NorsePlay.

  While we've mentioned the first chronological Conan story  The Frost-Giant's Daughter (1934 CE), which was later altered & published as Gods of the North (1953 CE), there is something in Howard's Northmen 's lore that evokes an interesting NorsePlay when we find Conan as part of a skirmish in the Æsir - Vanir War. Howard's fiction suggests that Ymir is regarded as the God of the Jotuns , who is still sacrificed to and called upon, and if we NorsePlay this idea into the Norse Lore, the Gods versus Giants rift gains an even more sensible irreparability. If the creation story encounter had gone the other way with Ymir killing the divine grandsons of Búri instead, it may have been the Aesir seeking an exile-like home on the outskirts of the worlds, and been as equally unforgiving in their relations with their ascendant giant rulers . One also shudders to think that humanity might have become a thrall race to the giants, or worse, livestock . #    #...

Gathering from online reviews, previews, and our personal powers of speculation, the Nordic Netflix show Ragnarok harnesses elements from the reincarnation & self-discovery of the children's book series The Blackwell Pages and the New Zealand TV cult favourite The Almighty Johnsons of gods into mortals, and partly the contemporary fantasy of American Gods  and tabletop RPG Scion , into what seems to be a teen fantasy drama. Headed by Danish writer Adam Price (of the successful Danish political series  Borgen)  and Danish editor-turned-debut-director Mogens Hagedorn, the show's set in the pointedly named town of Edda (actually shot in Odda, Norway). The description colour text: " In a Norwegian town poisoned by pollution and rattled by melting glaciers, the End Times feel all too real. It’ll take a legend to battle an old evil. " So it appears literal & figurative corporate giants are intentionally ruining the environment in order t...

Okay, total spoiler which we dislike doing, but there's no way around it: While not the best episode of The Librarians , "And the Reunion of Evil" (season 3, 2016) includes a surprising jotun NorsePlay element where two librarians stumble from the heart of a snowstorm into a Swedish ski lodge hotel while possessing an artifact that a trucing private reunion of giant clans have gathered to consume. The jotun are presented as troublemaking descendants  of Loki, who instead revel in causing the ills of the world (disasters, plagues, insurance fleecing, etc), which is something of a downgrade as major adversaries of the Gods, but then it would explain how they've stayed under the radar for so long. The giants wear Scandinavian patterned sweaters, and some fur accent garments, while overdrinking and playing hnefatafl and k ubb in displays of oneupmanship. [watch in mirrored format here .] #    #    # Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something spe...

Norse Mythology family tree by Humon Comics. The style of this is iconically reductivist, yet still charmingly winning, though we believe Ymir should be more ancient sleeping mountain as opposed to an infant and the infanticide that would falsely imply. What's always interesting to note in these is how closely related the different factions are. Thor the jotun slayer is himself half-giant as many Aesir, and the Aesir marry often from the select of jotun maidens, yet despite familial ties the enmity overrides that, and defines the nonusversal conflict of entropic forces wanting to breakdown everything because that's just what they do, versus creators' constant struggle & vision to preserve an established existence for everyone. #    #    # 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 th...

Njord Kane's Spangenhelm quotes an anonymous author who speculates that Bigfoot/Sasquatch can be identified as Trolls, and that they are vibrational extra-dimensional entities in nature, which is why physical evidence has been hard to collect and why the sound of church bells pains them so. It's a pretty interesting train of thought that fills in something within Norse Cosmology. [4/10/2020 Addendum: Since originally posting this, the  Spangenhelm  website's gone down. If any of you know if there's a repost elsewhere online, we'd like to link this entry to it.] #    #    # 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/b...