NorsePlay.

The question we're confronted with is: Is The Northman the best Viking visual media yet made? Despite all the previous internet objections (for whatever that noise is worth), the bar for this is History Channel's inarguably successful  Vikings (2013-2020 CE). Director Robert Eggers mixes the supernatural moments of magical realism from  Vikings with the pastoral setting from  Prince Of Jutland (1994 CE), while screenwriter Sjón pulls from the Icelandic tropes of When the Raven Flies (1984 CE), using Saxo Grammaticus' Amleth legend from  Gesta Danorum: Deeds of the Danes as a baseline point and The Sagas of Icelanders as building blocks, all which make for a  necessarily brutal & beautiful film. [model Ineta Sliuzaite rages through the sky as a  valkyrie  with her line-filed teeth!] [Note: Spoilers are about to occur ... but you read Hamlet in high school like everyone else, right?] For Heathens coming to this film, there...

The cybervikingsphere is rife with excitement & premature criticism over the upcoming April release of The Northman . In the above trailer it looks like there's much to anticipate from this NorsePlay'd major motion picture, so let's extrapolate some points of interest about what & why that is: ⸶ Nicole Kidman & Anya Taylor-Joy. Holy Freyja's cats , we'd sail a longship across the Atlantic for those two. ⸶ Björk as the Seeress. It's so spot on to see the avant-garde songstress cast as a mystical Völva witch. In real life Björk's a destiny maker, a musical subgenre game-changer, a talented actress, and winner of Iceland's Order Of The Falcon. Love her. (And she left me candy with a note at my work once. True story.) ⸶ Sjón's co-screenplay. Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson, known by his mononymic, is an accomplished writer whose work contains elements of magical realism , a literary convention which has a striking resemblance to the matter-o...

When the Raven Flies/Hrafninn Flýgur  (1984 CE) is considered by some to be the best Icelandic film of all time. After viewing it, we can totally see why. Though said to be cinematically styled after samurai film Yojimbo (1961 CE) and the Spaghetti Westerns of the mid-1960s ( WtRF is also classified into a group of films derivatively called Cod Westerns [heh!]), it is distinctly of the Icelandic Saga tradition, which historically & artistically precedes both those classifications by nearly 800 years in writing and 1,000 years orally. The first part of the Raven Trilogy (also known as the Viking Trilogy ), acclaimed director & Icelandic national personality Hrafn Gunnlaugsson weaves a solid story of Viking brutality, vengeance, mistrust, and consequences that recalls some aspects of both Njal's Saga & Gisli's Saga in the telling. The subsequent two films are only loosely connected in story, but are thematically bonded. And we recommend them to all those who m...

Take Conan , Icelandic Sagas, the cartoon styling of Bone , shading of Mignola , and you have Barbarian Lord . We just read this, and if you like anything in the above list, the cross-pollinated tropes of berserker s, trolls , witches, farmstead neighbor feuds, and Viking poetry will totally win you. And like a saga, there's a no-nonsense plot point-to-point presentation that keeps the pace lean and satisfying at the same time. Go read this. It rules. #    #    # 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 rese...