NorsePlay.

  A girl's body's discovered floating in the open sea by a Viking prince's ship. Barely alive, they spare some of their dwindling water for her, and when she comes to, her eyes open ... to reveal goat-like horizontal pupils! This is the hook for Vei , a two-volume graphic novel , originally a Swedish 12-issue limited series from 2012 CE, and it is a stunningly executed NorsePlay. Writer Sara Bergmark Elfgren & artist Karl Johnsson gift us a re-scripting of Norse Mythology that answers the very real question of why don't the Jotnar or the Aesir just make a pre-emptive attack now to get an early victory and not have to suffer the pyrrhic resolution of end-time Ragnarök? The answer is a détente struck by a longstanding "peace" agreement mediated by a periodic gladiatorial combat. The winning side then for that time gets the domain of contested Midgard, which makes our world & its mortal reverence the key to divine power! This gives us a sweeping story rev...

When Valheim from Iron Gate Studios released in February 2021 CE, it blew up & sold 5M copies in its first month! Watching the initial gaming streams of it, Valheim looked too grindy for my liking, and the premise that there was a separated 10th world also seemed repeated from Marvel Thor back in 2013 CE where Odin cuts off & hides a whole unknown Realm as vengeance for the occupants apparently killing his daughter (and yes, that storyline's a ridiculously heavy-handed retcon for the sake of inserting of Angela from Spawn as Thor's incredibly angry sister [!?!], do not recommend), but then I heard that the Gods make cameo s : The horizon also has a gargantuan view of Yggdrasil looming in the distance as a contextual setpiece. As an aside, there's also a weird craft called The Tolroko Flyer from an unpublished earlier game that can only be unlocked via a cheat, but it doesn't do anything other than litter the landscape & look anachronistic. What I can...

While reading volume one of P. Craig Russell's graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology , the immediate result from the death of primordial Ymir is shown in a panel as a giant wave of blood being released. This is so enormous that the flood kills all but two of the jötnar, which implies that Ymir's sanguine deluge also drowns the giantess wives of Buri & Bor, and collaterally their grandfather & father as well if such a flood is on so large of a cosmically uncontrollable scale. Such a consequence would then explain why after the waves settle it is the third generation of Odin, Vili, & Ve that are left to craft & rule the Níu Heimar, while Buri & Bor are unmentioned after that, and maybe settle why such a cosmic creature as Auðumbla is absent as well. This isn't necessarily the answer: There could just be missing stories, or the death of Ymir & universal creation passes forward ruler-worthy powers or status or both to the three ...

  Given the Norse Lore, one might think this is possibly Thor's trophy room of jötnar skull s at Bilskirnir, or perhaps his gathered material for a borderland hunting lodge/nithing pile, and maybe that's Þjálfi at right trying to figure out how to organize his master's giant ossuary. Well, that's what my Heathen Worldview saw anyway, and one can sometimes argue a case for what personal contexts a viewer brings to a piece over artist's intent . This evocative art installation is Mass by Ron Mueck from  2016-2017 CE , detail (!), media of synthetic polymer paint on fiberglass. [thanks to Sofie Vanherpen (go read her scholarship on Aud the Deep-Minded here ) for incidentally bringing this to my attention.] #    #    # 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 truthf...

  The amazingly kitch chain-wielding Valkyrie product shot aside, this limited edition $9,000 USD Legends Of Valhalla pinball machine features unlocks that include a wizard Valhalla mode, and a super wizard Ragnarök mode. Yes, the honoured hall of the slain can be reached for naught but a quarter . Well, unless the Gods of your local Asgardcade Hall have set it for four quarters, in which case it's still a bargain. The Odin playing field art seems strongly based on Amon Amarth 's Johan Hegg! And who ever suspected there'd be a Mammen Axe unlock in a game? #    #    # 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. ...

