The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/category/features/pilgrimages)
“I have discovered that parks help fill a void for me,” writes Meagan Fischer, “of finding community in my devotion to the web of life. After years of frantic activism, I am learning to care for myself for the long haul, to surround myself with beauty.”
The horizon promised forever, with the land in between rich with life and beauty. The Divine Mother was present everywhere in those fertile fields, hills, and mountains. The endurance of the land and the creatures and spirits who dwell there filled me with awe.
The woods around my home in Arctic Norway were few and far between, mostly small birches barely taller than your average adult. Here in Åland, I met with real woods: tall bone-white birches, spruce, thick pines, bushy walnut groves. This vibrant life was everywhere, and all the while I was searching for graves.
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?”
It had been seven years since Anaar and I had traveled to Europe to offer this work. In many ways, we expected it to unfold much as it had before: a celebration of community, of poetry, of ritual, of art. And while it did indeed fulfill all that, there was another, more global reality that inserted itself into the mix: Covid-19.
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.
