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...

The treasured containers for the Mead of Poetry, tri-horn vessels Óðrerir, Boðn, & Són crafted by Grimfrost for Vikings show creator/writer Michael Hirst. An exceptional NorsePlay out of the Edda s made into a beautifully functional representation! #    #    # 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 .

One might imagine that when Thor, Loki, & Þjálfi enter the Jotuns' Hall of Útgarðr that it may have borne some resemblance to this dining room of Sorrisniva AS's ice hotel in Norway ... except considerably larger. Carved anew every year from ice & snow, the interiors are otherworldly & evocative. #    #    # 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 .

Ninth in the Norse Goddess series of memes is Angrboða, Jötunn mistress of Loki, and mother of Fenrir, Jörmungandr, & Hel, three of the greater adversaries lined up against the Aesir come Ragnarök, ergo her "Bringer of Sorrow" name. Again, this selection isn't a venerated goddess, given the above offspring, but seems to be selected for inclusion to fill out the strong feminine archetype being depicted. The wolf-mother imagery here's apropos for her raising of Fenrir & his brethren ( if she's identified with the giantess who dwells in the Ironwood in the Eddas), and the skull tableau on panel 7 implies the connection to Hel & death with the snuffed candle and expired hourglass. The obvious opportunity to include the world serpent association's glaringly absent. Odd redundancy: Panel 6 is the same as panel 3 in the Skadi meme except here in black & white. [Found on a VK Wall. If anyone knows who originally designed these, do let me know...

The hard truth is that at the end of the post-conversion night, what we mostly have left of the Norse Gods are the  Edda s. And the fact is  you want more NorsePlay . We know from the  Edda s' passing references there were tons more stories. And from within an oral tradition, all these tales were surely told & retold in many differing versions with emphasis placed or displaced depending on the audiences' points of interest or the skald's creative leanings. So when Norse Lore believers/followers/fans get bent that so-and-so told it "wrong" or added/subtracted things, there's an ancient & liberal precedent being celebrated with these differences. In this vein of expansive storytelling license, there's obviously  Marvel's 1962 to now superhero take , but during that period Norse lore has been remixed by other daring authors, which we will survey here: Dennis Schmidt's  Twilight of the Gods  (1985-1987) trilogy as prequel/re-interpretive,...

When Professor Mark Mirabello published  The Odin Brotherhood  (1992) surely many dismissed the idea of a surviving secret society of religious Norse practitioners as an attractive fantasy, or thought the dialog in the book only an Edda-like delivery system for a revival. Understandably any sort of unearthed esoteric knowledge revealed after hundreds of years using unconfirmable sources opens itself up to scrutiny & examination, especially by reconstructionists who've had to weed out and re-plant structures in their religion, and we leave it up for those better versed in the archaeology & attestations in Asatru Lore to do so. What can't be argued is that Mirabello serves up some interesting ideas & perspectives onto the Asatruar's table, which we will present & ourselves extrapolate on here from the 5th edition (we don't have the current 6th edition [but if the publisher wished to send us one, we'd be happy to examine & revise this survey in ...

After reading trendy Eggers' underwhelming recent essay on the D'Aulaires' childhood classic  Norse Gods & Giants  (which one already knows is  wondrous all-ages magic  without his stamp of uninsightful approval), running across celebrated A.S. Byatt doing her take on Norse lore was an offering Nine Worlds better. Known for one of the most refined epistolary novels, the Booker Prize winning  Possession  (1990), which will rip your heart out and make it pump tears of saddest sad sadness, one can only imagine the Wagnerian angst & pathos such a talent could lend to the verses of the Gods. Yet the tender  Possession  and the Icelandic skald Snorri Sturluson's mythopoeic collection are also worlds away from each other, and the gap shows at times. [Friedrich Wilhelm Heine's "Kampf der untergehenden Götter" (1882).] In  Ragnarok: The End of the Gods  (2011), Byatt brings her own modern insights into the built-in eschatology of...