Is there a better exit speech in the history of cinema? I've seen things you people wouldn't believe; starships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've seen C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All these moments will be lost in

The Norse legends as told in the Poetic Edda rely a lot on dreams, especially the wonderful Völuspá and quite literally in Baldrs draumar. After Ragnarök there is a chessboard on the green grass and Níðhöggr the dragon appears overhead, bearing corpses in his wings, and then the Völva emerges

Sweden’s most famous painting, Carl Larsson’s Midvinterblot (1915), created controversy by celebrating the sacrifice of a pagan Swedish king who died to save his people – an explicit act of seiðr. Its power, of course, was that it reminded everyone that Christ’s death was a sacrifice, echoing the

Dragons reflect early speculation about what hybrid species might look like. They were reptiles associated with earth and water, yet they could fly like birds, emit fire and their blood had magical properties. Now humans, having once experimented with whole organ transplants from other mammals (pigs, baboons), are seeking ways

Are you superior to animals? To insects? To viruses? If you consider such questions frivolous, you are in good company - most Western philosophers and religious thinkers have thought so too. Michel de Montaigne thought differently: “When I am playing with my cat,” he asked, “how do I know she

Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (1867) is a satire on Norwegians, because lurking deep within the national character is the desire to be a troll, or so we are led to believe. Ibsen chose to be a troll in Italy and Germany for decades while thinking of respectable Norwegian society

Ragnarök is Revelation and Genesis. Both have a god of thunder and a giant dragon who opposes him, but Revelation suffers from a mix of numerology and astrology and it has nothing to do with science. It’s very personal, subjective, the view of one man. That said, I'

Seiðr was magic associated with women in pre-Christian Scandinavia. In the Norse myths the dwarves and elves understood it, as did the hero Sigurd after he killed the dragon Fafnir and bathed in its blood, and so too did the goddess Freyja. It involved trances and prophecy and the potential

The Bifröst Bridge is the way to Asgard in the Viking stories. The god Heimdall who waits there is the guardian. He can hear the grass growing and leaves falling from Yggdrasil, he can see to the end of the world and he never sleeps. Or, it's the

The most striking thing about the Norse and Germanic goddesses is that they disappeared for a millennium, from the onset of the Christian era until the late 20th century. Why do they appear so infrequently in European art and literature, when there are so many paintings of Aphrodite and Venus

How do we create life from inanimate matter? We can't. But, medieval Jewish alchemists and Kabbalists thought it might be possible.  The Golem has had an illustrious history ever since, well, the mid-19th century. Most of his history before that appears to be projections back in time -

The thunderous hooves of Washington Irving's Headless Horseman recalls Odin and Thor bowling with the heads of the dead as they rolled across the night sky. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) is based on a German folktale. Irving wasn't of German or Dutch descent but

In the Viking legends the Kingdom of the Dead, the Underworld, was not described in any detail before it was Christianized by the Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241). Whether it was across a bridge or in a cave or on a hill or through the air, it

Should you read The Poetic Edda, the original source for all the great Norse myths, in order to understand them? Not really, other than to satisfy yourself that ancient Norse poetry is three bridges too far: old, foreign and metaphorical. The Poetic Edda (I have the Lee M. Hollander translation)

The Baltic, German and Slavic gods resemble the Norse pantheon. Totems can be found everywhere dotted around the countryside and in the architecture. A pagan undercurrent flows through the area’s history. It is neatly captured in the sculpted head of a woman which appears on a Jugenstil (German Art

Claude Lévi-Strauss' masterpiece Tristes Tropiques was published in 1955. In it he poses the essential dilemma of any anthropologist or historian and, of course, any scientist too: Either I can be like some traveler of the olden days, who was faced with a stupendous spectacle, all, or almost all,

The Valkyries ("choosers of the slain") were the black warrior angels who appeared to the dying - as wraiths who would carry them away, usually after battle. It must have been both a fearsome and comforting image if you lay dying far from home, which is why the

The Web of Wyrd is a metaphor for fate and destiny derived from women's spinning. As the individual fibers turn round the spindle, or are woven together as the warp and the woof, by the Norns at the foot of Yggdrasil, they become the thread of our lives,