NorsePlay.

Last time NorsePlay went pretty deep into the sacred groves of Twin Peaks , only later noticing the cereal box actually says right on the front the following spoken ingredients: Major Briggs: O f course the modern age has changed forever the way  your people live, Mr. Thorson, but my guess would be  that there still remains a tremendous vestigial interest in   the legends and folklore of ancient Iceland . Einer Thorson:   (smiles, doesn't have a clue)  Vestigial. Absolutely. Major Briggs:   I  know, speaking for myself, that I find these last  remnants of a connection to a natural, more primitive,  almost pagan way of life, endlessly fascinating; locally,  for instance, we have the Sasquatch mythos, or Bigfoot, a  large, evil smelling forest-dweller, which I suppose  would correspond to your " huldufolk " or hidden people. Einer:   Trolls ? Major Briggs:   Exactly. In the extras, episode 27 director Stephen Gyllenh...

In a clever Wagnerian Ring Cycle adaptation in Marvel's Thor: The Eternals Saga , this striking panel of Marvel's Valkyrie Brunnhilde is being punitively put to her fire ringed bed in an enchanted sleep after doing what Odin actually wants as opposed to what he told her to do. In a strange and somewhat surreal story arc, Marvel Thor seeks out Odin's Eye for answers about an implied previous incarnation of himself that Odin won't reveal to him. The Eye, actually flying around on an ectoplasmic stalk and terrorizing a planet of gnomish aliens just to power flex, submits to Thor's threats and begins telling the God Of Thunder of a hitherto previously unknown Ragnarök and its survivors' link to the current Asgardian cycle , which then follows Wagner's Ring adaptation of The Saga of the Volsungs , with Thor apparently living as both mortal heroes Siegmund and his incestuously born son Siegfried, which helps explain why they look identical to Marvel Thor t...

While Dune is more an obvious analogue for the desert culture of the Middle East, religious versus secular frictions, and the global fuel crisis of the 1970s CE, there's  a strikingly evocative sequence of NorsePlay tucked within the final episode of Dune: Prophecy S1 (2024 CE): This is made more meta-pointed by the casting of Travis Fimmel of Vikings series fame who gets swallowed by the Jǫrmungandr -like sandworm, then finds himself sacrificing the integrity of his eye to becoming augmented with godlike powers, all of which is so very Odinic. And given House Harkonnen roughing out their exile on the North-like wintery world of Lankiveil and having to make do with whaling exports, perhaps there's more NorsePlay to be spotted in the upcoming seasons. We can only hope. #     #    # 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 seve...

While reading Frog's  Mythology and the Lived Environment (2024 CE), he goes a little more into Finnish and Baltic mythology to flesh out his approach to myth as a "symbolic matrix" as a way to broadly reconcile all previous framings. This interesting & novel redefining aside, at one point Frog uses the idea that every time the Baltic storm god Perkūnas uses lightning and we hear thunder a devil is hit and/or the noise makes them flee from fear of getting hit . This idea of devils being scattered by thunder then made me think of how trolls in the Norse Lore are quite put-out by the sound of church bells, so if we look at this dynamic of audial repellence , it's probably comparatively easy to extrapolate that Thor's fatal lighting & roaring thunder got replaced in the process of conversion tactics to the clapper of a church bell instead hammering the lip to gong away trolls within earshot. In this the church displaces Thor as humanity's protector agai...

Photographer Jennifer Peters has recently begun using her re-enactment group members for a series of photos depicting the Norse Gods! Óðinn freshly eye-plucked !: Iðunn probably looking off-screen at distractive Loki as Þjazi in eagle form circles around to kidnap her !: Þórr unknowing wrestling Elli (old age itself) in the rigged Utgard ian contests!: The work is remarkable in that Peters sometimes picks significant moments in the Norse Lore with dynamic action, which bring those narrative turns to life. We hope she continues expanding on this theme in her photography as we love the results. [ check out her work  here! (And thanks to the Valhalla Conversations podcast for bringing this creator to our attention.)]   #     #    # 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 tru...

As a Hispanic Ásatrúar, I love & identify with the intersection between Scandinavian culture and my ethnic background, and after seeing Dalarna Horse variants during my recent Map Of Midgard site investigations in Minnesota I began to wonder if anyone had made a Dalarna-style horse piñata . Seeing my Nana craft many piñatas from the ground up as a kid , either for family events or as commissions, there were no cultural restrictions or content barriers to what she could make (i.e. when I was 7, she made a Spider-Man piñata for me), so the idea of one only sticking to the traditional donkey/burro, bull/ox, or more geometric 7-pointed star simply didn't hold. Plus with the fact that Spanish vaqueros brought horsemanship and thus begat cowboy culture in the New World, why wouldn't all equines be fair game for Mexican piñatas? While the above & below weren't made by Mexican grandmothers, I was really stoked to see that a couple people had used that folkcraft to make Da...

This marks the seventh year NorsePlay has attended the renowned Southwest Frith Moot! [note that orange NorsePlay banner adorning the ramada-hof's sacred central pillar!] Southwest Frith Moot is the longstanding annual regional Ásatrú/Heathen gathering hosted by Arizona's Wanderer Kindred's Chieftain Vince & Gythia Dani, which is held at a varying campsite, this year's June event again being up at a campground in the Coconino National Forest. [NorsePlay might bring the open table games, but it's Vince that brings the matchless Odinic knowledge!] Compared to last year's far more organic SFM , this year's had a great concrete schedule, plus a huge list of topics to choose from for initial lecturing & subsequent open discussion, the latter of which went in great & varied directions from many different voices among the more vocal & inquisitive attendees.   Yes, I was tapped to handwrite the above list of discussion topics and the below SFM schedu...

