NorsePlay.

While Fritz Lang's two-part, nearly 5-hour  Die Nibelungen will remain the first amazing silent film breakout Norse mythological screen achievement, there are actually a few later adaptations of The Saga of the Volsungs / The Song of the Nibelungs , some of which are fairly derivative of Lang's adaptation, and others that show more proto-Sword & Sorcery plotting. Here are three notable cinematic NorsePlays: Treasure Of The Petrified Forest , (aka The Stone Forest,  1965 CE) is more Wagner than Volsungs, setting up hero Sigmund & love interest Princess Siglinde as committed to protect the secret of the forest and its mound of treasure. Unfortunately a hostile Viking king figures out from a defecting jealous sister what that secret is and battle amongst the glitterbombed stucco trees ensues. There's definite fantasy roots here, and more build on the antagonist, but if you're looking for Norse Lore served Spaghetti Viking style , this delivers with some fun narra...

Somewhere within a long & very, very speculative post I found, there was a supposition about Ask & Embla being made from Ash & Elm . Given the prehistorical scale of mythic time the NorsePlay was that they're the two types of wood that get paired up as the two Mesolithic hunter choices to make a bow & arrow. Ash grows straight and so is ideal for arrows. Elm is flexible and is used for bows. While I haven't seen this association repeated anywhere else, it does address the why behind the choices of those specific trees, why they compliment each other, and why the specific gender assignations are applied to types of trees via their uses. This attractive speculation aside it could just  more simply   be a verbally alliterative reason, or a localized growth factor of those trees being complimentarily  found together in a certain area, but perhaps it could be all three of the above. [the Hedeby/Haithabu (825~850 CE) bow illustration above and actual...

Branding is like 80% of sales in the cigar industry. Every year new lines launch at cigar industry shows dressed up with fancy labels in classy boxes to compete for shelf space at tobacconists everywhere. Naming products after titans or gods to add appeal and have positive associations is nothing new, but I was delighted to run across these Norse God cigars : Odin totally strikes one as a cigar smoker. Any cigar lounge could possibly be considered a Sessrúmnir, or "a hall of many seats". And of course some Thor named offerings: Given feasting culture , and Viking halls as both centers of religious & secular power, the idea of lighting up Nordic-themed cigars after these grand meals isn't out of the question. And in the what-if world where the Vikings retained beachheads in Vinland, perhaps they would have found a tribe with proto-cigar smoking customs from whom to import tobacco back home to Scandinavia , and then labels such as these would've be more prolific,...

While NorsePlay's not above featuring Viking kitsch, albeit very judiciously, I have to include Newport News, VA's Viking Burger . [While this logo could be a Viking Age post-Hamburg food takeaway raid, the much-later burger was possibly U.S. Danish immigrant Louis Lassen's lunch wagon invention from 1900 CE, but named by German sailors after their namesake city.] With menu items like the hot & spicy stuffed Angry Odin burger, the vegetarian Freya option, Frigga (a sirloin patty burger), the huge  Ragnarök (f ries & torcs [onion rings] topped with Viking sauce, cheese sauce, jalapenos, and onion] side, and the Valhalla custom ordered burger, where even stuffed with mac 'n' cheese is an option, it's all a pretty brilliant NorsePlay. And odds are the above building is a converted Der Wienerschnitzel, but then that fact alone makes you notice that all those  hot dog joints sort of resemble Viking Age longhouses . Beyond this business just being a them...

Meili, the God of Travel, is such an amazingly obscure catch within the Æsir Gods list. Yet there's a chance that Meili, one translation meaning “the lovely one”, is only a kenning for Baldr who tends to always get the epithet as being the brightest (read handsome/attractive) of the Gods. One of the few references is Thor claims " Meili" is his brother, though the obvious point-of-reference would be Baldr, and this reading of the word might only indicate that.  Odin alone has dozens of names, so it might reason that popular Baldr would have a few other proper names & epithets to his credit as well. This association's a Viktor Rydberg connection though, and while I love to entertain Rydberg's romanticist associations generally, he sometimes gets farwheeling in reaching to glue things together (but man, is it neat to think about). Also Rudolf Simek doesn't put this association in his Dictionary of Northern Mythology which tends to be a good reference & ...

Director John Milius filmed a sequence in Conan The Barbarian (1982 CE) where usurper King Osric (Max Von Sydow) gets assassinated by his own bodyguards who turn out to be Thulsa Doom's secret court agents! Note the backdrop of both these scenes contains tapestries that are Viking picture stone adaptations , the first being from  Stora Hammers Stone I: [second panel down, right side.] And the second being Odin from the Andre III picture stone: [on Sleipnir, upper right] The metaphysical implication being that Odin is claiming King Osric for Valhalla using this final conflict, which is along the lines of what happens to many kings & heroes in the Sagas. Except this storyline gets cut as the ending voiceover says Princess  Yasimina gets returned to her father (and the novelization adds that Conan is offered Yasimina, and essentially the kingdom of Zamora by marriage, but refuses Osric) and Conan instead goes adventuring in the West, with just the tapestries' edges...

