NorsePlay.

After winning the Southwest Frith Moot Viking Games' Knife Throwing event in 2019, I thought I could possibly win that again last weekend in Arizona's White Mountains, along with the prestigious Axe Throw by building our very own backyard NorsePlay Axe Throwing Target and putting in the practice. So many, many drinking horns of mead and late into the night before the Viking Games, SFM co-organizer & Chieftain of Wanderer Kindred Vincent Enlund says he'd like a way to include Kubb, the celebrated Viking lawn game, but without it having to take days like the annual championships up in Eau Claire, because we've serious Heathenry lecture s scheduled for the afternoon, otherwise Kubb's a no-go. Bragi's tongue's suddenly in my mouth and I say: "Let's invent Speed Kubb! We can reduce the kubbs from 5 to only 3 with no throw-ins, only give the players 3 batons so that way the opponent at least gets one turn, half the playing field, and keep the King ...

There's a point where attestation ends, intuitive inference begins, and we have to NorsePlay the more likely ideas to see if they grant us returns from our praxis. In that progression of reasoning & trial, we find that Healing Goddess  Eir is broader than the limited attestations and can address both physical & emotional malaise. And we strongly suspect her hand manifesting in the crop of vaccines that have begun to open up Midgard again, so if you have a moment, go give her a blot of thanks. Also, along these associative suppositions, while we've found much parroting that the goddess is connected to a white Eirflower , we can't actually find which flower this specifically is. If we NorsePlay it to research and assign one , which white flower might it be, taking into account healing properties in tandem with Indo/Migration/Iron/Viking Age regional origins? Our NorsePlay would be the Alpine/Southern Germany Edelweiss , which is used in folk medicine and has many no...

During the early medieval period of Iceland, after the conversion brought with it a change from an oral tradition to written manuscripts , quills were made from goose, swan, and ravens' feathers. Quills were always selected from a left wing, since the feather would curve away from the right-handed writer so they wouldn't Odinically poke themselves in the eye , nor have the feather blocking their line of sight from themselves to the page. One could be poetic in saying that Huginn & Muninn had a pinion in the Prose Edda 's scripting , the memory of Snorri writing, and the thoughts of Snorri composing, onto the vellum pages. [Raven wing photo from the Slater Museum of Natural History Raven Quill Dip Pen made by Mariya Green aka Vrana Raven (Etsy: vranaraven.)] #    #    # 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 h...

At Crooked Tooth Brewing in Tucson, AZ, USA, the dwarven-inspired hammer art & colour text label on this bottle speaks for itself: From the cavern cities of Nidavellir, this beer has plum & date forward notes on a dark, dark sour tide of 11% liquid hammer -to-your-face. Crooked Tooth recommends splitting the bottle ... which we did not do ... and now very much agree with them after the fact. #    #    # 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 product development to offer,  do contact him...

[plant matter, pine, lichen, and moss, suspended in resin!] NorsePlay has to ask if the ancient Germanic tribes had 3D printers and polycarbonate to create with whether they might've celebrated the runes in these materials, highly elaborating on their decorative aspects to better court the attention of the Norns and obtain deeper readings, or to use as sharper foci for galdr or  seiðr . [Yellow Glitter Runes!] In terms of "blooding" the runes, there's even a gold flake & pigs blood version that has suspended dots of blood in them. That's some serious  Neo-Vitki  tech for you. [Crafted by Portland's SaintDeath on Etsy, thanks to friend & artist Chiara Caballero for bringing these to our 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 truthful potency...

When you depict the cosmos, you map it, you are performing the ritual of sacred geography , taking abstract invisible concepts and stickpinning them into a fixed place where they're suddenly more concrete, in a real position , around the corner, or over that mountain range, or under that hill, and even if that place's time & space doesn't match nor measure nor visibly scale as ours does, you've given or found it a physical connection point attached to our own. It felt real enough to begin with, enough to record it in mythological lore and make a story of it, but in assigning it a location , it gets that much more real and perhaps accessible. After every rain, Bifröst is a two-way street , and there's a point where the land we walk meets the trunk of Yggdrasil and connects all the points of the Norse Cosmos to us. Mostly we see more general depictions of Yggdrasil , and the above world tree map diagram re-titles some of the otherworlds, possibly to be more lin...

