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.
One day this August I picked up my phone and called Jens-Roger. “You know I told you the other week that I and my family were moving out?” “Yes, I remember.” “Well, I was thinking that before we leave for good, we should bury our daughter’s placenta. And we all really enjoy your place. Could we find a spot somewhere there?”
The Midgardsblot festival, taking place each August in Borre, just south of Oslo, Norway, has slowly but surely become ubiquitous among Viking nerds, Norse Pagans, and metalheads alike. With its unique blend of extreme Metal and nordic folk acts (among others), alongside numerous artistic and academic entertainment acts, it was only a matter of time that I checked it out for myself.
Exhausted, sweaty, and painfully hungry, I take my back into the gravel road of what must be Sōdra Ugglarp. On the horizon a long earthen-colored brick building stands against the deep blue sky, like a wall. In front of it, I notice a concrete-pit filled with horse manure. Closest to me, nearly as long as the barn, lies the stone ship, shaped by dozens of massive standing stones, like teeth of a giant rising from the green earth.
“Nexion is wrath,” the Eddas, and Michael Jordan: The second part of Lyonel Perabo’s conversation with Joshua Rood.
“Even though Ásatrú might not have been quite where I had imagined it, people were actively trying to work toward something. You don’t get temples and songs and chants and beautiful ceremonies and certainly not a deep knowledge system overnight. You need to discover and build these things. And you need a community to do it with.”