NorsePlay.

I've successfully plotted 900 mappoints for my Map Of Midgard Project! This is the eighth progress update since  the initial blog post ,  the first update ,  the second update ,  the third update ,  the fourth update ,  the fifth update , the sixth update , and the seventh update . Of the original backlist of 360 mappoints left to plot, 122 potential sites remain. Of the 100 points mapped since last update 44 were outside of that backlist thanks to more references & sources popping up. I keep thinking that if I read enough Norse Lore to make data for the Map Of Midgard that I'll put things together in a way no one else has via this map, and something will emerge in one of these stickpins for me to find. Something wonderous. Something magical. Something numinous. While the Map Of Midgard itself I feel fulfills that requirement in creating a geographical wonder that has places rife with sorcery, lairs & appearances of supernormal creatures, and...

  Sure, this could just be a silly seasonal food post, but then NorsePlay never squanders a Norse Lore learning opportunity: There's a scientific overlay that in the Norse Cosmology the world serpent Jörmungandr possibly represents gravity which functions to encircle & thus hold our Midgard together (much like this pie crust), while his end-of-days electrical target Thor represents electromagnetism . This physics-speculative NorsePlay is from part of Manly P Hall's lecture On Norse Myth , noted esotericist & author of The Secret Teachings Of All Ages (1928 CE). Thus the inescapable dual fate of Thor & the Serpent could perhaps be not just archenemies targeting each other throughout time, but a bond of universal forces competing & acting upon one another. So this winter holiday be Thor, and save the Norse Níuverse by eating all the pie. Plus it'll be good prepwork for your time at the endless feasting tables of Valhalla . Thanks for reading, subscribing, sha...

A  National Geographic article on the Brothers Grimm exploring the motives & origins of their fairy tale collection uses a photo of a field of barley at dawn covered in golden light catching dew to accent this lift quote from Rumpelstiltskin : If by to-morrow morning early you have not spun this straw into gold during the night, you must die. The article's photo caption poetically reads, " The alchemy of dawn turns barley into gold. " This evoked an insightful NorsePlay: Jacob Grimm in his  Teutonic Mythology linguistically associated Sif's hair with a golden moss plant, and later scholar Hilda Ellis Davidson agreed that her hair was the golden wheat. Such interpretations link the  Skáldskaparmál   story of the theft & replacement of Sif's Golden Hair as a fertility analog for the harvesting & annual re-growth of wheat, barley, and other crops, which makes Sif associated with grain. I n terms of cosmology, Thor's lightning strikes the field and...

After all the turns of fate & adversity suffered by master smith  Volundr, one has to ask what happens after he fashions wings and flies away out of the  Völundarkviða 's narrative after wreaking his creative vengeance on his petty king captor? To answer this question, brilliant Columbian novelist Gabriel García Márquez wrote a short story in 1968 CE called  A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings that NorsePlays at least one episode of where a millennium aged Volundr lands much, much later. [the 10th-century CE winged figure from Uppåkra, Sweden, a copper alloy mount thought to represent Volundr in flight.] The telling is subtle in identifying Volundr, relaying with hints who he is, and at the same time misdirecting by using Latino/Catholic-based contexts that the people surrounding him have to frame him by, which is really brilliant & clever and keeps this identity secret while having it in plain sight if you know this story from the Norse Lore. It f...

The Norse Lore has assigned hall names for many of the Gods' residences, but an omission I've always been curious about is where Bragi dwells. While Bragi, in a very Baldr-like way, is always welcome everywhere thanks to his storytelling abilities and the potential to glorify his host in poetry, it's never mentioned where he actually goes home to. Functionally Bragi's partly described as a meet-and-greeter for the honoured warriors who come into Valhalla. One could suppose that maybe he heralds them upon entry, perhaps naming & enumerating their martial deeds for those already in the hall. But this MC duty still doesn't actually place Bragi as living in Valhalla. There's also the possibly that he perhaps instead moved in with  Iðunn . One attestation from  Hrafnagaldr Óðins places Iðunn as descending from elves, as one of "Ivaldi's elder children", and as a dís who dwells in dales. Those descriptors would make Iðunn at least part elf and poss...

