NorsePlay.

  Unless you're paying close attention you're probably giving the Vegvísir a quick nod of immediate recognition and moving on, but in the above comparison there's subtle differences being noted in its appearance that you might not have otherwise caught while scrolling past its very commonplace presence in the cybervikingsphere. Depending how strict you feel you require your magics to be, that variance might be crucial to you actually finding your way or not. The most legitimate and interesting source difference above would be the Galdrabók (c. 1600 CE) versus the Huld Manuscript (1847 CE [ÍB 383 4to] ), but you also have to question if later changes, specifically the far later Galdraskræða version (1940 CE), are refinements or improvements to the included runestaves . In a post-GPS app-based world, maybe this wayfinder stave now doesn't matter, but it's nice to have a backup system just in case. [thanks to FolkRealms user Rollo Bloodaxe for bringing this to my...

We have to point out the spectacle of the Minnesota Vikings Legacy Ship. While one can write this off as NFL sports team marketing, if you were to take this same sculpture from in front of the US Bank Stadium and place it elsewhere, say just 2.2 miles south to compliment the American Swedish Institute, then it would play on a different level. Where it is, it's Viking kitsch as as an unapologetically commercial trope instead, featuring a jumbotron video sail that slideshows advertising and events 24/7, plus the ship has audio, can produce smoke effects, and has night lighting. Taken by itself as a sculpture by day there is something monumentalist & partly brutalist in its sharper angles and contemporary presentation, but also subtractive in only having a dragon prow above ground with only a negative space outline for the back, implying a whole ship's presence, as if the rest were still buried under the fan-inscribed pavers, only re-emerging at the tail. If it wasn't for...

I've always admired the infographic al design and layout of this Yggdrasil with its well-labeled icons showing the major figures and aspects in each of the Níu Heimar. Big Sidenote: A thought provoking touch here is Máni actually facing defiantly towards Hati , which raises some NorsePlay possibilities. Given wolves' folkloric compulsive hailing of the full moon by howling at it (not actually, but were talking in the context of myth here), is there a lunar versus lupine power struggle being personified and commented on that could be the reason that a monster wolf wants to eliminate our silver satellite? And then so is Skoll just wanting more active time  by eating Sunna since wolves are not diurnal? These motivations are something to think about adding to the spectrum of their reasons as being more than just celestial hungers. #     #    # Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires'...

Before we get into the title's sticky naming question, let's look at a working example of this issue: Back in July 1997 CE, Details Magazine featured a retrospective entitled The Gloom Generation on the Gothic genre of music, using quotes from all the formative goth band heavy hitters and names: Robert Smith of The Cure, Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Peter Murphy & Daniel Ash of Bauhaus, Ian Astbury of The Cult, and Rozz Williams of Christian Death. It was an amazing survey of dark creative luminaries responsible for post-punk teens homebrewing black nail polish, Rit dying all their clothes black, and adopting an undeath aesthetic that will endure forever as their legacy. Except the article reveals that none of these artists ever considered themselves or their music Gothic. They rejected the title, claiming in this comprehensive survey that they never encouraged that label, and that they didn't want responsibility for it. But that didn't matter. It ...

From Vikings on History Channel to Vikings: Valhalla on Netflix and now to Amazon Prime for another offering, Bloodaxe ! Note, however, that Bloodaxe is being announced not as a continuation of the previous series, despite being made by the same producer. Yet given this, NorsePlay suspects it may as well unofficially be a third series and was very likely desired by Amazon as such to obtain the pre-existing fanbase, and we predict will likely be marketed as closely as such in all but name without crossing the line of actually saying that's exactly what it is. Executive producer & writer Michael Hirst of the previous shows adds his son Horatio Hirst to the creator credits. Focusing on the legendary eponymous Eric Bloodaxe (ON: Eiríkr Blóðøx) and his queen Gunnhild's sanguine rise to the throne of Norway, this show in its early 2027 pre-release has already secured a second season, which should say something about the studio confidence behind it. [There's no stills yet ...

Just only having this single preview still, NorsePlay feels hesitant about a live-action God Of War TV series adaptation , but to say anything without giving this a chance would be unfair. And honestly, I want more NorsePlay , not less, and Sony's franchise shift to re-nest Kratos within a Norse Mythology context really got the lore alot of attention, which we appreciate. Since this photo was taken Ryan Hurst in the picture above suffered an unfortunate bicep tearing stunt injury, but the upshot is that the role got handed to Dave Bautista, which feels more of an angry/gruff/strong-silent emotive fit for Kratos, plus he's actually half-Greek. Sight unseen the show has already been commissioned for a second season, which feels promising given the series' intent to cover both GoW & GoW: Ragnarok , since it would be crushingly disappointing if they didn't get to the second more dynamic installment and finale. [compare/contrast to the above photo.] Looking at cherub c...

When I was six, I really wanted to be an astronomer and track an as yet undiscovered tenth planet like Percival Lowell hunting Pluto. So, yeah, sure, astronomy and its spectacles are neato. Yet when we lens things through the Norse Lore, we have to pull back into our Heathen mindset and ask ourselves for the potential metaphysical answers. To be clear, I'm not ever saying throw out the brilliant illuminations of science (and unless a specific theorem or a particular thesis proves wrong, always hang on to the rest of that), but in a quantum universe where many infinite possibilities & positions can be true yet contradict each other, this allows for differing viewpoints and explanations to be equally valid at the same time (which if we were to apply and realize that this holds with arguments, maybe we could all CTFD and mostly be cool with each other again). In Gylfaginning §12, High, Just-As-High, & Third are answering Gylfi's daisychain of cosmological questions, here...

