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Showing posts from September, 2021

cigars of the Norse Gods.

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Branding is like 80% of sales in the cigar industry. Every year new lines launch at cigar industry shows dressed up with fancy labels in classy boxes to compete for shelf space at tobacconists everywhere. Naming products after titans or gods to add appeal and have positive associations is nothing new, but I was delighted to run across these Norse God cigars : Odin totally strikes one as a cigar smoker. Any cigar lounge could possibly be considered a Sessrúmnir, or "a hall of many seats". And of course some Thor named offerings: Given feasting culture , and Viking halls as both centers of religious & secular power, the idea of lighting up Nordic-themed cigars after these grand meals isn't out of the question. And in the what-if world where the Vikings retained beachheads in Vinland, perhaps they would have found a tribe with proto-cigar smoking customs from whom to import tobacco back home to Scandinavia , and then labels such as these would've be more prolific,

powerfeasting at Viking Burger.

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While NorsePlay's not above featuring Viking kitsch, albeit very judiciously, I have to include Newport News, VA's Viking Burger . [While this logo could be a Viking Age post-Hamburg food takeaway raid, the much-later burger was possibly U.S. Danish immigrant Louis Lassen's lunch wagon invention from 1900 CE, but named by German sailors after their namesake city.] With menu items like the hot & spicy stuffed Angry Odin burger, the vegetarian Freya option, Frigga (a sirloin patty burger), the huge  Ragnarök (f ries & torcs [onion rings] topped with Viking sauce, cheese sauce, jalapenos, and onion] side, and the Valhalla custom ordered burger, where even stuffed with mac 'n' cheese is an option, it's all a pretty brilliant NorsePlay. And odds are the above building is a converted Der Wienerschnitzel, but then that fact alone makes you notice that all those  hot dog joints sort of resemble Viking Age longhouses . Beyond this business just being a them

NorsePlay Investigates: Meili, the Norse God of Travel?

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Meili, the God of Travel, is such an amazingly obscure catch within the Æsir Gods list. Yet there's a chance that Meili, one translation meaning “the lovely one”, is only a kenning for Baldr who tends to always get the epithet as being the brightest (read handsome/attractive) of the Gods. One of the few references is Thor claims " Meili" is his brother, though the obvious point-of-reference would be Baldr, and this reading of the word might only indicate that.  Odin alone has dozens of names, so it might reason that popular Baldr would have a few other proper names & epithets to his credit as well. This association's a Viktor Rydberg connection though, and while I love to entertain Rydberg's romanticist associations generally, he sometimes gets farwheeling in reaching to glue things together (but man, is it neat to think about). Also Rudolf Simek doesn't put this association in his Dictionary of Northern Mythology which tends to be a good reference &

Odin's cameo in Conan The Barbarian.

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Director John Milius filmed a sequence in Conan The Barbarian (1982 CE) where usurper King Osric (Max Von Sydow) gets assassinated by his own bodyguards who turn out to be Thulsa Doom's secret court agents! Note the backdrop of both these scenes contains tapestries that are Viking picture stone adaptations , the first being from  Stora Hammers Stone I: [second panel down, right side.] And the second being Odin from the Andre III picture stone: [on Sleipnir, upper right] The metaphysical implication being that Odin is claiming King Osric for Valhalla using this final conflict, which is along the lines of what happens to many kings & heroes in the Sagas. Except this storyline gets cut as the ending voiceover says Princess  Yasimina gets returned to her father (and the novelization adds that Conan is offered Yasimina, and essentially the kingdom of Zamora by marriage, but refuses Osric) and Conan instead goes adventuring in the West, with just the tapestries' edges only fleet