Ginnungagap and the Great Rift.

We recently read Graham Hancock's Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilisation (2015 CE), and while NorsePlay doesn't necessarily endorse Hancock's theories, we feel that he's got an interesting take on things that makes for provocative discussion. And we couldn't help looking for elements of the Norse Lore in some of what he puts forth, so behold the above photo of the Great Rift, a dark obscuring mass that appears as a huge gap in the Milky Way galaxy, and think for a moment about Ginnungagap, the primorial void at the beginning of Norse Cosmology.

There are a portion of academics who believe the Norse Gods, cosmic animals, and other elements are to be found in the heavens as constellations and other celestial bodies, but we suspect this is in part a combined astrological Greek and post-conversion overlay of placing deities in the sky "up there", whereas the Norse Lore shows them distinctly housed in Asgard or, as per our Map Of Midgard, wandering/adventuring/residing even (at times) on our earth, and the stars being fires hung on the inside of Ymir's skull as part of creation. (Yet given the supernature of the Norse Gods, they could be tri-located in all these at once, perhaps.)

And to pick at a detail of the celestial overlay, it's more often put forth that The Milky Way is Yggdrasil, so it's probably not contrarily the all-matter holding World Tree and the absent-matter Yawning Void at the same time. Still, the above photo makes you think about possible Heathen Worldviews and those perceivable contexts. Given religious localization, maybe there were a few Scandinavian or earlier Germanic Arch-Heathens that did see the Gods in a processional circle above to mirror, secure, and push forth the night sky's glistening clockwork of calendar seasons.

 [photo by Yuri Beletsky at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, Chile.]

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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.