Nature’s Fireworks: Thunderstorm Facts and Lore

With July comes nature’s fireworks—thunderstorms! How is thunder formed? How far away is lightning? Let’s look at some thunder lore and how thunder is born. What is Thunder? Thunder is born in the instant when the return lightning stroke leaves the earth and spears upward through the channel of ionized air. The channel is viciously

Forget Hades and Loki, who was the Celtic god of death?

The names of the ancient Celtic gods are much less known than those of their Greek and Norse counterparts. Thanks to modern retellings of ancient myths in books and movies, names such as Hades, the Greek god of the Underworld, and Loki, the Norse trickster god, are well known. But the gods and goddesses of

Who Is Jack Frost?

Is Jack Frost nipping at your nose? If so, you might be interested in the origin of this enduring winter character. Learn more! During the holiday season, Jack Frost returns to our collective imagination, along with Santa Claus, Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman, the Grinch, and the rest of our array of favorite seasonal characters. Jack

How Loki Shapeshifted From Nordic Folklore to a Marvel Icon

There are more than 800 years between the stories of Viking god Loki first being written down and his arrival (in the superb Tom Hiddleston) in the Marvel cinematic universe in 2011’s Thor. The new Disney+ series Loki, set to be released on June 9, is primed to explore more antics of Thor’s trickster brother

Release the Trolls: The Norse Mythology Prevalent in Popular Culture

Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings series, which New Zealand’s taxpayers contributed US$114m towards just to keep in the country, reaffirms the fact that the world loves high fantasy. J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic was a fixture of pop culture long before Peter Jackson brought it to life on the big screen. But its permanence in the

Valhalla: fighting and feasting in the Viking warrior afterlife

All Viking warriors hope for a glorious death in battle so they reach Valhalla – or at least, that is what pop culture would have us believe. But what is Valhalla? Did all Vikings want to get there, and what happened to those who didn’t? We asked Carolyne Larrington, fellow in medieval English and professor

Gods Of Iceland: Jörð, The Biracial Earth Mother

Strengths: She’s Odin’s daughter. Weaknesses: She’s also his wife. (Or one of them anyway). Modern Analogy: Is unschooling her children on a homestead. It’s going really well. Jörð doesn’t play a very active role in the tales of Norse mythology, and she’s hardly mentioned in the Poetic and Prose Eddas, but that doesn’t mean she