The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/author/lyonel)
Lyonel Perabo is a scholar of Old Norse Religion, who holds an M.A. from the University of Iceland and focuses his research on Medieval Norse-Icelandic literature, Nordic travelogues, and the local history of northern Fenno-Scandinavia, where he currently resides. When not engaged in academic ventures, Lyonel works within tourism, advertising, translation, and berry-selling.
“Sundrung oozes a sort of dark mysticism which can only stem from a deep understanding of Old Nordic lore,” writes Lyonel Perabo of the new album by Icelandic heavy metal band Nexion.
“Both Charlies, Hebdo and Kirk,” writes Lyonel Perabo, “played pretty much the same game: riling up people, both for laughs and to score political points. Kirk’s ideology was rooted in Christian conservatism, while Charlie Hebdo was staffed by left-libertarians. Yet they both met with the same fate: they were murdered because their speech was deemed dangerous.”
Lyonel Perabo makes his pilgrimage to the 2025 Midgardsblot festival, partaking in a sweeping day filled with ritual, scholarship, and the heaviest metal to be found anywhere in Scandinavia.
Elias Lönnrot, the folklorist, the traveler, the physician, the student, the ethnologist, the editor, and finally the rune singer, did birth one longer Kalevala, one which was as indebted to his creative process as it was to ancient songs and lore.
The rise, rapid development, and adoption of AI-generated art poses an existential question which goes beyond base issues of consumption, mass media, and copyright law. AI art challenges what it means to be human, what we can aspire to be, and the nature of existence beyond the realm of material reality.