In Neil Gaiman 's American Gods the operating premise for the divine is that the Gods are regionally bound and that their existence & power depends upon those who believe & worship them. In Starz' TV adaptation, Season 3's opening addresses Viking Metal 's celebration & reclamation of Heathen Nordic contexts by kicking off with this scene of faux band Blood Death lead by Johan Wengren (Marilyn Manson!?!): As the story of the ancient Old Gods versus the emergent New Gods of Technology unfolds, we see the Old Gods adapting some of that technology in order to garner digital followers, and Odin (the venerable Ian McShane) connecting with metalheads, bikers, and aggro  fans , which seems appropriate for Mr Wednesday who banks on & rewards those of the warrior ethos. The teleplays expands in notable degrees upon the book, backgrounding & filling out minor characters into fan favourites, and giving us such clever lines as Wednesday's:  "Ask and y...

I've successfully plotted 1100+ mappoints for my Map Of Midgard Project! This is the ninth progress update since  the initial blog post ,  the first update ,  the second update ,  the third update ,  the fourth update ,  the fifth update ,  the sixth update , the seventh update , and the eighth update . What marks this as a watershed is that aggregating mappoints is now "complete", and the Map Of Midgard Project can move one huge step forward towards publishing physical maps! When originally starting this project over six years ago , I imagined that there would be fewer than 100 mappoints. Then finding literature-to-location correspondences exponentially grew into far, far more than I'd imagined. Even with over 1100, there's more out there, but I feel that stickpinning a thousand-plus mappoints is a massive accomplishment and contribution of aggregation & original research to the field of Norse Lore. And sure, there's certainly more mappoints to be...

In Northern folklore, the water horse attracts, adheres, and drowns those who touch it, but it's never adequately explained why it's called a kelpie.  While it's not for certain, it's thought the Scots word's related to the Gaelic "calpa"  or colt, but one might instead guess it has to do with kelp. In the latter line of thinking,  God Of War: Ragnarok  shows the kelpie with a tail made from strands of kelp, and when it transforms to dive underwater, even more kelp-constructed fins emerge from its body! This visual explanation's a seriously good example of NorsePlay as it helps fill-in an obvious answer that may have never previously presented itself. Yet even if this is an etymological coincidence, it shows how some myths become even more adorned as they roll forward in time by  gathering the moss of artistic decision  ... or in this instance, gathers kelp. Safety warning: Do not be fooled by this GoW:R video -- do not touch ...

The above is a reconstruction of a tapestry fragment found in the Oseberg ship burial made from this: This lacuna-ridden ~12" long by ~8" wide weaving might've escaped notice on many digs, maybe been accidentally dug through or pushed aside as random gauze to get at some shinier sword fittings or silver treasures, but when we look very, very carefully at it, we can make out some of the details. Found during the excavation in 1903 CE, the Oseberg Tapestry makes its way to us after more than a millennium from a prestigious funeral in ~834 CE. That survival's something beyond magic, and the reconstruction by Stig Saxegaard of Storm Studios from 2018 CE (note the not-present colours in the artifact are an artistic choice in the visual reconstruction), revealing what are probably hung men sacrificed to Odin is grimly amazing. This process could be seen as a metaphor for the reconstruction of Ásatrú, for archaeology's restoration of a picture of the past, and of the a...

  There's a lot of  great detail in this cosmological sketch print of  Die Neun Welten / The Nine Worlds  by E. Müller-Baden, c. 1900 CE. It almost looks like Yggdrasil's tertiary root is so far away from the main body of its subterranean structure that it's pretty slim pickings for Níðhöggr, who never actually does cause critical damage on The World Tree, so perhaps this offers a reason as to why. This diagram also solves the arboreal co-identification problem by specifically making Læradr the upper portion of Yggdrasil . There's also a more geographical separation between portions of  Niflheim depending if you're an oathbreaking victim unmercifully given to  Níðhöggr 's serpentine children (#2), or if you're a regular deceased (#9), which would probably spare Hel 's broader populace the gnashing of dragon teeth & wailing of the dishonourable. Though if any of you recall where the " Egisheim" Sea is cited from, do let me know. Below is ...