David Lynch's cult phenom Twin Peaks  has summoned much extrapolation, and while revisiting the quirky town full of beloved characters and dark doings, we've noticed some NorsePlay hiding in the pines. Note that Lynch's maternal grandparents were Finnish-Swedish emigrants, so our following speculative observations may very well come from our auteur director perhaps being storytold Norse Lore in his childhood, which might explain alot about his amazingly strange vision. First & foremost, we realized the Log Lady bears a prophetic godpole that speaks to her, which in turn makes her  the town völva . There is an insistent "Would you know more?" seeress-ness from the  Völuspá in her pressing of needed but unwanted & doom-filled knowledge on those she talks to. Larger than this, the whispering of the trees being the voices of the Gods is an ancient idea at play as Tacitus' Germania speaks of sacred groves and later sources talk about specific holy trees...

The dwarves make this one-off thing for you, super-powerful, self-returning, electrical ly generating, requiring a belt & gloves to even handle, so with a dangerous naming that means "the crusher" or "that which smashes", you probably should have an instruction set for it , just in case. Or maybe you have a different model : [designs by moviemaniacs of Stotfold, United Kingdom.] #    #    # 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 product development to offer,  do contact him .

While we've explored Conan here & there for NorsePlay, one cannot speak of the Cimmerian of the North without referencing the artist most responsible for visually depicting him: Frank Frazetta. Given Frazetta's standing as a giant of fantasy art , and as the fantasy genre draws upon the bottomless wellsprings of Norse Lore & the Icelandic Sagas for its material , we would present Frazetta's Kane On the Golden Sea as his most outstanding manifestation of NorsePlay : [First published as a book cover on  Darkness Weaves in 1978 CE.] Vikings on a longship looking for targets to raid, Kane boldly shirtless, Berserker -style. Of course some of this composition, like the Wagner ian horned helmet s, and D&D double-bladed battle- axe , plus the fur barbarian breechclout are visual tropes from later Germanic Romanticism, derivative medieval art, and other sources, but the spirit of this & his other famous works are Norse inspired. [this official print & o...

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...

  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 . #    #...

  The above pictured "SUBSCRIBE" by email button Feedburner widget will cease to work with Blogger in July, meaning it'll stop functioning & disappear in a few weeks, so if you've previously subscribed using this button, please now instead hit the blue follow button  in the column at left to continue receiving NorsePlay's high-quality content in your inbox. And thank you for your continuing readership, dedication, and enthusiasm. #    #    # 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 product developme...

  This handsome octagonal Norse-American centennial medal was issued for Minnesota State Fair on June 6th–9th, 1925 CE, and would make a nice bit of modern Viking hoard swag given its silver content of .900, 1/2 oz+ weight, and rare shape. Issued in a run of 40,000 silver medals and 100 gold ones, the medal was made to recognize the docking of Norwegian immigrant ship Restauration. The arrival of this ship is generally considered the first organized emigration of Norwegian-Americans to the United States. Obviously the 1825 CE boat wasn't a Viking longship, nor did they have horned helmet s, but the spirit of the idea's present in the coin's recognition of the event. As of this writing, they're starting at around $150, which metalwise is like 6-times the cost of the silver , but its the numismatic value and rarity that factors into its pricing. #    #    # Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in  the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy o...

  The Hordes of Death are Summoned Forth (2015 CE) by Christian Sloan Hall, who does much illustration work in the realm of metal music, particularly commissions for renowned Viking Metal band Amon Amarth ! Survive the Jive uses this image in a YT video as a visual reference to Norse Death Goddess  Hel , and there seems to be some influence from Kirby 's green-dominant deathly yet sexy Hela from The Mighty Thor . [go buy prints or hire this artist at https://www.deathlord.co.uk/] #    #    # 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 my...

The original punditry of this blog's name aside, the sagas talk about the sport of horsefighting or Skeid/Hestavíg . In this competition stallions are shown a mare which gets them excited, then they are prodded and egged on by their owners with long sticks to attack each other, and the last horse standing wins. These horse bouts lasted into the 20th century CE, but if we examine this tradition and a hypothesis of where it comes from, we can eventually find implied links to the story of Loki & Svaðilfari. This last point is our addition to this. Following the Icelandic settlers back to Norway where Skeid continued until it was banned in 1820 CE, not for the sake of the horses, but because during the raucous & usually violent festivals surrounding it, someone was stabbed. Going further back, the status of the horse as a ruling class animal can be seen in burials where valuable horses were sacrificed for inhumation in Viking Age ship burials and Vendel Period large moun...