NorsePlay.

During a recent trip in Willcox, AZ, I ran across this awesome bearserker girl mural : Adorning the southwest exterior wall of Bear's Vintage Thrift, my Heathen Worldview suddenly did a double take. There's a narrative in this art, a semi-sad introspection. Perhaps it's berserker-like battle-lusty Hervör Angantyrsdottir at the moment she decides to relinquish the formidable but cursed sword Tyrfing, stop raiding, and settle down to a more traditional life at her foster-father Jarl Bjartmar's hall. One might imagine this face of resignation at such a point of change in her life, the trade of her being done with risk & adventure for more secure domesticity & differing rewards of marriage. While there's no mention of her wearing a bearskin in  The Saga of Hervör and Heidrek  (though her birthfather was a berserker, so maybe passed on?), the mural could be allegorical of her ferocity cowling or even emanating from her person. On the commercial surface this wo

Berserker bearskin headdress made by The Crafty Crawford. Complete with all paws & claws, with the upper jaw taxidermied in, claimed by Idaho harvests where the meat is eaten and the pelt sold only to cover costs with a Native American art license. #    #    # 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 .

Watching the processional Bear Dance in Comănești, Bacău County, Romania, doesn't strike one as just a winter parade to drive out evil spirits. The men & women dressed in actual bear pelts adorned with oversized red tassels dance to shamanistic skin drums, wood flutes & whistles, pausing at certain intervals to make a mysterious trilling noise , lead by a masked old man, and subject to a call/response chant, has all the earmarks of a ritual. With the Indo-European lingual taboo on the actual word for bear, the migrant Roma who inspired this tradition first using real bears, and the serious to fierce demeanor of the dancers, recalls the idea that the Berserker may have been a formal entranced dance that lead to a legendary invulnerability in battle , and that perhaps this dance could be a remnant of the Berserkergang state at work. #    #    # Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in  the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires'  No