Tag: Norse Mythology

Æsir Solstice Sunrise

Freja by John Bauer, via Wikimedia Commons

In preparation for the solstice sunrise
The Æsirs beat their biggest drums
Filling the nightless midsummer night
With a majestic boom-boom-hum

Heimdallr heralds dawn by blowing the mighty Gjallarhorn
By Thor the holy hammer Mjölnir is thrown
The air by lightning strikes is torn
The earth seeded with protective thunderstones

Freya dons her feather cloak to fly
Seeking girls born with seiðr powers
Sending dreamers her priestess cry
To ken, pick seven kinds of flowers

The first step on the Völvas path
To see the meaning of the magic runes
Only for those that fearless curiosity hath
The hearing of the Norns spinning tunes

From the clouds that Frigg has spun
A cleansing rain starts to fall
Nourishing this year’s harvest growth begun
Ensuring food for animals and folk all

Ask and Embla’s children rise
Woken by the storm sounds
Hearing the Goddess falcon cries
Know it’s time to attend to holy grounds

The world cleansed, all peoples awake
Æsir, elfs, humans, vanirs and fauns
Sol her chariot to heaven take
Raising the sun to solstice dawn

©RedCat
Frigga Spinning the Clouds by John Charles Dollman
via Wikimedia Commons

This is the poem I began composing as I lay listening to the thunder on the shortest night of the year. I’ve managed to learn a trick that makes me able to remember short stanzas even after sleep. I compose a short stanza, or maybe only a couplet. Then while focusing on the sound, rhythm and feeling of what I want the poem to become, I say the lines over, and over, and over. Until they are firmly set in my mind. I do something similar when walking and having an idea, but not wanting to stop to write it down. This technique works most of the time, and gets more and more reliable the more I use it. I think this is relatively easy for me to do because when I sang as a child, all songs and melodies had to be learnt by heart.

I’ve read more than once that there’s absolutely no evidence for any pre-Christian Midsummer or Solstice celebrations in the North, even though most people here think so. And while I accept that fact. I refuse to believe that any people this far north would have celebrated only Midwinter, when night is nearly, or wholly depending on how far north, all day long. And not celebrate Midsummer when there is no true night, only day, dusk and dawn. Or Midnight Sun if you’re far enough north.

So while my poem is based on real Norse mythology – Æsir Gods and Goddesses, magical items and folklore. The story itself is wholly dreamt up by me listening to thunder rumble and boom.

Below you’ll find a list of internet sources where you can read more on each included God or Goddess, item or folkloric belief.

Shared to and read at Open Link Night #295 – Midsummer Live at dVerse.

Also shared to:

earthweal weekly challenge: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAMTIME.

Writers’ Pantry #76: Whatever the Weather over at Poets and Storytellers United.

Promote Yourself Monday, June 28, 2021 at Go Dog Go Café.

 Nornir of Norse mythology at the  Urðarbrunnr., by L. B. Hansen
via Wikimedia Commons

Æsir, Vanirs and Elves
Freya
Frigg
Norns
Sol
Thor
Heimdallr

The Gjallarhorn 
Mjölnir

Ask och Embla
To ken – Kenning
Seiðr – Magic
Thunderstones
Völva – Seeress

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Midsummer Poppies (2020 Re-post)

© RedCat

When dusk is night long
Lasting until dawn
Poppies vibrant song
Siren fey dreams spawn

Thrumming in the veins
Passion’s deep well
Growing like the grains
By hypnotic smell

Hear Midsummer’s call
Wonders fill your heart
Feel the fire of Sol
Drink her heedy quart

Frolic and feel joy
Bathe in love’s red lust
Freedom life buoy
By starlight souls trust

Bask in Everglow
Caressed by the breeze
Rest content below
Midsummer poppies

© REDCAT
© RedCat

Re-post comment:

Midsummer is drawing nearer each day. So it felt fitting to share this poem for tonight’s Wandering the Archives Wednesday.

Nights are magical right now. The light is otherworldly. Flowers shine with their own light and lend a seducing perfume to the air.

Read more about the Goddess Sól (Norse Mythology) on Wikipedia.

Photo by Freddie Ramm on Pexels.com

Also linking to Tuesday Writing Prompt Challenge at Go Dog Go Café.

1

Three Times Three Times Three – April Ekphrastic Challenge

Jane Cornwell

She was hung upon the tree
Three times three times three
So her mother didn’t have to her unwanted child see
So the other children could hurl spear insults with glee
So men could do as they pleased while she couldn’t flee

She was hung upon the tree
Three times three times three
For the crime of not stifling her curiosity
For the crime of speaking out against bigotry
For the crime of being different as all could see

She was hung upon the tree
Three times three times three
For the sin of searching creativity
For the sin of reading witchery
For the sin of speaking knowledgeably

When the God of the Hanged saw a woman tested on the tree
Three times three times three
Fjolnir sang one of the magic song to set her free
The One Eyed taught her how to truly see
Wayfinder showed all the ways on land and at sea
Forni taught her the world’s history
Ygg showed her the secrets of the tree
Glapsvid taught her spells to once more happy and healthy
Odin showed her the runes to unravel every mystery
The All Father gave her mead to awaken her poetry

©RedCat

This painting gives me shivers. Has every time I look at it. So today’s choice was a foregone conclusion. 

And for some reason it led me to thinking about the very debated part of the Edda poem Hávamál (line 138-145), where Odin sacrificed himself to himself, wounded by a spear, hanging on the world tree Yggdrasil for nine nights to be able to gain greater mystic knowledge from the magic runes.

So I read about Odin in my Poetic Edda copy, and read through what I could find online including a scholastic article from 2014. (You can find it here, but it’s in Swedish.)

Then, as I tend to do I made the story my own!

The last stanza contains nine different names for Odin.

To see all art and read all poems for today go to The Wombwell Rainbow.

This is also the poem I plan to read at tonight’s dVerse Open Link Live. The price of admission is a poem written by you. But if you rather not read and just listen that’s fine too.

See you there!

Photo by veeterzy on Unsplash
Jane Cornwell


likes drawing and painting children, animals, landscapes and food. She specialises in watercolour, mixed media, coloured pencil, lino cut and print, textile design. Jane can help you out with adobe indesign for your layout needs, photoshop and adobe illustrator. She graduated with a ba(hons) design from Glasgow School of art, age 20.

She has exhibited with the rsw at the national gallery of Scotland, SSA, Knock Castle Gallery, Glasgow Group, Paisley Art Institute, MacMillan Exhibition at Bonhams, Edinburgh, The House For An Art Lover, Pittenweem Arts Festival, Compass Gallery, The Revive Show, East Linton Art Exhibition and Strathkelvin Annual Art Exhibition.

Her website is: https://www.janecornwell.co.uk/

April Ekphrastic Challenge – GloPoWriMo 2021

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