Here's the thing about  Brute Norse : It's my favourite podcast. Creator/host/p hilologist  Eirik Storesund is the punk rock academician you never knew you needed. Irascible, hypercritical, and occasionally crass, all blendered into the unapologetically erudite. That mixing of dwarf-burnt motor oil into Nordic spring water makes you wonder how that even works. BN 's not the same 101/105 intro course level re-tread over so much that it's churned into the shallowest of indistinguishable muddy ground material that everyone else does. There's almost always a Gods/Runes/Sources/Hot Takes Review series of things when a vid/podcaster starts out with different levels of success, style, or research. And if you've been consuming the ever widening gyre of cybervikingsphere offerings, it becomes increasingly harder to find something different with serious depth or with just 5% of something you haven't already heard elsewhere. Enter Brute Norse in 2017 CE. So far beyond ...

While I don't know Hong Kong's Genesis Pens from a knarr's oarhole, they're crafting a line of fountain pens called The Norsemen , and they're apparently out of stock, so maybe they've done something right. Pictured above is the matte-sanded Raven Black version. [translucent Yggdrasil-accented ink window on the Jötunn model.]    With four different designs named after Norse Lore-relevant aspects, their resin barrels are engraved with Nordic motifs, each slightly different from the other three. [opaque frosted, gold-engraved Sleipnir version, inked with matching Bungubox Ebisu Gold (note, the above writing sample is from a swapped in custom nib).] While these open editions retail at around $200 each, the pen has the looks of a $500 limited edition from a more known company, but the default nib is a Polished Steel #6 Jowo, which I have no experience with, though apparently from the above picture, it can be ground or swapped if you felt you needed to custom upgrade...

  This family tree isn't the most comprehensive (nor correct, if you spot Gerriod being outside the line of descent for jötnar, and a few other things), but NorsePlay is posting it for the attractive & lateral thinking tree ring approach it takes. Note that Ginnungagap is given central primordial parentage, which since it's a place (or not-place, perhaps), is a markedly different way of looking at the Norse Cosmogony, though probably just incidentally serving the design. It would be pretty brilliant if someone were to run with this design to create something more encompassing. [Designed by Severino Ribecca.] #    #    # 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 ...

Jarnsaxa Rising 's a NorsePlay'd sci-fi/fantasy 18-episode audiodrama cut from the format of classic 1920s radio shows, mixed with much of the higher-consciousness imbued binaural panache of ZBS' productions from the 1970s/80s where galactic cyborg gumshoe Ruby would have to unexpectedly deal with ancient Mesopotamian death goddess Ereshkigal, or spiritual traveler Jack Flanders had to brave a metaphysical landscape that was both within & without himself, except here the tropes & structure are from an expanded re-characterization of Norse Mythology. For Jarnsaxa the jötunness, her axe to grind is with Thor, her ex-lover, and her opportunity for vengeance happens in the corpocratic dystopian future of 2094 CE via possession. In noir backstory style, we're introduced to a pair of company employees sent to investigate why a wind turbine on a Baltic island is generating power when it shouldn't be on at all, and that's the hook the story unfolds on, crossing...

From the hands of the director of Troll Hunter  (2010 CE) comes another foray into the fields of NorsePlay: Mortal (2020 CE). Vagrant American tourist Eric (Nat Wolff) is hiding out in the Norwegian forest, on the lam from an apparent arson fire/murder at his cross-Atlantic family's farm. Eric is apparently emotionally damaged with post-traumatic stress from whatever actually happened, and has nightmares involving fire . Another apparent murder lands him in the local Ossa jail, where rookie psychologist Christine (Iben Akerlie) is called in to speak with him before U.S. authorities are to show up and extradite him. Willing to talk to her, Eric then seems to manifest some electrokinetic powers , which she intuits are related to his volatile emotional state, and manages to talk him down. The film becomes something of a chase movie in its second act, with a final reveal of why Eric is gifted/cursed with his electrokinesis. This dynamic, however, was explored in  The New Mutant...