Brute Norse Podcast

Vineyards and wheat fields forever! In this episode Eirik takes a long, hard look at the belief in supernatural isles in Northern Europe. Our fantastic odyssey begins with the Norse discovery of America and its peculiar ties to scholarly hearsay in the Middle Ages, before we go on to address the rampant abundance of vanishing isles along the Scandinavian coast. Other more or less tackled subjects include: Minimally counterintuitive concepts, order from chaos 101, imperialist pigs and pyromaniac expansionism, the counter-factual Vinland wine industry, how to terrorize the huldufolk with every day objects, layered oceans, and much, much more. Musical contribution: Sjóraust IV by Richard Moult.

In the conclusion to our wetland venture, Aksel and Eirik take an up close and personal look at some of our favorite bog bodies. We go knee deep Roman and Migration Era weapon sacrifices, and dive into bog butter, bog milk, and bog cheese, exploring the wonders of ancient refrigeration and self-tanning (turning your face into shoe-leather).

Eirik and Aksel begin their journey into the bogs of Northern Europe. They look at water symbolism in Norse mythology and burial rites, the emergence of water depositions in the Mesolithic though the Bronze Age, and mentally prepare for the gim reality of Iron Age human sacrifice.

In this episode we are joined by Wulfheodenas founding member, archaeologist/cage fighter Dieter Huggins. Beyond him spouting wisdom from his life on the forefront of living history, here are some of the things you'll find in this veritable smörgåsbord of an interview: - The current state of Dark Age living history. - Funerary pageantry among early Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons. - The regulation of violence past and present, from warbands to the UFC, and the ambivalence of the warrior ethos. - Fair doses of camp life nostalgia.

In the final segment of the Chronologies of Ancient Scandinavia, Eirik and Aksel tackle the slippery slope of commodification of viking heritage, its uses and abuses. Can our admiration for our thieving, hyperviolent ancestors be morally justified? Let's find out!

In this part, Aksel and Eirik get into the actual timeline of Scandinavian prehistory with an emphasis on the Bronze and Iron Ages, including the Viking Age. We talk about the materiality of these periods, the language, and regional variation, before we segway drunkenly into our own snobbery.

Aksel joins the podcast once again to help unravel the dense issue of Scandinavian chronology. We start off softly with a primer on the origin and development of the ages themselves, from the Greek concept of the Golden Age, to the timeline of modern archaeology, before we get into how the Norsemen developed their own system of ages based on surprisingly scientific criteria.

The giants called: They want their primeval chaos back! This episode features a cosmic horror reimagining of the Norse myth of creation, adapted from my essay "The Trollish Theory of Art: a scandifuturist art creation myth", published in the recent darkness-edition of Scandinavian Kunstforum. Afterwards, I give a quick overview of Norse poetic morbidity, and pitch a few thoughts on how a philosophy based on Nordic folklore and mythology could inform our perception of traditional and modern art.

In this surprise Halloween special, we take a look at the strange and trippy story of the Oseberg ship, and of how a Brooklyn clairvoyant may have caused the discovery of the world's most extravagant Viking Age burial.

In this episode, archaeologist Aksel Klausen takes us deeper into the dark woods of Germania Libera. We take a look at Germanic, Hunnic, and Roman identity, and see how some kingdoms looked to the Romans - or the gods - to legitimize their power. On the way, we also find the time to consider Germanic animal ornament as an expression of surrealist art, and runes and writing in a non-written, storytelling culture.

Prehistorian Aksel Klausen joins the Brute Norse Podcast to swill wine and chat about ring symbolism, weapon sacrifice, kingship, and the emergence of the ancient Germanic warrior elites. This is the first part of a two-part interview.

The Germanic tribes are often credited with the destruction of the Western Roman Empire. There are no Roman roads in Scandinavia, still the empire resonated in the cultural memory of the Vikings. From Teutoburger Wald to the Taliban, Brute Norse joins forces with Krister Vasshus, PhD student in onomastic sciences at the University of Bergen, to discuss just how far the Roman shadow fell beyond its Northern border.

In this first episode I had a talk with Leszek Gardeła, assistant professor of archaeology at the University of Rzeszów, Poland, about the ambiguity of magic, morbid viking burials, and the ethics of studying the dead. Music by Eirik Storesund and KB Hus.