The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/runes/page/2)
Over the past week, Democrats have giddily celebrated the ascension of Kamala Harris to the top of the ticket. That’s great, but it doesn’t deal with the issue of elderly leaders in this nation of ours. Maybe the tale of Egil Skallagrimsson, the Viking poet who lived to old age, has something to teach us here.
Sometimes, the Mead of Poetry works indirectly. An old rock ‘n’ roll song is stuck on repeat in my head, spinning unceasingly between my ears. Actually, it’s not even an entire song. It’s just a verse or a chorus or sometimes only a line or two. Someone else’s creative creation gets lodged in there, doing work on my mind that only I can hear.
If we really believe in practicing world-affirming religions, then we should affirm the world we live in by working for the good of the planet and all that live upon it.
Lyonel Perabo interviews Joseph Hopkins and Lauren Fountain of the experimental publishing house Hyldyr, which produces new books and translations of interest to Heathens that seek to bridge the gap between the purely academic and purely popular.
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.