NorsePlay.

This week's NorsePlay comes from the world of darts with a line of Viking-themed darts complete with shield holder made by Shot Darts! The barrels appear to be highly tactile & partly grooved for easier grip (though this is argued that such a feature in turn makes for a less-smooth release), come in anodized colors, and bomber, taper, or straight in a range of weights depending on which model you get, but all in 90% tungsten. [check out those cool Huginn & Muninn flights!] [whoa, that engraved tip!] While outside of the sewing term of a dart, there isn't an Old Norse reference to darts as we know it now, but the origins are probably the medieval English doing archery, or axes, or spears into the ends of logs with their organically ringed wooden target-like circles & distinct centers, which would way later become the more formal dartboard "clock" we know of once someone wanted to move the action indoors, but decided that battle weapons probably weren't

  This 3D rendering of a modern longhouse was made by architecture student Eralp Erkasap. I think this concept is great, something of the pragmatics of a military Quonset hut with the pitched roof of a stave church, eliminating the turf maintenance, and combining the roof as walls at an angle where the snow will mostly slide off. Those slotted and wood-accented gables are a nice touch. I might go with some integrated solar panels, and narrow horizonal sliding shuttered windows for air, light, to keep lookout, and to use as shooting blinds for nearby game, predators, draugr  incursions, and  fire-bearing burners . [go hire Eralp for this & other livingspace designs here .] #    #    # 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, laun

While NorsePlay's not above featuring Viking kitsch, albeit very judiciously, I have to include Newport News, VA's Viking Burger . [While this logo could be a Viking Age post-Hamburg food takeaway raid, the much-later burger was possibly U.S. Danish immigrant Louis Lassen's lunch wagon invention from 1900 CE, but named by German sailors after their namesake city.] With menu items like the hot & spicy stuffed Angry Odin burger, the vegetarian Freya option, Frigga (a sirloin patty burger), the huge  Ragnarök (f ries & torcs [onion rings] topped with Viking sauce, cheese sauce, jalapenos, and onion] side, and the Valhalla custom ordered burger, where even stuffed with mac 'n' cheese is an option, it's all a pretty brilliant NorsePlay. And odds are the above building is a converted Der Wienerschnitzel, but then that fact alone makes you notice that all those  hot dog joints sort of resemble Viking Age longhouses . Beyond this business just being a them

During a recent read of Tolkien's  Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth I ran across the tale of "Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife". Now it's not any secret Tolkien's rife with NorsePlay , so this specific story's like a fan-fic expansion of the marriage of Njord & Skaði . [ Njord and Skadi on the Way to Nóatún by Wilhelm Wägner (1882 CE)] The connection of one to the other is that the husband is enamored of seafaring, while the wife is attached to the mountains, and they're both of different species. [Aldarion x Erendis meme from feanoriel's tumblr.] Specifically compare the following excerpts: [When] all was made ready and men prepared to weigh anchor Erendis came there, little though she loved the noise and bustle of the great harbour and the crying of the gulls. ~ Tolkien "Hateful for me are the mountains, I was not long there, only nine nights. The howling of the wolves sounded ugly to me after the song of the swans

  This early 1980s CE liquor ad campaign probably captured the attention of many, it being so remarkably over-the-top for its time. We present you the two magazine versions in order to see the inspired mixture of Frazetta/Vallejo-styled art, an amazingly predictive Golden Compass polar bear mount , Odinic eyepatch, and luminous magic sword (possibly lightsaber?!?). As with many fantastically depicted women warrior s, we have to ask if she's so battle-hyped up on body warming liquor that any midriff, leg, and arm armor's not required, or if she's just so valkyrie that she's divinely immune to the effects of low temperatures. Beyond these concerns, there's an aesthetic reaching for Northernness that is very, very NorsePlay, and if  placed ahead of us in time (again, possible lightsaber?), she could be a post-Ragnarök second generation goddess questing through the remnants of a Fimbulwinter-zone for a dwarven superweapon . #    #    # Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there

While viewing the perfect film Moonrise Kingdom for probably the 30th or so time, we just noticed a few more things that relate to the Lore, and while we don't think director Wes Anderson consciously included Norse elements from his Norwegian-Swedish paternal background, we're taking a moment to point our own Heathen Worldview observations out. Suzy Bishop & Sam Shakusky finally meet in a picturesque field after much postal correspondence, emotional negotiation, and extra-personal angst from their separate situations ... much the same after Freyr & Gerðr finally meet in "The Grove of Tranquil Paths", or the field of Barri in the Poetic Edda's Skírnismál , where they get married. At the performance of Noye's Fludde (possibly a less sanguine diluvial reworking of the killing of Ymir whose flood of blood starts a new chapter of cosmic existence), Sam is not content to stay in his seat with the rest of the scouts, but transgressively gets up and strike