NorsePlay.

NorsePlay would like to take a moment this Yule to spot the influence of Frost Maiden turned Norse Goddess Gerðr within the figure of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale figure, The Snow Queen. The above Edmund Dulac illustration (1911 CE) found in Stories from Hans Andersen , features a regally divine lady, diaphanously dressed with her pallid arms bared, the Northern Lights encircling her head, perhaps projected or reflected from her physical presence. This presentation of comfort in extreme cold would suggest jötunness heritage given to her. Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale (1844 CE) also features heroine Gerda whose name may indicate a storyteller's easy choice of one degree of character displacement from Gerðr. The Snow Queen herself probably trickles down into C.S. Lewis' Imperial Majesty Jadis, Queen of Narnia, whom those thankless rebels impugn as "The White Witch". Gerðr's known for the feature of her shimmering arms, part of why G...

Detail from The Goddess Gerd by UK sculptor George Blackall Simonds (1847–1929 CE). Gerðr of The Shimmering Arms is her most-known kenning. This could be yet another attribute derived/associated with the Northern Lights as they shimmer across the sky, so the sculpture depicts the jotun maiden with her arms upraised, and a possible dawn-esque Goddess halo of radiance made of hair, so her shimmering epithet could also perhaps alternately be a Midnight Sun association, or more simply the sun's reflection dazzling one's eyes off of the ice , or all the above really given the polyvalent nature of the Norse Gods, but the beauty of the proverbial & ideal pale-limbed lovely is definitely at work. And when Freyr beholds this attribute from his sneaking a view from Odin's throne  Hlidskjalf , the D'Aulaires show the phenomena of her shimmering as the first thing of Gerðr he sees. #    #    # Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in...

In a moment of curiosity, Freyr sits on Odin's high seat from which all the worlds can be seen. [ Freyr on Hlidskjalf   (1930) by Kather ine Pyle.] Because who wouldn't want a chance to see everything? But as Odin sits there to seek wisdom, Freyr instead beholds all through eyes of desire , and in looking, he sees the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, Gerðr of the Shimmering Arms, a jotuness so pallid in form, and comely in beauty that Freyr's stricken with a lovesickness he's never known before. [ Skirnir's Message to Gerd (1908) by W. G. Collingwood.] In that moment Freyr sees all the worlds, and beholds the one he wants most of all. The climb into that forbidden seat allows him the advantage of seeing the best possibility of out of all the women in existence, and in that very same instant he knows his Wyrd is hard forged. The action of sitting somewhere high for insight could be referencing the Nordic magic ritual of útiset...

While viewing the perfect film Moonrise Kingdom for probably the 30th or so time, we just noticed a few more things that relate to the Lore, and while we don't think director Wes Anderson consciously included Norse elements from his Norwegian-Swedish paternal background, we're taking a moment to point our own Heathen Worldview observations out. Suzy Bishop & Sam Shakusky finally meet in a picturesque field after much postal correspondence, emotional negotiation, and extra-personal angst from their separate situations ... much the same after Freyr & Gerðr finally meet in "The Grove of Tranquil Paths", or the field of Barri in the Poetic Edda's Skírnismál , where they get married. At the performance of Noye's Fludde (possibly a less sanguine diluvial reworking of the killing of Ymir whose flood of blood starts a new chapter of cosmic existence), Sam is not content to stay in his seat with the rest of the scouts, but transgressively gets up and strike...