NorsePlay.

  Every winter holiday season the memes roll out about Thor & his goats or Odin & Sleipnir as being the ancient origins for Father Christmas & Santa Claus and his reindeer. As easy a parallel as this is to make, many academics & others will tell you it's not true. As per the principles of NorsePlay, I would instead point out how the conversion process is being reversed in this possible bit of internet fakelore in favour of Heathenry. Given the two millennium long ownership of the winter holiday by monotheism in a long-game squatters' attempt to make Midwinter their own, the fact that these memes have become this annually re-occurring viral posting shows that the conversion has ultimately failed in terms of this re-connective & wanted polytheistic desire behind them (though always remember, there's room for everyone at this deep Winter feasting table, and no one can actually "own" a season -- it's everyone's). The simple cut & pa...

While reading James George Frazer's The Golden Bough  (1890 CE) I ran across a possible reason behind the story of Thor's journey to the land of giants in  Gylfaginning as to why you do not break the bones of his goats to suck out the marrow:   "... a belief that, if the bones are preserved , they will in course of time be reclothed with flesh, and thus the animal will come to life again . It is, therefore, clearly for the interest of the hunter to leave the bones intact since to destroy them would be to diminish the future supply of game." This above is from the Native American traditions, and only few sentences later Frazer, in his amazingly associative way, brings this taboo back around to Scandinavia (implying the similar belief traveled via migrations of people in the circumpolar regions): "In sacrificing an animal the Lapps regularly put aside the bones, eyes, ears, heart, lungs, sexual parts (if the animal was a male), and a morsel of flesh from each lim...

With my relatively recent deep dive into personal defensive equipment , I decided on a timely re-watch of  Dear Wendy  (2005 CE). There's a sequence before the climatic shootout at the end where The Dandies (pretty much a warrior ritual-centric männerbund ) break a bottle and take a cut along the arm in order to undergo a sort-of death analogue experience , that way when they do march off into the town square they've already faced and gotten passed the idea of being killed and so can then proceed fearlessly toward their fate. If we look at the Norse Lore, Odin sacrifices himself to himself, running a spear through his body to hang on the World Tree for nine days & nine nights, passing through a state of death that reveals the Runes and unlocks their magical uses. While the deathing's a means to that end, it's also a very exceptional experience, and one has to consider that Odin having that under his belt must now look at the cosmos he created & himself, and t...

Sure, the Norse Lore has its share of wooing and star-crossed tribal consummations, so one might guess in pushing that into a contemporary enemies-to-lovers themed romantasy isn't so much of a far cry to explore, maybe. Romance author Rachel Van Dyken's Fallen Gods is about to hit tomorrow on December 2nd with a Deluxe Limited Edition featuring open fore-edge painting. This is the compelling bit of the super dramatic teaser sample: He raised me to obey. To bleed. To be his blade when the time came. Now he’s sending me to Endir University, a place filled with ancient bloodlines and deadly secrets, to steal back Mjolnir , the hammer of legend. If I fail, everyone I love dies. While I'm not hot on romantasy (but hey, try and win me with your spice ), that the exploration of the Norse Lore brought forward into a contemporary setting (i.e. Netflix' Ragnarok , American Gods , The Almighty Johnsons , Friedman's awesome Vidar Trilogy ) is something that always provokes N...