NorsePlay.

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...

In Orkneyinga: The Saga of the Earls of Orkney there's total guff being spoken about Shetlanders (and pretty much everyone else who isn't Orcadian, really). A long time ago, the wee archipelago  of Shetland was colonized by Vikings, used as a launching point for their raids, and then was a longtime property of Norway.   So I've been watching my Tucson pals DJ on Twitch, and while seeking other content have pleasantly stumbled into the NorsePlay storytelling stream of Shetland comedienne Marjolein Robertson , who is relating the Eddic tales in her own earnest & winning way. [so I keep linking this other more appropriate photo, but its unlinked like six times, so dubble f' it, I'm posting this more inappropriate photo which is sooooo epic the internet is too scared of to even touch much less move.] Marjolein's pretty much a current cultural ambassador for her northern homeland. W e think her accent is to die for, and her expressive dialect makes listening to...

Perhaps this is our Heathen Worldview's magic binoculars at work, but we see alot of NorsePlay within Moonrise Kingdom 's Suzy Bishop. She's a thoughtful Huginn-esque raven, she wears a transformative bird costume like Freyja, she goes berserkergang and stabs a kid in the lumbar with lefty scissors, starts fighting with some girl in her classroom (war goddess), disagrees vehemently with her family over their possessive intentions (i.e. giving her to the giants for trade at certain points in the Lore), travels with a cat ( Bygul/Trjegul ), willingly suffers for her jewelry (the painful piercing for new earrings scene/Freyja's bargain for Brísingamen), and wanders fearlessly into the wilderness to search for her love (Sam/Óðr). Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola, have we caught you at something Eddaic? #    #    # 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 ...

Neil Gaiman faced the daunting task to adapt the narrative holy of the holies, the ur-book stories, the most ancient tales known to man from which all other tales have since flowed from: Norse Mythology . As we told a childhood friend of Neil's last month, Neil is a fearless writer, that before Neil there wasn't a great movement in the fantasy genre to use the Gods as actual intimate first & close third-person protagonists. [Neil Gaiman being fearless!] We look back at his record for this daring talent with reading pleasure:  The Sandman  (his breakout World Fantasy Award-winning graphic novel series expanding the being of Greek deity Morpheus),  American Gods  (heavily featuring Gods from various pantheons), and  Odd & the Frost Giants  (a  NorsePlay  story for children of all ages). And now, in a tribute to pay back what originally inspired him, Gaiman offers us his version of  Norse Mythology . In his introduction, ...