In a more secular Heathen alt-historical context, the idea of a vanity plate, a term which has negative theological connotations, would possibly instead be called a boasting placard. NorsePlay suggests we reframe it this way, and turn that into a positive for everyone who wants to express themselves via their ride's ID. As far as NorseSpotting boasting placards on these Tucson streets, I've only seen an ASGARD1 on a VW Tiguan, but I would bet there's a whole bevy of car plate kennings just waiting to be claimed. This one I found online would be a gimmie: And I imagine there has to be a sweet '70s custom bubble window van with VANATRU plates and an airbrushed Freyja on the side. I would rather like to see a library bookmobile with BRAGIBK on it. But let's get back to expanding on the idea of Eir as a Goddess of emergency healthcare in the title. Paramedics with electric lightning paddles and long needled heart-piercing syringes of adrenaline that're going to s...

Back in 2017 CE, NorsePlay posted about author Christopher Golden writing a Hellboy novel where Big Red gets Mjölnir fused to his oversized mitt and suddenly has to deal with the monsters of Norse Lore coming out of the woodwork. Later in 2021 CE, Dark Horse put out a graphic novel adaptation. The graphic's scripted by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, and with artist Matt Smith and colorist Chris O’Halloran doing Mignola's visual style to a chiaroscuro'd tee you can't really tell the difference. Now while Hellboy  as a comic is always good (though I argue BPRD 's better and will get to why), the sequence leading to the page panels above gives us Mignola's it's-always-the-apocalypse feels and customizes that to it's-always- Ragnarök feels. So you might ask: Does the story attempt to reconcile Hellboy's antichrist-rejection religious context with polytheistic Norse Mythology? No, but it doesn't have to, and Hellboy deals with much cosmic/divine ...

Woah! NorsePlay's global viewership has crossed the 200K mark! [at this point all of Midgard has at least some light grey!] I want to thank you all for your clicks, views, reads, comments, and follows over the past nearly 13 years of NorsePlay 's mythological investigations, exploratory content, and curation!  As it stands NorsePlay is currently getting ~4,000 views a week, which says sooooo much about the world's fascination with Norse Mythology, the study of Norse Lore, and its reception & intersection with popular culture. There's something within these stories that people desire, a truthfulness beyond the surface and woven into the fibers of them that feels deeply real, which for me personally is why I can't stop gazing into its bottomless Well Of Wyrdness and writing ( and making maps !) about what I find for myself and for you. I appreciate you trusting me enough to present the wonder of it all through my eyes. In the surmounting of this second landmark...

The 1990 CE black-and-white film The Juniper Tree takes The Brothers Grimm folkloric tale of the same name and places it within a medieval Icelandic context, adding the operating mechanism of witchcraft to push the story into the arena of magical realism. There's an observable throughline here that makes this film even more NorsePlay: The idea of a potentially very early Germanic cautionary tale set "2,000 years ago" (so 188 BCE from its recorded publication if literal), perhaps in an ancient world forest, and setting that story in an isolated Viking Age-style farmstead, and though the time period isn't stated it could be from then up to the Brennuöldin, The Age of Fire when witches (though by contrast mostly male) were persecuted & drowned, between 1625 CE and 1683 CE, so the carry forward from Germanic to Norse happens via modern art cinema. A prominent example of the same story media time shifting happens when Saxo Grammaticus' legendary Amleth becomes Sha...

In The Witch's Heart and Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Dawn Of Ragnarök , it's explained that Odin can't outright kill his blood brother's monstrous children and so has to instead imprison them. Hel gets the limitations of caretaking a whole world with its eternal duties of ruling & constantly processing the dead, her own half-dead condition potentially restricting her there. Fenrir 's everlasting & immeasurable hunger is tied down by a cord of equally impossible constructions, and this takes him out of the game. But when we look at Odin's nonchalance in throwing Jörmungandr into the ocean we have to ask how is this imprisonment? We could presume Angrboða 's serpent is a type of amphibian, initially able to breath air & live on dry land, but when Odin casts him into the water where a restriction has to be in effect from thence onward since we don't hear of Jörmungandr coming ashore, only above water when hooked by Thor , or magically bi-lo...

You'd just as likely not look twice nor too deeply at the 1982 CE Sword & Sorcery so-bad-it's-good film, The Beastmaster . Released in the huge shadow of Conan The Barbarian  only a few months later to try and capitalize on its wake, The Beastmaster only achieved a fair amount of attention after post-theatrical high-volume cable reruns, and its home video release. Yet as with anything Sword & Sorcery, The Beastmaster 's heroic tropes are inescapably Norse Mythology derived , so let's animal control more exactly where this Saturday afternoon TV matinee B-film gets a few of those specific facets from. The 3 Witches As Norns: Though they work in tandem with the wizard antagonist Maax, the witches still prophecy his downfall at the hands of Dar, the Beastmaster. And in the director's commentary, he says they're based on Macbeth's Weird Sisters, which of course are derived from the three Norns. Scrying Pool As The Fates' Well: Maax & the Witches...