In confronting the grim reality of losing one's dog, the question then arises: Will you see your animal in the Norse afterlife? [This entry is dedicated to my American Bully, Buddy Guillermosson. He has a terminal tumor in his lung, so I'm answering the above question for both of us.] In the Norse Lore there are canids to be found in Asgard, such as Odin's wolves Geri & Freki, who literally eat for him , so one must specifically suppose this happens at the table in his hall of Valaskjalf, and at the warrior laden tables of Valh ǫ ll, the latter being the most famous of afterlife settings. [the top panel of the Gotlandic Tjängvide picture stone's interpreted as Odin arriving outside of Valhalla, and note the dog present in the lower left of the upper panel.] The first chosen & other half of these honoured warriors go with Valkyrie leader Freyja to the blessed field of Fólkvangr & welcome hall  Sessrúmnir, where Freyja's chariot pulling cats play & r...

While we've actually featured something about elf-appeal before, we came up with the term  álfarsexual , but if we didn't grab a cheesecake image of say a potential Dökkálfar from Svartálfaheimr  with at least a solid +16 Charisma as a visual example of this word's preference we'd be remiss. You're welcome.  [from Irina-Isupova's "sexy darkelfs series": Arrana from her DeviantArt .]  #    #    # 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 ...

  Most Viking history texts tend to reference this wonderful bit of runic graffiti, but hardly ever show it, so NorsePlay has decided to feature this detailed photo of Halvdan's inscription. Probably carved by a bored Viking turned Varangian Guardsman while having to endure a tedious mass while standing in the upper gallery of the Church of Hagia Sophia, his action was definitely counter to the preached values of humility he was hearing and more from his Arch-Heathen worldview of establishing reputation and leaving your mark of achievement forever on the world. In this simple way, Halvdan has succeeded. Note Halvdan wasn't the only sermon-bored Varangian either as there are two more runic inscriptions, and possibly five on top of that awaiting valid confirmation, along with carvings of four drakkar Viking ships! Arinbárðr was another identifiable name, but his carving is much less readable than Halvdan's. In Byzantium, an environment where literal cutthroat politics always...

  There is an intimate quality in this depiction of Týr & Fenrir with Týr encapsulated in the wolf's embrace. Some retellings of this story instead cast Týr as Fenrir's caretaker & friend, with the god playing and (over-)feeding him, which may make this rendition of their fateful but necessary moment together here more of that variant narrative. Yet this art might also be visually read as Týr uncomfortably trapped by the wolf into the obligation of his oath. Storytelling accents aside, this moment also foreshadows Týr's end in the jaws of helhound Garmr, who is probably one of Fenrir's get , and whom  Týr  mutually slays come  Ragnarök, and depending how their bodies lay upon Vígríðr field, may mirror this in a more final & deadly embrace. [limited edition linocut handprinted by artist Kevin Cain who vends on Etsy as LiterateGriffin. Find this item here .]  #    #    # Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something spe...

When we talk about the universal functions of electricity , which runs everything from the cognition in your brain to the internet, we are on a supernatural level talking about Thor. The charges that hold atoms together are an operating principle wrought by Thor's power, so the extension of Thor's role as a protector is that he keeps the all the matter that Midgard is constructed of together so that we may exist upon it in the first place. The resurrection of Thor's goats from death brought about by the hammer is in a sense a doubled Frankenstein's monster moment (well, really it's temporally the other way around as Shelley's Romanticism/Enlightenment-inspired fiction came far after) where on an atomic level Thor's electric charge re-coheres & reconstructs the dead matter of  Tanngrisnir & Tanngnjóstr using his hammer. (This godly feat could also be an electrically-based particle acceleration to produce a directed time-reversing effect, but that...

  I've successfully plotted 800 mappoints for my Map Of Midgard Project! This is the seventh progress update since  the initial blog post ,  the first update ,  the second update ,  the third update ,  the fourth update , the fifth update , and the sixth update . Of the original backlist of 360 mappoints left to plot, 178 potential sites remain. Again this list would be less by now, but additional data for other mappoints does keep appearing in the course of research to add to the grand total number. This update in point, of the 100 points mapped since last update 30 are additional! [text mural by Dane EB Itso thrown up in Vardø, Norway, on the southernmost building of the island.] The above in-real-life memepaint appeals to my project's sense of discovery & wonder. It is also the above piece's incidental self-countering reflexive function to then label this unknown but evocative Scandinavian building's physical truth, which then actively puts it o...

The flaw of the short handle was just one possible outcome in the creation of Mjölnir. What if Loki's horsefly form had stung a bit harder? Or, what if Brokkr hadn't paused at all? What if Eitri & Brokkr had extra time to forge something even more artful if they hadn't been on a deadline for the crafting contest? What if they had integrated additional mystical materials? Could a more infused hammer defeat Jörmungandr from a greater distance to save Thor from the serpent's poison at  Ragnarök ? In Thor concept artist Charlie Wen's multiple hammer design submissions, we see the implications of the above questions NorsePlay out. And maybe it isn't too late for the Thunderer to go get some hardware upgrades and change his fate. #    #    # 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 trut...