#Norse influence

[the-golden-comet]

✨🌺OC Outfit tag🌸✨

Thank you for tagging me @mysticstarlightduck here , @thecomfywriter here, and @wyked-ao3 here . Appreciate y’all 💛💫✨

Rules: find outfits that your OC would wear!

Rules: create an oc wardrobe and outfit of the day (ootd) for the following situations: casual/daily wear, fancy event, on a date, during one of the most significant events in the book

I did this for Peter Hart and YWIMC, so I can share a couple outfits from another story. Tyr from ITROG only has one outfit, and it’s a little something like this:

https: //preview.redd.it/norse-hunter-v0-xd8o3cs3po1b1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=0a728a7fa16e2bcfd16b8191d7b946536619c6ad

If he were to dress for more formal events, it would be something like this:

https: //themedievalhunt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/20170304_153423.jpg

Going to gently tag (no pressure): @lychhiker-writes , @gioiaalbanoart , @alinacapellabooks , @fortunatetragedy , @sableglass , @words-after-midnight , @nczaversnick , @ominous-feychild , @paeliae-occasionally , @agirlandherquill , @kaeru483 , @greenfinchwriter , @saebasanart , @kaylinalexanderbooks , @indecentpause , @pisces-swirlix , @poorreputation , @autism-purgatory , @finickyfelix , @rivenantiqnerd , @frostedlemonwriter , @diabolical-blue , @marlowethelibrarian , @moltenwrites , @fantasy-things-and-such , @far-cry-from-finality , @honeybewrites , @drchenquill , @the-letterbox-archives , @theink-stainedfolk , @willtheweaver , @aintgonnatakethis , +open tag! ✨

[queenlucythevaliant]

So uh. You guys know I love The Last Battle. But more and more I'm becoming convinced that there's at least as much Ragnarok in there as Revelation. Quite possibly more, if we're going by page count. In the Bible, we're given a picture of God's sovereignty; in Ragnarok, we get pure Northern fatalism. The Last Battle has both, but until the last couple of chapters it's definitely skewed towards the latter.

Main case in point: the literal battle. We don't really get a last, hopeless battle to fight in the Bible. We're faithful witnesses, martyrs, and eventually victors alongside Jesus, but at no point in Scripture do God's people have to (get to?) grab our swords and die in desperate battle with the Enemy. The picture Scripture gives us is a little bit anticlimactic, actually.

Ragnarok, on the other hand, is this tragic losing battle where all the gods die, but get to take their enemy out with them. The world ends in this great, hopeless clash and the cycle starts again. It's tragic and mournful it's intensely narratively satisfying. It's clearly the stronger influence on the climax of Lewis's The Last Battle.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. I love the hopeless, elegiac quality that The Last Battle derives from its Northern influences. However, one of the things that really sets the Narnia books apart from most other children's fantasy is the fact that the kids' agency is usually subordinated to Aslan's power. The Pevensies don't save the day in LWW, for example, despite being the subjects of an ancient prophecy; they mostly sit back and let Aslan do his thing.

As such, I can't help but wonder what a version of The Last Battle without a last battle would look like. What if our heroes never got to pick up their swords and go down fighting? I don't think it would be a better story necessarily (Jack is on record saying that if you're looking for a religion with a really compelling story, you can do a lot better than Christianity - and then proceeds to cite the Norse mythos as an example). However, I'm still quite curious what it would look like. Food for thought.

[cappymightwrite]

An Unexpected Norse Detail in Winterfell

I was scrolling through tumblr yesterday, as you do, and suddenly paused on a gifset of the Lannister party in Winterfell during the early episodes of season 1. What caught my eye was this:

Behind the long table in Winterfell's great hall is some kind of large wooden screen/divider featuring some very interesting carvings. These carvings are near identical to those found on the Urnes Stave Church in western Norway, which dates from the 12th century:

I don't think we ever see this wooden screen in Winterfell again, but it's an interesting inclusion nonetheless, back when the show stuck more closely to the source material.

In The Vikings (Penguin, revised edition, 2016) Else Roesdahl talks a bit about this particular style of ornamentation:

The Urnes style is the last phase of the long development of Scandinavian animal ornament. This seems to have developed shortly before the middle of the eleventh century and was popular for nearly a century, that is into the early Middle Ages. After a final phase where it gave rise to details and influences in Romanesque art, now predominant in Scandinavia, it had died out completely before the year 1200. Many other forms of Viking Age followed the same course. The vigour and vitality of the Ringerike style gave way to this sophisticated, elegant, indeed almost decadent, style. It is named after the exquisite wood carvings that were re-used in Urnes Church in western Norway: a portal and a door, two wall planks, a corner post and two gable ends, one complete [...] The large, four-legged animal is still one of the main motifs, but it has become as slim as a greyhound. Snake-like animals with one foreleg, snakes and thin tendrils sometimes ending in a snake's head are also featured. The designs characteristic of this style form open, asymetric patterns, creating an impression of an undulating interweaving of animals and snakes. The large loops are often figures-of-eight and the shapes grow and diminish evenly; there are no abrupt transitions. The style is also used with virtuosity on brooches and on large numbers of rune stones in central Sweden, where the undulating ornament follows the shape of the stone and the long bodies of the snakes are used as rune bands [...] Several examples of the style have been found in England, and in Ireland it became as popular as the Ringerike style.