  So unless you bought the Cosmic Cube in a suitcase limited edition box set of the Phase 1 Marvel movies, you never saw this remade special silhouette art paper sleeve for the blu-ray of Thor . This is where NorsePlay has just saved you $200USD, and you could always print the above on a template to make one. You're welcome. (No, we didn't buy the fancy suitcase -- we instead have the 4K/BR steelbook combo pack, thank you.) #    #    # 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 t hen 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 e mployment/ opportunities in  investigative mythology, field research, or product development t...

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986 CE), Argentinian poet, writer, and national librarian, is a globally recognized giant of Latin literary  erudition. His essays, mind-bending short stories, and bittersweet verses almost all manage to reach & grasp something beyond themselves, unveiling a cosmic truth. And this last aspect is the NorsePlay & insight that Borges recognized within the Edda s, as a number of his works fondly explore the Norse Lore. In the earliest times, which were so susceptible to vague speculation and the inevitable ordering of the universe, there can have existed no division between the poetic and the prosaic. Everything must have been tinged with magic. Thor was not the god of Thunder; he was the thunder and the god . ~ from Borges' The Gold of the Tigers The literary parallels here between just-so events in Latin magical realism & surrealism being presented in a matter-of-fact way is equally found in the sagas & histories where troublesome zombie ghost...

Four-hundred years before Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark , Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes gave us the legend of Amleth, which is precisely where the bard sourced his story. In 1994 CE the interesting NorsePlay film of Prince Of Jutland also titled Royal Deceit, and later home release re-packaged as Prince Of Denmark and  Thrones & Empires , was made to place the story within its original context, being shot in a reconstructed Viking site in Denmark by Danish director/co-screenwriter Axel Gabriel Erik Mørch.   [so very Game of Thrones mis-marketed, right?] Starring a young Christian Bale, queenly Helen Mirren, fratricidal Gary Oldman, and a dollfaced Kate Beckinsale, the cast is quality, and Freddie Jones of Krull fame has a nice supporting role as the landed apple farmer Bjorn. The tension betwixt nephew Bale and usurper uncle Oldman as the former feigns madness to avoid being assassinated, while the l...

Given that the largest NorsePlay on the pop cultural block is Marvel's The Mighty Thor, it goes hand-in-hand that his rival for the throne of Asgard, Loki, has gained a near-equal amount of attention, and with Tom Hiddleston's charming performance upping the character's fanbase to an unprecedented level, it makes sense to fan service that army of horny-headed followers with a Disney+ series . Yet smart commercialism aside to gain MCU moviegoers streaming subscriptions for an exclusive Marvel-based show, Loki really manages to deliver a self-exploring complex character in an expansive MCU pocket-world, with all the sci-fi time-travel dynamics that'll bend your head like a mobius strip with their consequences. [Okay, spoilers from here on as this is a post-viewing commentary.] As with any time-travel story, self-determination versus set fate is often an invisible force the protagonist is up against. Unfortunately there's a whole outside-of-time bureaucracy, the Tim...

This horned-helmet wearing, Templar crossed shield bearing, and longsword brandishing Viking cover art illustration is from a 1959 CE 38-page vintage pamphlet by Hjalmar Rued Holand. Holand (b.1872-d.1963 CE) was a proponent of the Kensington Runestone along with other contested Norse America artifacts, and wrote five books supporting those theories before the discovery of Leif Erikson's camp at L'Anse aux Meadows in 1960 CE . In 1950 CE Holand was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Anthropology & Cultural Studies. No matter which way you weigh in or abstain on such theories, the above illustration's a remarkably out-there NorsePlay. #    #    # 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 t hen he's been fascinated by the truthful potency of Norse Mythology, passionately read & studied, embraced Ásatrú, launched...

In reading The War Of The Realms story arc in Marvel's The Mighty Thor , the formidable NorsePlay creation of Sindr, the Queen of Cinders, daughter of Surt , usurps Helheim , much to the dismay of the Thunder God and the rage of Hela herself . In the actual Norse Lore, Surtr has the consort Sinmara mentioned in the Fjölsvinnsmál , interpreted by some to be his wife. In running with that, it would stand to reason that Surtr has children. Using that possibility, this ally of the Dark Elf Malekith invades Helheim and solidifies her power in a meeting with the various factions of the land of the dead. Hela is understatedly displeased, and conflict ensues. Unlike the predestination of the Lore, at this point in the Marvel Comics Thor story the fate weaving Norns are are almost all dead, and it would seem that it's anyone's ball game as to how the ending will ultimately turn out, but it seems that Sindr is one to watch out for. #    #    # Guillermo Maytorena ...