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Showing posts from January, 2022

Vikings from spaaaaaaace!

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This pulp cover art is from an old 1977 CE Ace edition of  Space Viking , a re-print of the 1963 CE first edition by H. Beam Piper.  I haven't had the pleasure of reading  Space Viking , so here's a pretty insightfully & unexpectedly Norse Lore referential review from user "DenimLord666": [Space Viking] shares many similarities with Völsungasaga and Brennu-Njáls saga with obvious literary motifs and homages to the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson. Essentially Lord Trask of the planet Trask is a mirror image of the vargr Grettir Ásmundarson and Egill Skallagrímsson. Whoa. Get your  Ulfberht Mk III plasma rifles locked 'n' loaded, NorsePlayers! Let's planetfall raid, and slay some skræliens for their powerfusion caskets! #    #    # 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 tr...

thunder! thunder! Thor's Thundergoats ho!

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While this hoodie design is actually merch for a certain infamous furry con, it incidentally makes a pretty sweet 1980s mashup NorsePlay homage to  Tanngrisnir & Tanngnjóstr ! The evident teeth on the top only support the Teethgrinder & Teethgnasher descriptive names. [hoodie available here .] #    #    # 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 .

post-Ragnarök draugr Thor breaks Helheim.

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Some would argue Walter Simonson's story & art delivery in Marvel's early 1980s run of The Mighty Thor was the comic's most epic. In 2014, Simonson again turned his hand toward a very different Thunder God for IDW Publishing in 12 issues of  Ragnarök , with Thor as an undead  jawless   draugr in a post-doomsday world were the Gods still not only lost, but the adversaries actually win, divvying up the wreckage of the Norse Cosmos amongst themselves, which was an amazingly grim NorsePlay. Simonson returned in 2019 to the same dark world for six more issues with  Ragnarök: The Breaking Of Helheim , where he answers further questions of how exactly the Æsir lost so much worse than they anticipated, what allowed Thor to "survive", and if Baldr was prophesied to return then where exactly is he, among others. From Simonson's afterword in issue #6: Consequently, the Norse myths are a goldmine for a storyteller. There's so much room for new stories which stil...

Iceman & His Amazing Frost Jotunness!

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In the  Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends episode  The Vengeance Of Loki (1981 CE,  S1 E10), there's a total babe alert in deposed Frost Jotunness Queen Zerona : [blue jotunness fever, indeed!] In the show Zerona finds a quick admiration for the flirtatious & like-elemental Iceman who helps her out, first against usurper Ymir , and then to actually reclaim Jotunheim from Surtur himself! [watch this near-extraworldly romance unfold here !]  Collegiate Bobby's libidinous and not-quite altruistic gallantry in helping Zerona matches accounts of the desirability of some giant maidens. In the Norse Lore, when we look at the genealogy of the Æsir , we see an early intermarriage of proto-Gods Búri  & Borr, the former probably marrying/mating with an unnamed jotunness, and his son who marries giantess Bestla to produce Odin & his brothers. Later we have Thor with jotunness Jarnsaxa producing his three children, and ice maiden  Gerðr ...

the Northman will revenge his father, save his mother, and kill that Fjölnir.

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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...