The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/norway)
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.
Like a “Sunday Catholic” who is extremely devout on Sunday mornings but lives a decidedly un-Christian life for the rest of the week, we can all too easily make grand speeches over the drinking horn at blót but neglect to put intention into action when we step out into the wider world. Are we honoring the ancestors in our lives? Or are we dishonoring them?
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.
A new study uses skeletal trauma, grave goods, runestones, and infrastructure to argue that Viking Age Denmark and Norway had markedly different relationships to interpersonal violence.