NorsePlay.

  This screenshot from the Discovery Channel's  America's Lost Vikings takes foundation layouts from houses across three different centuries and overlays them on top of the three house foundations found in Leif Erikson's Camp/L'Anse aux Meadows. The similarities imply that the site was possibly used for centuries , as opposed to the few decades previously thought. The lack of physical artifacts of a long-settled site runs contrary to this, though given the low population of this colony compared to Greenland would render less accompanying materials to be found. And maybe they just came seasonally or for only a couple years at a time, like a set of winter cabins, perhaps using them as a staging point for further expeditions West to the mainland. While that's all suppositional based wholly on architectural parallels, hopefully that observation opens more doors toward investigations into a potentially larger Norse America . #     #    # Guillermo Maytoren...

While NorsePlay has previously featured the odd cross-pollination of Norse Lore with Tarot and Tarot-derivative decks, I recently ran across this Gjallarhorn: A Norse Oracle Deck that has a really nice panoply of art going for it : [note the Nordic Nouveau of Sif and the image borders.] Released last year, the cards feature the Gods, adversaries, runes, other Nordic symbols, are gold foil edged, and the box comes with an 80p hardback to let you know how to use the deck. So if you don't buy into the idea of an Italian Renaissance oracular system being retrofitted with a more ancient Nordic veneer (but to NorsePlay that: What if instead Bjorn Ironsides or one of his cohorts left a rune set in Luni, Italy, during their 860 CE occupation that later influences the strega who comes up with principals behind Tarot to mix with a later Mamluk deck? Sure, rather unlikely, but history blenders wyrd turns like that sometimes), then instead just enjoy it for the pretty neat gallery of art tha...

Many are the days I keep my signifiers low key, and I usually just wear my oath ring bracelet, and I get a lot of compliments on that (though I also tend to wear a NorsePlay t-shirt every workday so I can engage & promote my brand when people ask me about it, so only sorta low key?). Part of my morning's self-decorative decision-making comes from questioning whether also throwing one of my two awesome Mjölnirs on is "too much", and possibly having those who see it mistakenly write me off as a racist (despite me being Hispanic ). Yet the deal is if I'm proactively deciding not to wear the hammer for that latter reason, then that choice to a passive degree lets the racists trying to take ownership of Thor's hammer as their symbol do so, which is total misappropriation as, according to the 2013 Heathen World Census, self-proclaimed racists were less than 1% of the anonymous survey's sample. Given Heathenry/Asatru/Northern Tradition's obvious growth in t...

After a mead at the local Short Rest backroom tavern this week, I noticed these RPG prop gaming coins that seem to be adorned with the Dwarven race's arguably greatest achievement, Mjölnir : Seeing these got me wondering if there were other NorsePlay'd prop currencies being strewn about the TTRPG tables, and I also found the following: [minted by Fantasy Coins LLC.] [Talisman3D on Etsy.] [RelicCollectorShop on Etsy. Note the Valknut cornered square coin above and their other set below:] These all evoke a bit of Viking alt-history or mythic space in terms of creations from an elsewhen or elsewhere , and make one long for the assurance of physical metals over paper. #     #    # 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,...