NorsePlay.

  Sure, this could just be a silly seasonal food post, but then NorsePlay never squanders a Norse Lore learning opportunity: There's a scientific overlay that in the Norse Cosmology the world serpent Jörmungandr possibly represents gravity which functions to encircle & thus hold our Midgard together (much like this pie crust), while his end-of-days electrical target Thor represents electromagnetism . This physics-speculative NorsePlay is from part of Manly P Hall's lecture On Norse Myth , noted esotericist & author of The Secret Teachings Of All Ages (1928 CE). Thus the inescapable dual fate of Thor & the Serpent could perhaps be not just archenemies targeting each other throughout time, but a bond of universal forces competing & acting upon one another. So this winter holiday be Thor, and save the Norse Níuverse by eating all the pie. Plus it'll be good prepwork for your time at the endless feasting tables of Valhalla . Thanks for reading, subscribing, sha...

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,...

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...

Late last year on the south bank of the Thames in London, the pop-up shop Thor's Tipi Bar swung its doors open with the motto "Drink, Feast, Conquer, Repeat". [ Hit them up to get a location happening near you.] #    #    # 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 .