What's so intriguing about the original carving though is that it is depicting pagan symbolism... but on a Christian church. As mentioned above, the Ringerike style predate Urnes and was "roughly contemporary with the intial spread within Scandinavia of Christianity, and was the first to contain Christian iconography, although pagan symbolism was still present," notes Philip Parker (The Northmen's Fury, Vintage, 2014). By around 1050, it gave way to the Urnes style, named for the stave church shown above.

But what do these carvings mean? In Tree of Salvation: Yggdrasil and the Cross in the North (Oxford University Press, 2013), G. Ronald Murphy offers this explanation:

The door is simply surrounded with whorls of writhing snakes and vines. The tangle is so perfectly executed in a welter of animal elongation and plant reduction to vines, that it is difficult to identify where a head begins or where a tail finally ends, if at all, or to trace what seems like a joint to a neck or a leg or a vine. The main point seems to be the inter-twined-ness itself of all living things, animal or vegetable, in one huge tangle [...] Now as one looks at the left side of the doorway there is one animal standing on four legs [see above!] that is simply startling in the clarity of its depiction. It has been called a lion and explained as the Lion of Judah (Christ) fighting with evil. I think that such an interpretation makes the mistake of using an inappropriately biblical explanation when the artist, by his very Viking-like pictorial style as well as his tangle of animal and plants, tells you he is here using a Germanic one. If you look at the animal you can see that he is eating at the vine or branch which in turn is a serpent biting at him in the neck. Look at the animal's head and you can see two small horns protruding—that animal is a young male deer, a hart. Now it becomes clear it is not the Old Testament that is giving the context here for the meaning of the portal: this is an allusion to the Elder Edda and its description of Yggsdrasill as the suffering tree with many serpents forever biting on its twigs and branches, as those twigs and branches are also being devoured by a hart. The traditiona of the single deer may also come from a previous stanza in the Grímnismál where the hart is named: Eikþyrnir [Oak-thorn] is the hart's name, who stands on Father of Hosts' hall and grazes Læraðr's [kenning for Yggdrasill] branches; and from his horns liquid drips into Hvergelmir [seething cauldron], from thence all waters have their flowing (Poetic Edda 55 and 270n)

According to Murphy, "to enter the door of the Urnes stave church is to enter Yggdrasill." So, to bring this back to the world of asoiaf, it´s an interesting piece of set design to include this screen or divider in Winterfell, a place closely connected with the "old gods" of the north and that has its own world tree, in a sense: the weirwood tree, or heart tree, of the godswood. Moreover, beneath one of Yggdrasill's three large roots is the spring Hvergelmir (mentioned above, meaning 'seething cauldron'), beneath another is Mímisbrunnr ('Mímir's well) and beneath the third is Urðarbrunnr ('Well of Urðr'), this is interesting to note in parallel to the hots springs and ice-lidded pool in Winterfell's godswood, close to its heart tree.

In the Prose Edda, one of our foremost sources on Norse mythology, Yggsdrasill is also connected with Ragnarök, the doom of the gods. In chapter 54, it is told that Óðinn will ride to the well Mímisbrunnr and consult Mímir on behalf of himself and his people. After this, "the ash Yggdrasill will shake and nothing will be unafraid in heaven or on earth," and then the Æsir and Einherjar will don their war gear and advance to the field of Vígríðr. In asoiaf, the north has its own legend very reminiscent of Ragnarök, called the Long Night and I've written about their similiarities before and keep meaning to return to that.

Anyway, I just think it's pretty cool they included that detail of the Urnes style screen in Winterfell — I'm always putting Norse details into my fics wherever I can, most recently the Oseberg tapestry.

[tovaicas]

anyways my friends activated my conlang brain and I've made smth insane as usual

red is influences, blue is Elezen-family languages, green is like a mix bc I see the Alliance cities as having a trade language (that critically is limited to them).

I see Duskwight as a separate language from Black Shroud Elezen (but sharing a lot - easy enough to learn for those speakers). Coerthan and all its derivatives are a whole different language under the Elezen umbrella and isn't mutually intelligible with BSE. Because they split so early, they probably don't share much more than root words and etymologies; within the same family so not difficult to learn for other speakers of Elezen languages, but very distinctly different.

