The Sacred Flame (Mathias Nordvig)
Explore every episode of The Sacred Flame
| Pub. Date | Title | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Feb 2023 | Yggdrasill: The Tree at the Center | 00:47:36 | |
In this episode we explore the symbolic meaning of the world tree Yggdrasill in the Nordic story-worlds. We examine the tree in Old Norse stories and relate them to Sámi and Finnish stories. We dig into the sacred meaning-making that lies behind using the tree as an image of the cosmos, world-connectedness, and community. Eventually, we arrive at suggestions to how the image of the tree in the Nordic story-worlds can be meaningful for us today, and how we can change our perception of our world by reflecting critically on how we think about nature in modern societies. The benefits of nature experience: Improved affect and cognition - ScienceDirect An occasion for unselfing: Beautiful nature leads to prosociality - ScienceDirect Physiological and cognitive performance of exposure to biophilic indoor environment - ScienceDirect René Descartes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 'Mother Trees' Are Intelligent: They Learn and Remember - Scientific American The Poetic Edda (Oxford World's Classics): Larrington, Carolyne: 9780199675340: Amazon.com: Books | |||
| 26 Feb 2023 | Ancestors: The Spirits of the Land | 01:05:16 | |
In this episode we're exploring the ways that we talk and think about ancestors. The Nordic story-worlds have a lot to say about ancestor worship, and how we can connect with the land through ancestors. Today, most people seem to think about ancestors as those who came before us, who are tied to us through blood. Blood-based ancestry is a way of thinking about yourself and the people and place that you belong to, which more often than not leaves you disconnected from where you live. Land-based ancestry is another way of thinking about ancestors and how they integrate with the space you inhabit. In the Nordic story-worlds there are many names for land-based ancestors. This shows that the peoples in northern Europe had a rich relationship with their land. You can use their stories and ways to talk about land-based ancestors to create strong ties to your world today. | |||
| 28 Mar 2023 | Midgard: Walking with the Land-spirits | 01:05:21 | |
In this episode, we're investigating how we can connect with the land that we live on. Many of us feel disconnected from the land -or, more importantly, we feel nothing about the land at all. We live in big, urban spaces. Even if we don't live in cities, we generally exist in spaces that are designed to disconnect us from land. In the modern age, it seems that most people only know how to relate to land through ideas about the political territories they live in, their constructed nations. Connecting to land is about seeking, making, sharing, and celebrating natural relationships. We take a deep dive into how we can commune with the land and gain a better sense of who we are based on where we are. LANDBACK - Building lasting Indigenous sovereignty. Native Land Information System – Data Portal of the Native Lands Advocacy Project What Native land are you on? This map shows Indigenous tribes' past territories : NPR Native-Land.ca | Our home on native land Invasion of America (arcgis.com) Home Page | National Museum of the American Indian (si.edu) Coming Down to Earth • Writings – Bayo Akomolafe Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Continental Rationalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Rationalism vs. Empiricism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) | |||
| 18 May 2023 | Frey and Gerd: Growth of the Soil | 01:27:36 | |
In this episode I discuss farming from a historical perspective that goes back to the Viking Age and leads all the way to the present day. I work with the story about how Freyr, the force of fertility, desires Gerd, the protector of arable lands. I get into the historical aspects of farming technology in north-western Europe, attitudes, ideologies, and much more concerning land management and agriculture. As always, this episode goes deep into not just what people did but also what people thought when they were managing their lands. I extrapolate from that to some modern developments in land management and agriculture, which evolved from aristocratic land rule in the 1600s to corporate farming today. | |||
| 09 Jun 2023 | The Wanderings of Rig: Vikings and Whiteness | 01:31:14 | |
In this episode I explore the concept of whiteness and why it has become so closely associated with Vikings. We begin with the story about Rig, a deity claimed to be the same as Heimdall, and his journey through Midgard. Rig is said to have created the three classes of humans, and according to the old story, these three classes have something akin to phenotypical descriptions attached to them. After the story, I dissect it and its history, its use in modern times, and dive deep into our modern ideas about Vikings and race, racialization, and the construction of whiteness today. | |||
| 03 Jul 2023 | The Last Elder: Snorri Sturluson and the Fantasy of Heaven and Hell | 01:12:24 | |
