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...

While on the face of it, Draupnir's being a priceless magical treasure is obvious: It's a bracelet that generates its own wealth every ninth night by duplicating eight more of itself. Yet the Eddic narrative of Draupnir could also be read as a measure of gifting & worth. Odin sacrifices Draupnir into the burning boat of Hringhorni with his dead son because that is what this person he loves was worth to him in his life -- Baldr was an endless treasure that had an unexpectedly premature end. The infinite wealth of that sacrifice doesn't matter to him, only the possible return of that priceless person does. In Odin's act of gifting there is an attached value, the intention of sentiment, a moment bonded to a physical object on a supernatural level. The force of those feelings are an act of energy sacrifice, and once made that energy flows down into the well of the past, waters the great tree that holds the very worlds, coming back up through the branches to feed the pr...

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...