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Showing posts from May, 2021

the runes of glitter & clarity.

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[plant matter, pine, lichen, and moss, suspended in resin!] NorsePlay has to ask if the ancient Germanic tribes had 3D printers and polycarbonate to create with whether they might've celebrated the runes in these materials, highly elaborating on their decorative aspects to better court the attention of the Norns and obtain deeper readings, or to use as sharper foci for galdr or  seiðr . [Yellow Glitter Runes!] In terms of "blooding" the runes, there's even a gold flake & pigs blood version that has suspended dots of blood in them. That's some serious  Neo-Vitki  tech for you. [Crafted by Portland's SaintDeath on Etsy, thanks to friend & artist Chiara Caballero for bringing these to our attention.] #    #    # 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...

the many interpretations of Yggdrasil.

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When you depict the cosmos, you map it, you are performing the ritual of sacred geography , taking abstract invisible concepts and stickpinning them into a fixed place where they're suddenly more concrete, in a real position , around the corner, or over that mountain range, or under that hill, and even if that place's time & space doesn't match nor measure nor visibly scale as ours does, you've given or found it a physical connection point attached to our own. It felt real enough to begin with, enough to record it in mythological lore and make a story of it, but in assigning it a location , it gets that much more real and perhaps accessible. After every rain, Bifröst is a two-way street , and there's a point where the land we walk meets the trunk of Yggdrasil and connects all the points of the Norse Cosmos to us. Mostly we see more general depictions of Yggdrasil , and the above world tree map diagram re-titles some of the otherworlds, possibly to be more lin...

the godpoles speak in Twin Peaks.

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David Lynch's cult phenom Twin Peaks  has summoned much extrapolation, and while revisiting the quirky town full of beloved characters and dark doings, we've noticed some NorsePlay hiding in the pines. Note that Lynch's maternal grandparents were Finnish-Swedish emigrants, so our following speculative observations may very well come from our auteur director perhaps being storytold Norse Lore in his childhood, which might explain alot about his amazingly strange vision. First & foremost, we realized the Log Lady bears a prophetic godpole that speaks to her, which in turn makes her  the town völva . There is an insistent "Would you know more?" seeress-ness from the  Völuspá in her pressing of needed but unwanted & doom-filled knowledge on those she talks to. Larger than this, the whispering of the trees being the voices of the Gods is an ancient idea at play as Tacitus' Germania speaks of sacred groves and later sources talk about specific holy trees...

an owner's manual for your Mjölnir.

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The dwarves make this one-off thing for you, super-powerful, self-returning, electrical ly generating, requiring a belt & gloves to even handle, so with a dangerous naming that means "the crusher" or "that which smashes", you probably should have an instruction set for it , just in case. Or maybe you have a different model : [designs by moviemaniacs of Stotfold, United Kingdom.] #    #    # 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 to offer,  do contact him .

Frazetta is NorsePlay.

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While we've explored Conan here & there for NorsePlay, one cannot speak of the Cimmerian of the North without referencing the artist most responsible for visually depicting him: Frank Frazetta. Given Frazetta's standing as a giant of fantasy art , and as the fantasy genre draws upon the bottomless wellsprings of Norse Lore & the Icelandic Sagas for its material , we would present Frazetta's Kane On the Golden Sea as his most outstanding manifestation of NorsePlay : [First published as a book cover on  Darkness Weaves in 1978 CE.] Vikings on a longship looking for targets to raid, Kane boldly shirtless, Berserker -style. Of course some of this composition, like the Wagner ian horned helmet s, and D&D double-bladed battle- axe , plus the fur barbarian breechclout are visual tropes from later Germanic Romanticism, derivative medieval art, and other sources, but the spirit of this & his other famous works are Norse inspired. [this official print & o...