In this episode I take a dive into the life of the creator of parts of the Nordic story-world, Snorri Sturluson. We'll look at his life, his intentions, his interests, and some of the things he did that changed the Nordic story-world forever. I consider Snorri the last elder of the Nordic story-world. He was the last elder for good and for bad. He was one of the last few who carried so much knowledge of the Nordic story-world in his head and could work with it creatively. He also belonged to that last generation of Icelanders who kept the flame alive. But as much as we can thank him for writing down some of the Nordic story-world, so that we would have it today, he was also of that generation of Icelanders who had lost their way and stopped caring about the future of their children as much as their own wealth and fame. He belonged to that generation of Icelanders who left tradition behind to join the Norwegian kingdom and a new world order. The result was devastating to Icelandic culture, the new generations, and the Nordic story-world. It was a loss of intergenerational care, intergenerational storytelling, and continuity. It was a cultural Ragnarok for Iceland. Today, we're faced with a similar cultural Ragnarok as the bonds between generations are failing. We are also faced with a climate catastrophe Ragnarok for those same reasons. | |||
| 01 Aug 2023 | Ættir: Unn the Mindful and Family Sovereignty | 01:12:56 | |
In this episode we follow in the footsteps of Unn the Mindful, one of the few known women leaders of a settlement in Viking Age Iceland. We explore the reasons her family left Norway for Iceland and what we can learn from her example today. This episode is about family sovereignty: the difference between "family values," a talking point made up by people who want to control our lives, and a sovereign family that defines itself on its own terms without submitting to outside forces. What does it mean to be a member of a family? What does "family" even mean? And how was this all understood in ancient times in the North? | |||
| 19 Sep 2023 | Freyja and the Dwarfs: Sex and Sexuality in the Viking Age | 01:25:58 | |
In this episode, I'm discussing sex and sexuality in the Viking Age --and far, far beyond. I departure from the story about Freyja sleeping with four dwarfs in exchange for the necklace Brisingamen. I discuss other, related stories, not least Ari Thorgilson's report that Hjalti Skeggjason was outlawed for calling Freyja a "bitch" in a poem that he composed in the year 999. From there, I consider other reports on Scandinavians' sexlives in the Viking Age, and what they mean for the general picture we get of pre-Christian attitudes to sex and sexuality. I relate this to factoids about human evolution, our physical configuration, and our inner hormonal processes associated with sexual activities. From there, I take it to a global level and discuss some aspects of other cultures' sexual practices. If you listen to this episode and feel that I don't give you a straight answer to what we can take from this knowledge of history in terms of applying it to our lives today, you'll have gotten the point: it's not for me to decide or even suggest how you should relate to this subject. | |||
| 10 Nov 2023 | Odin and Loki: Queer sexuality in the Viking Age | 01:24:06 | |
In episode 8, I tackled sex and sexuality in a broad perspective. I would be remiss not to follow that up with a deep dive into what we today call queer sexualities and categorize with the LGBTQ+ acronym. Are there sources from the medieval period, the Viking Age, and before that, which can help illuminate these subjects? Some scholars and practitioners of Nordic paganisms suggest there are -but what does it look like with a critical eye toward the pre-Christian context; a period that did not (at least as far as we know) have a language for expressing queer sexuality like we do today? I'll unpack the stories that are often used as examples of pre-Christian attitudes to queer sexuality and take a deep dive into them. After that, I'll offer some additional thoughts on how we should approach the stories, the material culture from the Viking Age, and our current situation. How Copenhagen Became The "Gay Village Of Northern Europe" - Jetset Times Valkyrie fra Hårby - Birka female Viking warrior - Wikipedia Viking warrior women? Reassessing Birka chamber grave Bj.581 | Antiquity | Cambridge Core A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics - PMC (nih.gov) | |||
| 17 Dec 2023 | Witches and the Spectacle of Modern Life | 01:29:27 | |
This episode begins with the story about Gefion who created the island of Sjalland. I examine the story of her meeting with Gylfi in the form that it is represented by Snorri Sturluson in Edda. After that, I take a dive into the witch craze of the early modern period and discuss its impact on European-western societies, what role it actually played in social life, and how a goddess of the meadows was turned into a witch. I extrapolate some ideas from that, which hint at how we've created a society of the spectacle, a society where human life is framed, encased, and reduced to representations in the tiny boxes that we keep in our pockets, our phones. | |||
| 14 Jan 2024 | Heathen Ritual and Magic | 01:43:06 | |
