Author: Eirik Westcoat

Audio: A Triad of Sumbel Toasts

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I present more audio for the blog. Here is a triad of sumbel toasts, which first appeared as text in this blog back in October 2012. Though it is the eleventh recording for this blog, it is only the first set of toasts to be recorded for it. The toasts are first to the gods and goddesses, then to the ancestors, and then to the kindred I’m in, the Hearth of Yggdrasil.

Here is the downloadable file of me reciting the poem:
Eirik Westcoat – A Triad of Sumbel Toasts

And here is the inline player:

Enjoy! Feel free to share the file. For details, see the Creative Commons link below.

This post is:
Copyright © 2014 Eirik Westcoat.
All rights reserved.

The linked audio file of A Triad of Sumbel Toasts is:
Copyright © 2014 Eirik Westcoat.
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives License.

Change to Blog Schedule

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Hail all. My blog will be taking what is hopefully a temporary reduction in update frequency in order to allow time for some other things, including work on a scholarly paper and a book of poetry. Instead of weekly, the updates will be biweekly for at least the next two months. Here’s the update schedule through mid May:

March 19
April 2
April 16
April 30
May 14

All of these dates are Wednesdays, and the actual update, as always, may be plus or minus one day.

Beer in Midgard

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Here I present a poem on subject much enjoyed by heathens and others: beer. Its style is a bit different from previous poems. Rather than have stanza breaks as is usual for Norse styles, it runs continuously without them, which was the typical Anglo-Saxon style. Otherwise, the meter the same as my usual fornyrðislag. Also, rather than splitting the long lines into visible half lines (as one will see in Tolkien’s Fall of Arthur, for instance) and/or putting those half lines on separate physical lines (which is typical of my usual fornyrðislag practice and as one will see in Tolkien’s Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun), I simply give the long lines with no internal breaks, though the astute follower of this sort of poetry would probably have no trouble figuring out where the breaks would go.

As there are no stanzas to count, the length is reckoned by counting the number of long lines. Thus, this is a 25-line poem, making it the equivalent of a little over six stanzas of ordinary fornyrðislag. The title of this poem is “Beer in Midgard.”

Beer, the bright drink, beautifully colored,
of malted barley and bitter hops,
is the brewer’s bounty and a boon to Man.
This yeasty ferment of Yule-tide cheer,
heathen feasting, and happy hours,
Continue reading →

No Content This Week

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Ugh. The skald has gotten sick again. Though not as bad as in January when I suspected the flu, the timing is more inconvenient this time. So for this week, the blog is taking a sick day and there is no new poem or other content to post. As a brief note for the future, my experiment in writing slam poetry in the alliterative meters is going quite well, and posts of either a whole slam poem or some short previews are likely in the next month.

A Short Valentine’s Day Poem

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Since I noticed that a certain secular holiday was approaching this Friday, I decided I would write a short poem related to it. My poem, of course, has some of that Northern flavor that my readers have come to expect.  It is four stanzas of ljóðaháttr. Its title is “A Short Valentine’s Day Poem.” A word of warning: there is word of vulgar language after the cut at the end of the poem.

Is it love lurking
or just lusty thoughts
in this frigid February?
From Roman roots
is the ritual day
of venturesome valentines.

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Calls to Other Beings

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Once again, it is time for some of the most practical poetry that this blog features: calls to various beings from the lore. Although unusual and unexpected, the calls here may be found quite useful by some. Today I present calls to Ancestors, Others, Dag, and Nótt. Like all previous calls, these are also two stanzas of ljóðaháttr each (with the stanza break removed as before). A call to the ancestors is self-explanatory. The call to the Others is a sort of catch-all for friendly beings who might wish to attend the ritual but who are unknown and/or have not specifically been named in prior calls. (That is, the call is designed to follow specific calls to other named beings. It may not make much sense to use the call by itself.) Dag and Nótt are the Old Norse words for Day and Night, although Snorri’s Edda treats them as supernatural beings and provides a genealogy for them. There are probably few who would hold blóts to Dag and Nótt, but some might wish to try reciting the calls on a daily basis at the appropriate times as part of a personal practice.

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Audio for Gunnlaðarljóð

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Today brings my tenth audio recording to this blog. This time, it is Gunnlaðarljóð, which was posted as text last November. My recitation uses the original Norse pronunciations of the names instead of the anglicized versions.

Here is the downloadable file of me reciting the poem:
Eirik Westcoat – Gunnlaðarljóð

And here is the inline player:

Enjoy! Feel free to share the file. For details, see the Creative Commons link below.

This post is:
Copyright © 2014 Eirik Westcoat.
All rights reserved.

The linked audio file of Gunnlaðarljóð is:
Copyright © 2014 Eirik Westcoat.
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives License.

Wrath of a Tiny Etin?

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In his book Runelore (on page 188), Edred Thorsson notes that etins don’t have to be of great size, although Ymir certainly is. Sometimes they can be small, and he notes that, “the name of a certain beetle in Old Norse is jötunuxi [etin-ox].” He also reckons them to be non-evolving beings. I found myself wondering if viruses can be seen as etins after a fashion, especially after I got stricken with one this past week. They certainly have no consciousness, at least not any that would be remotely familiar to humans, as they occupy a sort of borderland between life and non-life. Unfortunately for us, they do evolve somewhat to thwart efforts to wipe them out entirely. Nonetheless, they remain viruses despite the changes they undergo, and so in another sense, they don’t evolve.

The particular virus that struck me was a cold, or at least I thought so at first. It was rather nasty, as if it were in tryouts to be the flu. The worst of it for me has past, however. So for this update, I wrote a short verse about it. It is two stanzas of fornyrðislag.

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Audio for Building Asgard’s Wall

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Today I present an audio recording of another eddic tale that I’ve set in verse. This time, it is Building Asgard’s Wall, which was posted as text last March. In this spoken version, the words are different in a few places from what I posted, and the original post has not been edited.

Here is the downloadable file of me reciting the poem:
Eirik Westcoat – Building Asgard’s Wall

And here is the inline player:

Enjoy! Feel free to share the file. For details, see the Creative Commons link below.

This post is:
Copyright © 2014 Eirik Westcoat.
All rights reserved.

The linked audio file of Building Asgard’s Wall is:
Copyright © 2014 Eirik Westcoat.
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives License.