Where the Map Ends

Sep 28, 2026

The Woman Who Turns Away

A journal account of the Huldra, the hidden forest woman of Norwegian and Swedish tradition, and the herders and hunters who claimed to have loved her.

Sep 27, 2026

The Tree at the Centre of Everything

A journal entry on Yggdrasil, the vast tree of Norse cosmology, and the wells, wells-keepers and gnawing creatures said to hold the nine realms in place.

Sep 24, 2026

The Horn That Waits

A look at Gjallarhorn, the horn of Heimdallr, and the old uncertainty over whether it was ever separate from Mímir's well of wisdom.

Sep 18, 2026

What the Wolf Was Promised

A visit to the Gosforth Cross in Cumbria prompts a retelling of Fenrir's binding and the fate the Norse sources give him at Ragnarök.

Sep 17, 2026

At the Well of Urd

An account of the Norns, the three women who set the fates of gods and mortals alike at the foot of the world tree, and of how uncertain their thread-work really is in the old sources.

Sep 8, 2026

The Beast Mistaken for Land

A journal entry on the hafgufa, the vast Norse sea creature said to be so still and so large that sailors mistook its back for an island, sometimes at fatal cost.

Sep 6, 2026

A small cast pendant, shaped like a hammer with a short handle, was worn at the throat across Viking-age Scandinavia as protection against the disorder of the world. I went looking for what it actually meant to those who wore it, and found the answer was never quite settled.

Sep 5, 2026

The Worm in the Mound

A journal entry on the wyrm, the serpent-dragon of Norse and British tradition that coils through barrows, rivers and the roots of the world tree, always keeping close to buried gold.

Aug 28, 2026

Marginalia of the Deep

A journal entry tracing the sea serpent from Jörmungandr's coils around Midgard to the sightings and chart-drawings of Norwegian sailors and the naturalists who took their word seriously.

Aug 11, 2026

The Horse That Crosses Worlds

A journal entry on Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged horse, tracing his strange birth and his one recorded errand into the land of the dead.

Aug 6, 2026

The Serpent at the Chart's Edge

A journal account of Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent of Norse myth, whose coils were said to ring the inhabited world and whose shadow lingers at the margins of old sea-charts.

Aug 1, 2026

The Fire That Must Not Go Out

A journal entry on the old, near-universal duty of keeping a fire alive through the night, from the Vestal flame in Rome to the smoored peats of the Scottish Highlands.