Borgvættir & Staðvættir: the Heathen cityscape.

Listening to Gifts of the Wyrd podcast, Heathen urban planner Paul Mercutio of the North River Kindred recontextualizes the city as just as much a landvættir connective space. To paraphrase Mercutio's thoughts:

In the wild there are trees, rivers, lakes, mountains, and all of that is majestic and obvious in terms of connecting with nature. And going outside's all well & good, but in the intervening 1000+ years, man has gone from agricultural to urban and is unlikely to perform any sort of radical reversal on a large scale, so we have to find connective praxis in the modern context of the city's environment.

If we look at the materials of the city we find that concrete was once air, water, sand, gravel, and eight other bits of earth cemented to make that concrete. Glass is just a sheet of heated sand. Steel is iron and carbon. These are all natural elements reformed into what makes a city. Also, your utilities are tubed, piped, and wired in what resembles a root system, or circulatory map, elements of water, gas, and Thor's electricity, all flowing like rivers under the streets & sidewalks, into trunks, up lightpoles, to hydrants, into rainforest showerheads, flaring burners under tea kettles, pooling into an inductive charging pad on your nightstand. Nature, albeit in a transformed & harnessed fashion, is there in the city, all around you.

And this means not only the húsvættir in your apartment is present and probably hiding your socks, but the rest of those spirits are in the roads, walls, watertowers, generators, telephone poles, and other urban structures you see and live around everyday.

[Norse Hall in Portland.]

Like Odin wandering right into the Hall of the Volsungs or the royal hall at Lejre, those landwights aren't just picking the wild spaces because they're wild, they've moved into town with us as part of our urban wilderness, resting in the asphalt, listening in a cellphone tower, vatnavættir burbling in the wet gurgles of someone's frontyard fountain.  

Given this recognition of Heathen Worldview among the highrises & dark alleys, NorsePlay would like to introduce the neologisms borgvættir and/or staðvættir to recognize these particular city dwelling spirits. And maybe if you include them in your blót rounds, not only will those socks probably turn up, but maybe things around the house won't need repairing so much, and your luck within the city you live in just might increase.

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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 then 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 employment/opportunities in investigative mythology,  field research, or product development to offer, do contact him.