(also I'm not listing them but the branches extend to include other diaspora Elezen languages)

[nimblermortal]

Matthew Mercer: You can hear them talking, but it sounds less like someone talking than like someone grinding two stones together Nimbler: Ah, so Danish

[theactualrogue]

I offer monthly subscription and independent tarot readings

Please support me, this goes towards rent since my bf lost his job again

You can also cashapp me: $babybratbat03

[solvicrafts]

It just occurred to me... I never did show off my newest Loki plush, did I?

So uh... here you guys go:

I made him a few months ago and just completely forgot to post about him (plus I had other things going on)

[islandiis]

fun fact: miðvikudagur literally means 'mid-week day' :) happy hump day from Fannar

monday - moon day

tuesday - third day

wednesday - mid-week day

thursday - fifth day

friday - fasting day

saturday - bathing day

sunday - sun day!

[suswous]

‘English is three languages in a trench coat.’

Literally every language is. You are not special.

[noxtivagus]

i love the sky so much

[temikoangie]

Tenko being a buddhist and keeping true to these beliefs even when it's not the logical thing is what makes Tenko my fave so while I understand why people w some types of religious trauma would dislike that part and interpret the master as a bad influence, as someone whose religious trauma was getting my religion demonized, seen as toxic and dismissed, it works for me as much better to interpret him as well meaning. I actually think I've seen way more people portraying him as toxic than anything

i wanna quickly preface this right now tht I Am Not a Buddhist Nor do i practice Buddhism so if i ever get something wrong here Please do correct me im entirely open to crticism on that part. ( i realize now i didn't end up going indepth to your religion as i expected but i am Very much open to feedback if desired)

personally if people Do interpret master as a toxic influence Solely because of the religion that he himself raised tenko in, i think theyre!! very horribly wrong ! there is nothing wrong with that at all, tenko's beliefs really do align very similarly. however my main ick with the master that tends to get overlooked is How he essentially treated the whole ''hating men'' thing.

Tenko, canonically told us themselves, that they use their neo-aikido abilities to go out every day & night, to help bring justice. Whether it's helping an elder cross the street, tracking down a thief or even sexual predators on the train !

the 4th dialogue especially concerns me, seeing there wasn't any limit on what situations tenko is essentially sent in to diffuse. and it seems like they've been doing this since they were young! ( at least young enough that it would've seem like they've been doing this for... practically their whole life) Who knows what kind of things tenko was exposed to !! and in the next FTE we pretty much get a confirmation as to why tenko hated men, and it was because their own master reinforced the idea that men shouldn't ever be touched, lest your abilities gets drained out. I get that the master is trying to shape up tenko's moral compass (hence stuff like ''No getting excited about the holidays, dont eat 3 more sweets per day, dont touch men etc etc)

(thisis also the same fte where tenko ''finds out'' that their master is a man and completely freaks out )

i get what the master is trying to do here but like... that's definitely not something you should say to your Very Impressionable Child who's already seen things they probably shouldn't have to experience at their age. there are definitely less.. traumatizing ways of doing this.

Did the master intend to do this maliciously? or did he meant it well and didn't realize the profound effect it would have on his Essentially Foster child ? who freaking knows. the game never really gives us any better hints for either side, but regardless of intention, it's still not a very smart thing to do to this traumatized person with emotional dysregulation .

now going back to the buddhism ppl who insinuate that master is a bad influence on tenko Solely because his religion is stupid and kind of weird! like idk how explain it to you but i don't like the attempts of demonization of other religions that isnt your typical Evangelical Christianity type thing. ppl who think that Is the Reason to interpret master as toxic is ! wrong ! and Should reevaluate why they see master as toxic ! and i am here Personally to tell you that Maybe master shouldve idk. taught him to redirect his energy to something else entirely ! that doesn't involve giving him a freaking savior/caretaker complex! people shouldnt use this as a chance to demonize buddhism!!!

[lumendelmari]

Krom, the half-giant zealot barbarian who originally hailed from the Northlands, but now assists the Circle of Swords in Neverwinter Wood. This character is from "Zelyra Erenaeth: Origins," the prequel to "The Grey Warriors," a retelling of a completed Out of the Abyss (Dungeons and Dragons) campaign.

You can read both stories here:

[borom1r]

ah… wait. augh. things to add to the Rohan Siblings Fic

[theversevoyager]

In a world of Greek gods and Norse legends, two heroes united. Zeus' thunderous might and Odin's cunning wisdom formed an unbeatable team. As they faced the colossal Kraken, born from Celtic tales, they knew the odds were dire. Yet with courage and willpower, they conquered the beast. Forged by myths, they became legends themselves.

[heartofstanding]

I could write a banging novel about Philippa if only I could read Swedish or if more stuff about her and her political/cultural context was published in English.

[pandalavalamp]

So sleep deprived I’m starting to feel feelings I haven’t felt in years