The Sacred Pillar: The Irminsul, Yggdrasil, and the Axis Mundi Across the Germanic World
Charlemagne’s forces spent three full days destroying the Irminsul in 772 CE. Not hours. Three days of sustained effort to dismantle a wooden pillar. That is not the effort you put into removing an inconvenient object. That is the effort you put into destroying...
Ragnarök Is Not the Apocalypse: What the End of the World Actually Means in Norse Cosmology
When Christian missionaries encountered the Norse account of the world’s end, they recognized it immediately as something like their own apocalyptic tradition. Fire, destruction, the death of gods, the end of the present world order. They were not entirely wrong...
Odin’s Bargains: What the Mythology Actually Says About Sacrifice, Knowledge, and the Cost of Both
Odin gouged out his own eye and threw it into a well. Then he hung himself on a tree for nine days with a spear wound in his side. He did both of these things voluntarily, in exchange for knowledge. That tells you everything that matters about who this god is and what...