NorsePlay.

As a Hispanic Ásatrúar, I love & identify with the intersection between Scandinavian culture and my ethnic background, and after seeing Dalarna Horse variants during my recent Map Of Midgard site investigations in Minnesota I began to wonder if anyone had made a Dalarna-style horse piñata . Seeing my Nana craft many piñatas from the ground up as a kid , either for family events or as commissions, there were no cultural restrictions or content barriers to what she could make (i.e. when I was 7, she made a Spider-Man piñata for me), so the idea of one only sticking to the traditional donkey/burro, bull/ox, or more geometric 7-pointed star simply didn't hold. Plus with the fact that Spanish vaqueros brought horsemanship and thus begat cowboy culture in the New World, why wouldn't all equines be fair game for Mexican piñatas? While the above & below weren't made by Mexican grandmothers, I was really stoked to see that a couple people had used that folkcraft to make Da...

This marks the seventh year NorsePlay has attended the renowned Southwest Frith Moot! [note that orange NorsePlay banner adorning the ramada-hof's sacred central pillar!] Southwest Frith Moot is the longstanding annual regional Ásatrú/Heathen gathering hosted by Arizona's Wanderer Kindred's Chieftain Vince & Gythia Dani, which is held at a varying campsite, this year's June event again being up at a campground in the Coconino National Forest. [NorsePlay might bring the open table games, but it's Vince that brings the matchless Odinic knowledge!] Compared to last year's far more organic SFM , this year's had a great concrete schedule, plus a huge list of topics to choose from for initial lecturing & subsequent open discussion, the latter of which went in great & varied directions from many different voices among the more vocal & inquisitive attendees.   Yes, I was tapped to handwrite the above list of discussion topics and the below SFM schedu...

Yes, that's right Norsespotters: Max appears to be brandishing a Völva's Staff! Whether Maurice Sendak in 1963 CE perhaps saw the short iron wands from Norse archaeology/studies can't really be confirmed, and perhaps may have also been in part influenced by vintage troll tale illustrations for his creatures in  Where the Wild Things Are  is pure conjecture, but looking at the scepter compared to the find & reproduction below, it definitely could've been NorsePlay'd into the classic children's picture  book. [ NorsePlay acknowledges Nathaniel Morton's random T-shirt choice last week as inspiring this entry.] #     #    # 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 Mid...