NorsePlay.

After the city & cable company decided to totally spraypaint mark underground lines in my easement area and front yard (which is where I have my holy Vé with the sacred tree I leave offerings in front of), I decided to then spraypaint & adorn their semi-eyesore broadband podium box that's stood unused in my Vé since I bought the house well over a decade ago into a runestone of my own: Semi-modeled after the Karlevi Runestone (Rundata Öl 1) on the island of Öland, Sweden, my "runestone" like most has been "raised" as a property marker, a praise/boast of achievement, and in memory of one who's died /fallen. Bouncing my text through Valhyr's Old Norse translator, I then used their Short Twig Futhark converter on the ON for the following (with a bit of transliteration to keep proper names intact): These Runes are drawn by Guillermo Skald of NorsePlay Mapmaker of Midgard Owner of this Vé and Red Hof And Raised in Memory Of Buddy Guillermosson For a pa...

While on my way to this year's Southwest Frith Moot , I decided to take a detour to go to my Map Of Midgard 's stickpin for The Mogollon Troll and have a proactive investigative mythologist looksee both for the monster that makes this central Arizona highland rim its home, and a hidden cave potentially filled with legendary giant-kin treasures! [ Map Of Midgard rollover for The Mogollon Troll stickpin from the Jötnar data layer!] Known as "The Mogollon Monster", given his physical description in the screencap above, if we lens him through the Norse Lore this totally makes him a troll, so I've used that recontextualization & worldview to place him on my map as The Mogollon Troll. As I drove up, it started to rain. At first intermittently, then for wetter spates. While I'd read online the unpaved road was an unchallenging washboard, the reality was somewhat rougher than that, took slower going, and had logging truck traffic that if mistimed around some cor...

In 1975 CE, master writer  Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina, writes The Disk , a very short story that explores the NorsePlay of an additional Odinic magical item of curious qualities. I'm linking the following reading so you can enjoy this strange tale and so I can discuss it afterwards: Great, right?!? (Wait, you don't do audiobooks? Then go read it here , and come back.) So if we look at Borges' story though the greater context of the Norse Lore, there's the oddity of the Disk Of Odin itself, and its impossible one-sided-ness. We have to ask why Odin needed such a thing made in the first place. If the old man's reason is correct, then its singular quality provides an irrefutable proof of kingship , though not a guarantee of one, since the exiled old man Isern only has the object and not his kingdom. There's an Odinic quality in the old man's blindness (which also meta-reflexes into Borges' own single-functioning eye into a later complete blindness). T...

Last month I had the pleasure of attending an artmaking party where a surplus of supplies were made available to guests, along with a pretty good refrigerator & bar full of creative lubricants. (Being very NorsePlay, I brought a Danish Raspberry Kringle to share, which got eaten first!) Our host scored some off-brand Shrinky Dinks, which he announced most enthusiastically ... but I had no actual idea what that was, somehow bereft of such a thing growing up, though I wasn't the only one there who didn't know what that was exactly. Once I got through evaluating the room for flirtworthiness, I grabbed the sheet of hard plastic material, a set of fancy colored pencils, and went to town, taking an unexpected three hours to finally create this: Above is the final result with the sunlight from behind through the opaque drawing surface! Note the scale compared to my fingertips. Using a portion of the holster design that I made a matching T-shirt from, plus the Bjornkult text banne...

  This Mjölnir-riffic vintage cheddar's made by Isle of Kintyre Cheese as a Scottish artisanal offering. Presumably the Magnus is King of Norway Magnus Barefoot known for claiming the Scottish Hebrides, and for his nickname in adopting the shorter Scots tunic that left his legs (and thus his feet) more bare. The Kings of Norway had converted a few generations back by Magnus' time, so the hammer's probably more the strength of the cheese, which also can't avoid the visual callback to Thor . The head on the label below is also probably not Magnus but Thor as he's got a lightning motif in his details. The above variant packaging is what I ran into in a Tucson high-end grocery store, and the website doesn't say whether it's the same cheese or slightly different variants. Also, its a really little round for $10 USD, which goes way farther in terms of other types of cheeses I prefer, so I didn't risk getting it, though I do appreciate the NorsePlay of it....