NorsePlay.

We loved Midsommar as a horror film, and that's its function.  While NorsePlay's all about media that uses the Norse Lore, as an incidental conveyance for Lore  Midsommer requires some explaining. [Spoilers happening now.] With the subgenre of folk horror, traditions & folklore become subverted & alienized to provoke uncertainty & fear. That's a horror film's job, and Midsommer co-opts four specific things from the Lore to help its story do this: 1. The Runes. Stitched in clothing, painted in folk art inside wall murals, handwritten in a book, and on two rather fake looking runestones, Midsommer uses the Runes as indecipherable roadsigns to sub/consciously make the viewer anxious about where the film's driving them. Aesthetically, the Runes by themselves evoke a mysterious & magical feel . In the Lore, the Hávamál explains that through Odin's self-sacrifice he gains knowledge of the Runes  as a writing system, as associative symbols, and as