The "Lady of the Beasts" picture stone is a significant artifact from the Viking Age and is considered to be one of the most remarkable examples of Viking art and craftsmanship. The stone is believed to date back to the 8th or 9th century AD and stands at around 2 meters tall. It is made of sandstone and is currently on display at the Gotland Museum in Visby, Gotland. The carvings on the stone depict a woman surrounded by animals, with the woman believed to be a goddess, possibly Freya or Frigg. The goddess is depicted with a crown and holding a staff, she is also wearing a dress with a larg ..read more

Our source of the legend for the discovery of the runes comes from the Hávamál [Hover-mol] (The ballad of the High One), an old Norse poem, words of wisdom from Odin, the father of the Gods. Verses 139-146 tell the tale of how the runes were won. Verses 147-165 allude to a collection of magical charms he made from them. The original text translated into English can be found in the Appendices if the reader wishes to delve deeper but gist of the story is shown below. The Old Norse universe (Nine worlds) At the centre of the Norse universe stands the great ash tree, Yggdrasil [ Ig-drazil ]. Yggd ..read more

The Elder Futhark Runes  - are the magical alphabet of the ancient Germanic tribes of Northern Europe and Scandinavia. We will discuss the mythology and magical uses of the runes in another post. This post focused briefly on the history of the runes.   The runes are perhaps derived from the Greek or Etruscan alphabet as long ago as 300 BCE, possibly having a shared ancestry with the Latin-alphabet, which may explain the similarity of some symbols to roman equivalents representing approximately the same sound.    The runes are often found engraved on jewellery, we ..read more

Today, we frequently consider the self to be made up of three parts: the body, the mind, and the soul/spirit. These come together to form a self contained whole with a very definite and clearly defined border dividing it from its surroundings. The self is a much more nuanced concept from the Norse perspective. In their philsophy the self is made up of several distinct pieces that are each semi-autonomous and have the ability to separate from one another under specific conditions. Furthermore they believed that some of these pieces could continue to exist after death or undergo reincarnation i ..read more