NorsePlay.

There's definite NorsePlay a'brewing in the Witches Of East End cauldron, a Lifetime channel supernatural drama that ran only two seasons in 2013-4 CE. Behold this rune-laden screenshot of the Gardiner Grimoire : The closest manuscript analog to this show's prop would be the Codex Runicus , a 202-page book from ~1300 CE: Quite unlike a grimoire though the Runicus isn't a collection of dark magical workings , but is mostly a collection of laws. Yeah, I know, not as exciting, but historically wayyyy valuable, and the later period revivalist runes are really a standout in the corpus of medieval manuscripts. But back to our regularly scheduled TV program: The origin lore of Witches of East End is that they're refugees from Asgard , leaving after Odin begins to tighten an iron fist on everyone, including Joanna (Julia Ormond), his headstrong & independent daughter, herself the mother of two headstrong & independent daughters, one most pointedly named Freya (...

In Doctor Sleep , Rose the Hat leads her traveling circle of Shining followers, The True Knot. To seek others that possess The Shining, Rose sits atop her RV on a platform they call the "watchtower" in her beaverpelt low crown top hat to cast herself astrally afar. And here is where director Mike Flanagan may have NorsePlay'd us. [ Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson as Rosie the Hat.] There's some sagas where a seidkona or volva (that's a witch or prophetess) is hosted with honour as a wisewoman, usually wearing a conical lamb & cat skin hat as part of her needed accoutrements . She's normally asked about subsequent harvests, but then the Sagas become sagariffic when she tells the fate of someone in the room, which is when the story gets interesting. Sometimes these witches are hired to perform cursework, find a missing object, spy/remote-view, or attack an adversary from afar. [the wax figure from the Saga Museum in Iceland of Þorbjörg Lítilvölva {a desc...