Yes, that's right Norsespotters: Max appears to be brandishing a Völva's Staff! Whether Maurice Sendak in 1963 CE perhaps saw the short iron wands from Norse archaeology/studies can't really be confirmed, and perhaps may have also been in part influenced by vintage troll tale illustrations for his creatures in  Where the Wild Things Are  is pure conjecture, but looking at the scepter compared to the find & reproduction below, it definitely could've been NorsePlay'd into the classic children's picture  book. [ NorsePlay acknowledges Nathaniel Morton's random T-shirt choice last week as inspiring this entry.] #     #    # 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 Mid...

In the Norse Lore there appears paired legendary drinking horns like the Whitings and Godmund's Golden Horns from Helga þáttr Þórissonar , or within archaeology like the Golden Horns of Gallehus, or the Early Anglo-Saxon ones at The British Museum, or these pictured Sutton Hoo horns. This raises the question of why two separate horns are needed. While the more obvious answer is that horns naturally come in pairs off the heads of bovines so why not keep them paired, yet more pragmatically unless you're double fisting it then you only need one at any given moment of drinking for your single mouth. My previous reading of Georges Dumézil gives us the rather well-fitting theory that Freyr's servants Byggvir & Beyla are poetically named for Barley & Bee , both associated with Freyr's agricultural harvest of plenty. Within The Pre-Christian Religions of the North V.3 (ch54, p1410, Lindow & Schjødt), we're presented with a picture of a pair of preserved drinki...

Now the Gods can be with you wherever you roll, plus save your ride's interior with their protective presence on a custom sunshade: This photo doesn't really do this sweet D'Aulaires double truck illustration from their famous book justice, but I had to show it in the NorsePlay-mobile 's front window to demonstrate how a practical item can represent. While I'm going to have to use the reverse reflective surface for the next few months of Arizona summer, when fall hits this is the side that'll get displayed. #     #    # 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...

Then while reading this series of books for a year, buried in a footnote on p1182 of The Pre-Christian Religions of the North V.3 , a passing reference happens to one-eyed Gaius Julius Civilis (25 CE – c. 1st Century) as potentially being the ancient figure that Odin's one-eyed-ness is based upon! Pulling back to look at how maybe this happens, as we see the chariots roll out of the Indo-European steppes and the migration moves over time & distance from Germany to Scandinavia to the UK to Iceland, the original stories gather details from histories, other mythic traditions, and creative retellings ( NorsePlay , anyone?), so this idea that the Gods are a displaced multi-particulate apotheosis or an agglomeration of aspects from ancient figures/locales/traditions is a possibility. Enter Civilis, Prince of the Batavi, rebel leader in Germania Inferior against the Romans in 69 CE, a notable one-eyed royal warrior who makes a stand and very Odinically celebrates defiant heroism by sa...

Like a global empire, Sunna never sets on NorsePlay . This week NorsePlay has surpassed 100K+ views! [and I know for a fact that readers have visited my blog from Iceland & Greenland, and I'm not sure why the global count tracker didn't see those, so, like the Vikings to Vinland, NorsePlay has definitely also crossed the Atlantic.]  I would first specifically like to thank my South American Latino-gard for an amazing reading spike of nearly 10K of those views in the past month. This obviously has alot to say about how interest in the Heathen Worldview surpasses all boundaries & constructs, and how the Norse Lore has universal appeal. Hails y  bienvenidos mi gente! Note that this 100K+ is only the view count after  the blog's move from mid-2023 , before which it had gotten 27.8K at its previous URL , so really it's more likely just over 130K. (Hey Blogger, where's my shiny wall plaque?) [in a graph, views from the URL move onwards!] And more broadly, I th...

After the city & cable company decided to totally spraypaint mark underground lines in my easement area and front yard (which is where I have my holy Vé with the sacred tree I leave offerings in front of), I decided to then spraypaint & adorn their semi-eyesore broadband podium box that's stood unused in my Vé since I bought the house well over a decade ago into a runestone of my own: Semi-modeled after the Karlevi Runestone (Rundata Öl 1) on the island of Öland, Sweden, my "runestone" like most has been "raised" as a property marker, a praise/boast of achievement, and in memory of one who's died /fallen. Bouncing my text through Valhyr's Old Norse translator, I then used their Short Twig Futhark converter on the ON for the following (with a bit of transliteration to keep proper names intact): These Runes are drawn by Guillermo Skald of NorsePlay Mapmaker of Midgard Owner of this Vé and Red Hof And Raised in Memory Of Buddy Guillermosson For a pa...

While on my way to this year's Southwest Frith Moot , I decided to take a detour to go to my Map Of Midgard 's stickpin for The Mogollon Troll and have a proactive investigative mythologist looksee both for the monster that makes this central Arizona highland rim its home, and a hidden cave potentially filled with legendary giant-kin treasures! [ Map Of Midgard rollover for The Mogollon Troll stickpin from the Jötnar data layer!] Known as "The Mogollon Monster", given his physical description in the screencap above, if we lens him through the Norse Lore this totally makes him a troll, so I've used that recontextualization & worldview to place him on my map as The Mogollon Troll. As I drove up, it started to rain. At first intermittently, then for wetter spates. While I'd read online the unpaved road was an unchallenging washboard, the reality was somewhat rougher than that, took slower going, and had logging truck traffic that if mistimed around some cor...