NorsePlay.

Flipping through Andrew Lang's The Crimson Fairy Book (1903 CE), I read  a pretty brilliant NorsePlay  remix in the story of  The Horse Gullfaxi and the Sword Gunnföder . This story is full of loans & borrowings from across the lore, the large ones being the hero named Sigurd (from The Saga of the Volsungs ), the horse Gullfaxi (from the race in  Skáldskaparmál ) which one is forbidden to ride (this rule from  Hrafnkels saga applied to his horse Freyfaxi), and a weather effecting magic item that summons hail (from The Story of Thorstein Mansion-Might ). There are a couple other lesser parallels to be divined, but the above are the most certain & definitely present. [story illustration by Henry Justice Ford.] Even without being well-versed enough in the Norse Lore to identify any of the above, the story in itself stands alone as a fun tale. Sourcewise, Lang adapts the story from an 1884 CE German translation by Viennese politician & Scandinav...

NorsePlay:  Creative explorations, variants, and additions to Norse Lore & Myth. The Lore's been a sandbox since hearthfires and skalds in the hall, and once Tolkien got ahold of it with the intention of making an open-source world, it's also been fair game in modern days. Our Lore's stories attract creativity because they are the ur-stories, our Gods are bad arses, the adversaries are felt as a real/metaphorical yet inevitable threat, and all that carries a useable weight that narratively, artistically, musically, and cinematically cannot be ignored. To acknowledge the historicity of this concept, Norse Language expert Jackson Crawford states that NorsePlay in terms of variation & fanon started pretty much from the get-go. As we desire & request more Norse-inspired narratives, so did the arch-Heathens & subsequent generations ask the fireside skalds for sequels & team-ups, and they delivered audience-satisfying new stories, very much like comics...

One of NorsePlay's favourite landmark sculptures, the Sólfar , or Sun Voyager. [Photo from Day 2 of my Iceland: a travelogue experience.] Made by Jón Gunnar Árnason in 1990 for the birthday of Reykjavík. While there we watched foolhardy tourists fail to climb its overslick aluminum sides and nearly eat it. We see the probable influences of the Nordic Bronze Age petrogylph ship images and the staves of galdrastafur within Sólfar 's structure. #    #    # 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 ...

Day -1 : Deplaned! ... and it begins with me sprinting full out from one end of Phoenix's mile-long Sky Harbor Airport to the very last concourse, which of course looks very action film terrorist red flag-like. The plane (if you can call the wee Red Bull can with wings an actual plane) from Tucson was 45 minutes late getting in due to confidence inspiring "maintenance issues", which left me with less than 10 minutes to make my connection to Denver. "The door is closed." I can see the plane through the window, still connected to the jetway. "But the plane is  right there ." "The door is closed. You'll have to go talk to customer service," she states in flat disciplinarian tones with barely veiled punitive relish. By contrast the sweet great aunt US Airways desk agent's deeply apologetic about me losing a whole day in Iceland, and I simply can't get pissed at a nice old lady who's doing her best to get me out as early as ...