could benefit & come to know our Gods even better.
We need to bring our imaginations to the material. Peering instead through the lenses of fantasy, or speculative science, or quantum theory, or LARP into Norse Lore, the variations might, and probably will, lend us insights into the old. Like using comparative religious studies, or contemporaneous histories and technologies, this expands how we previously thought about something outside the box, and generates plausible new ideas about a subject. Not so surprisingly we could find that the Lore might even support these incidental insights that result from our NorsePlay.
Is Thor's hammer a type of Tesla device that discharges lightning and is magnetically tuned to return to the wearer of his gauntlets and belt?
Do Sleipnir's 8-legs represent a quantum superposition that allows him to be the fastest steed in the Nine Worlds?
Has the internet in effect become an extension of our Mímisbrunnr, the Odin's Eye within our collective webcam, and the # a powerful knowledge-gathering rune?
NorsePlay may allow us to further understand and relate to our Gods, like science fiction prescienting and perhaps even suggesting the future of things. The ideas filled in by creative writing alone may extrapolate the answers we as adherents or academics may never have come up with otherwise.
And in the embracing of Norse Mythology by popular culture, we see the admiration & celebration of the divine. If the Gods are at least semiomnipresent, then it stands to reason they manifest in art, in song, in our media indirectly or even directly. When we are inspired to create, it could be said that the gift of the Mead of Poetry, or the words of Bragi, or the ecstasy of Odin takes our hand in that. The wonder of the material invites & deserves it, so the next time you're looking for answers in the Lore, push the envelope out to NorsePlay it, and you just might get the reply from the Gods you were looking for.
[The NorsePlay logo's drafted by me, available as a finished sticker on request from Beloved Viking Vinyl. Get one on your goat cart if you likey.]
Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants at age seven. Since then he's been fascinated by the truthful potency of Norse Mythology, passionately read & studied, embraced Ásatrú, launched the Map of Midgard project, and spearheaded the neologism/brand NorsePlay. If you have employment/opportunities in investigative mythology, field research, or product development to offer, do contact him.
The Lore's been a sandbox since hearthfires and skalds in the hall, and once Tolkien got ahold of it with the intention of making an open-source world, it's also been fair game in modern days. Our Lore's stories attract creativity because they are the ur-stories, our Gods are bad arses, the adversaries are felt as a real/metaphorical yet inevitable threat, and all that carries a useable weight that narratively, artistically, musically, and cinematically cannot be ignored.
To acknowledge the historicity of this concept, Norse Language expert Jackson Crawford states that NorsePlay in terms of variation & fanon started pretty much from the get-go. As we desire & request more Norse-inspired narratives, so did the arch-Heathens & subsequent generations ask the fireside skalds for sequels & team-ups, and they delivered audience-satisfying new stories, very much like comics giving us major superhero crossovers.
Also, as a verbal antecedent to NorsePlay pointed out by archaeologist/researcher/artist Arith Härger, there's "fróðleikr", a skaldic saga word meaning to play with wisdom or learning.
So why is NorsePlay important?
As per Huginn’s Heathen Hof's 2016 Demographic Survey, 4% of practitioners come to Heathenry via fiction or music. Partly in line with this, the entertainment industry, authors, creatives, theme park investors, videogame designers, and many others are exponentially producing alot of Norse Mythology-based materials, which will only increase these interested parties.
NorsePlay leads people to us. We owe NorsePlay, and we should embrace it.
For the other 96%, NorsePlay is still important. Odds are you didn't arrive at Heathenry from your great-grandmother passing on her praxis to you in an unbroken line. Fact is only since late 1970-something have Reconstructionist Heathenry groups decided to investigate how to re-establish the polytheism of the Norse.
If the remaining source materials or existing archaeology was enough for successful reconstruction we would be done. But that isn't enough. The truth is everybody then must make educated guesses, form theories, infer, integrate comparatives, and hypothesize. Yet this also introduces bias, holds fantasies, wishfully thinks, uses instincts, romanticizes, and ultimately subjectivises in some degrees. In such reasoned but uncertain suppositions, there's alot of play. Ergo, NorsePlay.
Like a mental experimental archaeology, NorsePlay can take the tools we have and extrapolate, help us overlay the arch-Heathen Worldview onto our contemporary mindset, and shake perspectives up a little or alot. When we think about things differently from different disciplines, angles, fields, or approaches, this reframing of the things we're so familiar with can often reveal other aspects.
To address religious reservations about that, the idea of blasphemy's more Christian baggage, and our Gods are bigger than that, enough so to take it. The intent is not to reductivize or mock, but to celebrate & figure things out. In no way could anyone ever remove the simultaneous holiness of awe, terror, and fascination of the Gods. Yet in trying to examine their numinous supernature, perhaps we need to draw on other artful processes to perceive and understand the divine.
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| [Óðinn & I. The statue's in the style of the famous archaeological find, the Eyrarland Thor statuette. This modern Icelandic Odin's one of my favourite artistic expansions found in NorsePlay.] |
If we apply well-considered & measured doses of imagination & lateral thinking, we could benefit & come to know our Gods even better.
We need to bring our imaginations to the material. Peering instead through the lenses of fantasy, or speculative science, or quantum theory, or LARP into Norse Lore, the variations might, and probably will, lend us insights into the old. Like using comparative religious studies, or contemporaneous histories and technologies, this expands how we previously thought about something outside the box, and generates plausible new ideas about a subject. Not so surprisingly we could find that the Lore might even support these incidental insights that result from our NorsePlay.
Is Thor's hammer a type of Tesla device that discharges lightning and is magnetically tuned to return to the wearer of his gauntlets and belt?
Do Sleipnir's 8-legs represent a quantum superposition that allows him to be the fastest steed in the Nine Worlds?
Has the internet in effect become an extension of our Mímisbrunnr, the Odin's Eye within our collective webcam, and the # a powerful knowledge-gathering rune?
NorsePlay may allow us to further understand and relate to our Gods, like science fiction prescienting and perhaps even suggesting the future of things. The ideas filled in by creative writing alone may extrapolate the answers we as adherents or academics may never have come up with otherwise.
And in the embracing of Norse Mythology by popular culture, we see the admiration & celebration of the divine. If the Gods are at least semiomnipresent, then it stands to reason they manifest in art, in song, in our media indirectly or even directly. When we are inspired to create, it could be said that the gift of the Mead of Poetry, or the words of Bragi, or the ecstasy of Odin takes our hand in that. The wonder of the material invites & deserves it, so the next time you're looking for answers in the Lore, push the envelope out to NorsePlay it, and you just might get the reply from the Gods you were looking for.
[The NorsePlay logo's drafted by me, available as a finished sticker on request from Beloved Viking Vinyl. Get one on your goat cart if you likey.]
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