The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/pagan)
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.
Except that what I heard then were no musical notes. These were sounds of the earth. Crackling; slowly rumbling; like a fissure opening up on the ocean floor; or a mountain growing, or a volcano awakening after millennia of stillness. The music had not even started that I was already captivated.
What does Ásatrú theology have to tell us about end-of-life issues? How does it help us to understand our experiences as we care for those with growing cognitive issues and as we develop those issues ourselves?