As I’ve discussed previously, flyting is a rich Northern European tradition of poetic insults, where antagonists use their ingenuity to come up with rhymed verses where they say disrespectful things to one another, and, in most cases, things escalate with each exchange. You are correct to compare this in your head to battle-style rap, which […]Read Post ›
Tomorrow is April Fools’ Day, a date readers of this blog might associate with Loki. The Lokasenna is the poem most singularly devoted to Loki at play, insulting each of the gods while they are feasting in the halls of the sea god Aegir. But he takes his flyting too far, and ends up bound […]Read Post ›
Thor and Harbard, an illustration by Franz Stassen in Die Edda: Germanische Götter- und Heldensagen by Hans von Wolzogen, published in 1920. Thor holding Mjölnir has a duel of wits with the ferryman Harbard, here seen holding an oar or push pole for his boat; they hold their conversation across a sound or river from […]Read Post ›
Throwback Thorsday 