Tag: Norse mythology

You can buy Collin Cleary’s Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition here.

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Longtime Counter-Currents contributor Collin Cleary, author of Wagner’s Ring and the Germanic Tradition, was the guest on Nathan C. J. Hood‘s livestream for Wagner Day last weekend, where they discussed the use of Germanic mythology, as well as Faustian themes and the concept of fate, in Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungen. See below. (more…)

Friedrich August Moritz Retzsch, Faust and Mephisto Playing Chess, ca. 1825

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Part 2 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

III. Eating His Words: Renaissance Tricksters

Renaissance dramas were also a rich fount for stories/speech gone awry and ironic. (more…)

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Robert Eggers’ The Northman, a retelling of the medieval Scandinavian legend of Amleth, is a masterful tribute to the Viking era. Eggers recreates the world of the Vikings with painstaking attention to detail and great respect for his subject.

Eggers does not have Right-wing sympathies. He has condemned the so-called “misappropriation” of the Vikings by White Nationalists. Yet his dogged commitment to authenticity has resulted in a film of which Joseph Goebbels would approve. (more…)

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Ron McVan is an American white nationalist and Wotanist. He has followed a lifelong career in the fine arts as an oil painter, pen & ink illustrator, sculptor, poet, writer, stained glass artisan, jewelry craftsman, and musician. His extended interests have always been wide and varied, ranging foremost in the martial arts, philosophy, the ancient mysteries, mythology, European history and heritage, comparative religions, and spiritual studies, most particularly in Gnostic Wotanism and Druidism. (more…)

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All installments of this series available here

It has been some time since I have published an installment in this series (the last, in fact, was in November 2019). After more than a year of research and reflection, I am ready to return to the story of Sigurd, Fafnir’s Bane. (more…)

Ferdinand Lindner, Altnordisches Julfest, from Die Gartenlaube magazine. 1880.

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Christmas is my favorite time of the year. From Christmas decorations to Christmas songs, I always get into the holiday spirit wherever my travels and adventures take me. Although I prefer spending Christmas with friends and family, I have spent a few holidays by myself in various countries. While I was never one to question (more…)

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Arne Nordheim was the most celebrated Norwegian composer of the 20th century. He is known for both his avant-garde electronic works and his large-scale orchestral works and music dramas. Nordheim’s Draumkvedet (“The Dream Ballad”), a music drama based on the medieval Norse poem of the same name, fuses his modernist idiom with folk influences to great effect. (more…)

Wilhelm von Kaulbach, The Fifth Adventure, 1848

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A manuscript containing Hitler’s ideas for an opera entitled Wieland der Schmied, inspired by Wagner’s draft for a libretto of the same name, was recently put on display for the first time at the Museum Niederösterreich. The museum is currently running an exhibit on Hitler’s early life featuring artifacts collected by August Kubizek between 1907 and 1920. (more…)

Emil Doepler, Heimdall an der Himmelsbrücke, 1905.

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As I have gotten older, certain events always seem to bring up specific memories and thoughts. This last week, I have struggled to fall asleep as I kept thinking about Homer’s Odyssey. The scene in question is when Odysseus returns home in disguise, only to see his once-esteemed dog Argos close to death after being neglected by his servants while Odysseus was away. Argos immediately recognized his owner when no one else did. (more…)

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Part I here, Part IX here, Part XI here

Chapter 10. The Death of Sinfjotli

In our last two installments, we explored the fascinating digression – the “saga within the saga” – that is the story of Helgi. (more…)

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Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was the most influential composer of the nineteenth century and one of the most influential composers in the history of Western art music. (more…)

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For a long time, the tales of Norse voyages to North America described in the Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders were thought to be legends. It was not until the nineteenth century that historians and archaeologists began to investigate the subject of Pre-Columbian Norse exploration in earnest. The first to do so was the Danish historian Carl Christian Rafn, whose Antiquitates Americanæ (published in 1837) sought to ascertain the location of Vinland. (more…)