NorsePlay.

The original punditry of this blog's name aside, the sagas talk about the sport of horsefighting or Skeid/Hestavíg . In this competition stallions are shown a mare which gets them excited, then they are prodded and egged on by their owners with long sticks to attack each other, and the last horse standing wins. These horse bouts lasted into the 20th century CE, but if we examine this tradition and a hypothesis of where it comes from, we can eventually find implied links to the story of Loki & Svaðilfari. This last point is our addition to this. Following the Icelandic settlers back to Norway where Skeid continued until it was banned in 1820 CE, not for the sake of the horses, but because during the raucous & usually violent festivals surrounding it, someone was stabbed. Going further back, the status of the horse as a ruling class animal can be seen in burials where valuable horses were sacrificed for inhumation in Viking Age ship burials and Vendel Period large moun...

With some concern we've recently been watching the thousands of earthquakes and threat of an eruption of some degree in Iceland, which happened Friday night at Fagradalsfjall Mountain. [3/20 photo by Vilhelm Gunnarsson.] The island country's been statistically overdue for one for awhile now, as Iceland formed up out of the Mid-Atlantic rift, and straddles the North American & Eurasian tectonic plates, so geographically it's lava-made and volcano-centric. The Reykjanes Peninsula happens to be where metro Reykjavík is, which groups nearly 2/3rds of the country's population together, and in this context is a vulnerability in terms of possible lava flow and poisonous gases. While the eruption was originally predicted to be at Mount Keilir, ~20 miles SW of Reykjavík, the instead active Mount Fagradalsfjall fissure eruption is ~25 miles SW on an opposing slope away from the capital. So far the lava is mostly within the unpopulated Fagradal valley south of the mountain. If...

Dark aesthetics, a trio of faceless otherworldly figures, implications of unquestionable temporal power, and the looming hint of a tree that is far more than a tree , guarded by their presence. These are the Norns. [This photo illustration has been reposted so many times without creative attribution that its original maker escapes easy research. If this is your work, we'd love to attribute you because we love it, so do let us know.] #    #    # 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 developmen...

NorsePlay wants to put forth the original & doctorate-worthy observation that there could be a historical throughline betwixt medieval Scottish Sword Dances, Viking Age Berserker Rituals, and the Vendel Period Spear Dancers. Our NorsePlay hypothesis runs thus visually, backtracking with the Scottish Sword Dances (15th c. CE): [ Go, lassies, go! ] In this tradition there's also the halberd-like  Lochaber Axe used in a dance, and a Dirk Dance, the latter termed a "battle dance" with "dueling" performers. The sword dance is done without touching the crossed swords before battle, which if successful is an indicator of imminent victory ... or death if not.   Further back, we have tentative guesses that the Viking Bersærkergang  was a ritually evoked religious ecstatic state reached via a frenzied dance , either pre-battle or done just before battle in front of assembled enemies, which would double as a psychological warfare technique. And at earliest, the Odinic ...

  I've successfully plotted 700 mappoints for my Map Of Midgard Project! This is the sixth update since  the initial blog post ,  the first update ,  the second update ,  the third update ,  the fourth update , and the fifth update . I'm still working on the remaining backlist of mappoints that weren't as easily findable during the course of my research. This list, originally  of 360 candidates, is now down to 248 possible additional locations. [yes, this is a for-real one-off promo Map Of Midgard t-shirt, because it's only getting closer with each of these posts!] While I expected to take on a more mercenary & expedient approach to this final list to get to a publication point, such an approach  doesn't respect the value of the data, so even though this lengthens the timeline of the project, I'm giving these the time they deserve. For example, no respectable Norse Lore map wouldn't include a speculative mappoint for Jotunheim , but that's a ...