In this episode I discuss what ritual and magic are. We begin with the story about how Thorhallr procured a whale for Thorfinn Karlsefni's starving crew in Vinland, and what it says about attitudes to ritual and magic in the Icelandic sagas. Then we take a tour through medieval opinions on non-Christian rituals and magic that have influenced Nordic literature. After that, I go deep into the development of concepts around magic in the early modern period, the rise of alchemy, Hermeticism, and Solomonic magic. All this leads to some thoughts on the western esoteric tradition and some thoughts on how modern heathens think about ritual and magic today, not least my own ideas and attitudes to the subject. | |||
| 10 Feb 2024 | Rune Magic Part 1: The History of Runes and the Earliest Magical Inscriptions | 01:25:17 | |
This episode is the first in a series about rune magic. There is a lot to cover on that topic, so I have decided to split it up in two parts. In this episode I cover the earliest inscriptions from c. 0 CE to the beginning of the Viking Age. I provide a rundown of the invention and development of the runic writing system and give an overview of select runic inscriptions that can be understood as magical or religious. Contemporary rune magic is far removed from what it was in ancient times. There is no evidence that people practiced runic meditation or divination with runes in the way that popular books on the topic suggest today. Most contemporary scholars will reject the idea that runes were used for magic at all, but that is usually because they are unfamiliar with the surviving inscriptions that clearly have magico-religious content. There are good reasons that the idea that runes could have been used for magic has fallen out of favor. I explain why that is the case in this episode, and I dig into what rune magic seems to have been about in the early period based on the available evidence. Old English rune poem - Wikipedia Stentoften Runestone - Wikipedia Vimose inscriptions - Wikipedia Svingerud Runestone - Wikipedia Vadstena bracteate - Wikipedia Abecedarium Nordmannicum - Wikipedia Ring of Pietroassa - Wikipedia Björketorp Runestone - Wikipedia Golden Horns of Gallehus - Wikipedia Gothic runic inscriptions - Wikipedia Engraving on 2,000-year-old knife thought to be oldest runes in Denmark | Archaeology | The Guardian Rock Carvings in Tanum - Wikipedia Mars Halamardus – Wikipedia (in German) | |||
| 20 Apr 2024 | Rune Magic Part 2: From the Viking Age to Contemporary Rune Magic | 01:19:44 | |
This is the second part in the two-part series on rune magic. I cover the period from c. 700 CE to the end of the medieval period, discussing various kinds of magico-religious inscriptions that archaeologists have found. I also discuss the literary evidence a bit, centering on the Eddic poem Sigrdrífumál. Although there's a lot that could be covered from the period 1600-1800, I skip that period to talk about the origin of contemporary rune magic in the late 19th century. We learn about the Austrian rune occultist Guido List and what his rune "revivalism" was all about. We also learn about some of the people he associated with and how some of them went on to influence the Nazi movement's use of runes and occultism. Finally, we learn a bit about how List's type of rune magic has become the dominant strain in contemporary rune magic. | |||
| 01 Jun 2024 | Masculinity and Viking Wolf-complexes | 01:06:47 | |
In this episode I'm talking about Viking wolves and those manly men out there who think of themselves as "wolves." We're diving into the wolf's history in the Nordic story-world and how it relates to contemporary male fantasies about individualism, rugged masculinity, and being a protector. We will be learning about honor, legal codes in Scandinavian history, habeas corpus, and why Tyler Durden in Fight Club is an irresponsible fool. | |||
| 28 Jun 2024 | Vikings on Mushrooms: A Note on Ritual Use of Psychotropics | 01:19:11 | |
In this episode I’ll take you on a trip through the historical components behind the idea that Vikings did mushrooms before battle. We will explore the context for why that claim emerged in the 1600s, when the Danish scholar Thomas Bartholin first put it out there, and why it’s the kind story that’s thoroughly a myth in the sense of something that's entirely made up. After that, I’ll offer some comments on the idea that psychotropic agents are helpful for the purpose of reaching a higher self, communing with spirit, ritual, whatever you’d like to call that connection we humans can make with the world around us. | |||
| 01 Nov 2024 | Community and sacrifice | 01:03:52 | |
In this episode I explore what it means to give something to a community, to sacrifice something, a part of yourself or something you own. It is important to know just how much to give so that you can avoid losing too much. These are the words of wisdom from Odin. I have often found myself giving too much to a community, and when what you give does not come back in some form of reciprocal acknowledgment, we get disappointed. The last four months have been incredibly busy, and I thought that it was because of my being busy that this episode kept being pushed further into the future, but not so long ago, I realized that it was in fact because I needed some important lessons about community before I could publish it. | |||
