The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/music)
December is a month of holiday festivities, near-nonstop sales advertisements, and many religious observations surrounding light. In the Northern Hemisphere, as we venture faster than dropping temperatures to the longest night and shortest day, it is only natural to think of the coming year and ask: where do we want to go?
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.
Lyonel Perabo provides a brief overview of three subgenres of heavy metal music of interest to Pagan listeners – folk, Viking, and Pagan metal – and offers TWH’s very own heavy metal playlist.
Readers contacted us with concerns about a rise in the term “Burn the Witch” and we looked into the term’s use on the internet, by musicians, and game companies.
Here is the lesson. Without positive action, comparative mythology is (at best) a dry academic amusement and (at worst) an exercise in colonialist cultural appropriation. Rather than taking from Hinduism and calling it Heathenry, I suggest that we learn from a closely related tradition that has much to teach us.