NorsePlay.

Maybe you need an altar-starter centerpiece, or a big cosmic representation that'll embody your Heathen Worldview. Well, here you go: Straight outta Kyiv, Ukraine, are wood crafters Mihaylo & Olha Melnichuk of Blagowood. The above's a 15.7" H x 6.9" W stunning relief of Yggdrasil with all the worlds and accompanying tree-dwelling beasts . But if that's a bit too large in terms of available shelf space or scale, here's an equally amazing version with somehow even more stylistically finer detail at only 9.1" H x 3.9" W: And look, I know some of you out there are going to say "hey, there shouldn't be a doubled gebo in the rune line! You don't double letters!", and hey, you're probably right, though applying absolute syntax rules in a varied script that was commonly riddled by users' mistakes at that time is probably also way pedantic. But look, Blagowood has personalization options and can carve it for you without the dou...

If we look at the transition from Elder Futhark to Younger Futhark, we lose a whole eight letters, and there's lots of dissertation-length ideas as to why that amputation occurred, and how that makes later translations of this truncation in Old Norse compared to Proto-Norse such a pain ... but that's not the linguistically deep can of worms I want to open here. What I want to draw your attention to is this one instance below of how language organically evolves to use foreshortening, abbreviations, and contractions for convenience's sake, plus how generational change in language happens to create subcultural exclusion, delineate age-group differences, and just to sound "cool". Now, I'm not recommend ing the tween graphic novel series Barb: The Last Berserker by any means. In fact I only read the first 20 pages or so before I put it down, but during my shallow preview of its low-end juvenile-target art and flip self-aware camp fantasy trope dialogue I ran acros...

This reclaimed wood pallet playhouse cleverly NorsePlay'd "Pallhalla" is totally inspiring. It gives one the idea that perhaps a full-size longhall could be assembled from the very same free roadside wood if this was just increased in scale ... . #     #    # 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 Midgard  project, and spearheaded the neologism/brand NorsePlay.   If you have e mployment/ opportunities in  investigative mythology,  field research, or product development to offer,  do contact him .