Spring and the Goddess of Dawn
While in many places the frost still crouches deep in the ground and the mountains sleep under a thick blanket of snow, the first harbingers of spring are already appearing in sheltered corners and sunny places: snowdrops and crocuses greet the first warming rays of sun, the young trees begin to bud…
The Age of the Wolf and Ragnarök - The end of the world in Norse mythology
Brothers shall fight and fell each other,And sisters’ sons shall kinship stain; Hard is it on earth, with mighty whoredom; Axe-time, sword-time, shields are sundered, Wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world falls; Nor ever shall men each other spare. – Völuspá Just as Indian mythology knows the Kali Yuga and Hesiod and Ovid write…
The Wild Hunt, the ancient ghosts ride across Europe
The months between the autumn and spring equinoxes have been since ancient times populated by dark creatures, myths and lore linking to the otherworld. Different kinds of festivities in celebrating the ancestors, rituals involving the honourable dead or tales of ghosts and demons are being celebrated to this day in some regions…
The Origins of Halloween: Samhain and the European Feasts of the Dead
Nowadays, Halloween is in many places wrongly considered an American invention. While it is true that the way we celebrate Halloween today hardly has anything to do with the traditions of our forebears, the roots of these customs reach back into prehistory. The name “Halloween” (“all hallows even”, the eve of All…
Postmodern skald, looking for echoes of the eternal gods in germanic myth and poetry.
