NorsePlay.

The Norse Lore has assigned hall names for many of the Gods' residences, but an omission I've always been curious about is where Bragi dwells. While Bragi, in a very Baldr-like way, is always welcome everywhere thanks to his storytelling abilities and the potential to glorify his host in poetry, it's never mentioned where he actually goes home to. Functionally Bragi's partly described as a meet-and-greeter for the honoured warriors who come into Valhalla. One could suppose that maybe he heralds them upon entry, perhaps naming & enumerating their martial deeds for those already in the hall. But this MC duty still doesn't actually place Bragi as living in Valhalla. There's also the possibly that he perhaps instead moved in with  Iðunn . One attestation from  Hrafnagaldr Óðins places Iðunn as descending from elves, as one of "Ivaldi's elder children", and as a dís who dwells in dales. Those descriptors would make Iðunn at least part elf and poss...

  So unless you bought the Cosmic Cube in a suitcase limited edition box set of the Phase 1 Marvel movies, you never saw this remade special silhouette art paper sleeve for the blu-ray of Thor . This is where NorsePlay has just saved you $200USD, and you could always print the above on a template to make one. You're welcome. (No, we didn't buy the fancy suitcase -- we instead have the 4K/BR steelbook combo pack, thank you.) #    #    # 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 t...

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986 CE), Argentinian poet, writer, and national librarian, is a globally recognized giant of Latin literary  erudition. His essays, mind-bending short stories, and bittersweet verses almost all manage to reach & grasp something beyond themselves, unveiling a cosmic truth. And this last aspect is the NorsePlay & insight that Borges recognized within the Edda s, as a number of his works fondly explore the Norse Lore. In the earliest times, which were so susceptible to vague speculation and the inevitable ordering of the universe, there can have existed no division between the poetic and the prosaic. Everything must have been tinged with magic. Thor was not the god of Thunder; he was the thunder and the god . ~ from Borges' The Gold of the Tigers The literary parallels here between just-so events in Latin magical realism & surrealism being presented in a matter-of-fact way is equally found in the sagas & histories where troublesome zombie ghost...

Four-hundred years before Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark , Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes gave us the legend of Amleth, which is precisely where the bard sourced his story. In 1994 CE the interesting NorsePlay film of Prince Of Jutland also titled Royal Deceit, and later home release re-packaged as Prince Of Denmark and  Thrones & Empires , was made to place the story within its original context, being shot in a reconstructed Viking site in Denmark by Danish director/co-screenwriter Axel Gabriel Erik Mørch.   [so very Game of Thrones mis-marketed, right?] Starring a young Christian Bale, queenly Helen Mirren, fratricidal Gary Oldman, and a dollfaced Kate Beckinsale, the cast is quality, and Freddie Jones of Krull fame has a nice supporting role as the landed apple farmer Bjorn. The tension betwixt nephew Bale and usurper uncle Oldman as the former feigns madness to avoid being assassinated, while the l...

Given that the largest NorsePlay on the pop cultural block is Marvel's The Mighty Thor, it goes hand-in-hand that his rival for the throne of Asgard, Loki, has gained a near-equal amount of attention, and with Tom Hiddleston's charming performance upping the character's fanbase to an unprecedented level, it makes sense to fan service that army of horny-headed followers with a Disney+ series . Yet smart commercialism aside to gain MCU moviegoers streaming subscriptions for an exclusive Marvel-based show, Loki really manages to deliver a self-exploring complex character in an expansive MCU pocket-world, with all the sci-fi time-travel dynamics that'll bend your head like a mobius strip with their consequences. [Okay, spoilers from here on as this is a post-viewing commentary.] As with any time-travel story, self-determination versus set fate is often an invisible force the protagonist is up against. Unfortunately there's a whole outside-of-time bureaucracy, the Tim...

This horned-helmet wearing, Templar crossed shield bearing, and longsword brandishing Viking cover art illustration is from a 1959 CE 38-page vintage pamphlet by Hjalmar Rued Holand. Holand (b.1872-d.1963 CE) was a proponent of the Kensington Runestone along with other contested Norse America artifacts, and wrote five books supporting those theories before the discovery of Leif Erikson's camp at L'Anse aux Meadows in 1960 CE . In 1950 CE Holand was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Anthropology & Cultural Studies. No matter which way you weigh in or abstain on such theories, the above illustration's a remarkably out-there NorsePlay. #    #    # 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...

In reading The War Of The Realms story arc in Marvel's The Mighty Thor , the formidable NorsePlay creation of Sindr, the Queen of Cinders, daughter of Surt , usurps Helheim , much to the dismay of the Thunder God and the rage of Hela herself . In the actual Norse Lore, Surtr has the consort Sinmara mentioned in the Fjölsvinnsmál , interpreted by some to be his wife. In running with that, it would stand to reason that Surtr has children. Using that possibility, this ally of the Dark Elf Malekith invades Helheim and solidifies her power in a meeting with the various factions of the land of the dead. Hela is understatedly displeased, and conflict ensues. Unlike the predestination of the Lore, at this point in the Marvel Comics Thor story the fate weaving Norns are are almost all dead, and it would seem that it's anyone's ball game as to how the ending will ultimately turn out, but it seems that Sindr is one to watch out for. #    #    # Guillermo Maytorena ...

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 & ...