I am gleefully busy!

I finally graduated from college, so I suddenly have a lot of free time on my hands and basically dove right into intense, self-directed study.

Got a snazzy little study binder and everything.

Since I have one part of Ursula Dronke’s Edda translation (I will have to dig for the other two parts, one copy is in a library in Philly so I’ll see if I can access it) I’ve decided to use it as the jumping point for my research. Dronke’s notes are incredibly thorough in explaining the cultural and mythological context of the poems. It is, predictably, really dense, but it’s great for taking notes from and I feel like I’m gaining a lot of new understanding from doing this.

I’m also learning a little bit of Old Norse in the hopes that I can someday, with further study, read and interpret the poems directly. Failing that, since Old Norse has a very flexible word order, I’ll probably try my hand at really simplistic skaldic poetry or writing rituals in Old Norse.

Old Norse also makes me really glad I’ve taken Latin and German, because Old Norse is absurdly inflective.

After I’m done working through the Eddas, I’ll be moving to the Sagas and similar books for cultural context, and studying the Rune poems and looking into magical practices like Seiðr and Galdr. I’m planning on getting ordained through The Ásatrú Community and want to make sure all my bases are covered for their direct ordination option, basically.

This has also involved grabbing as many academic commentaries on Norse mythology, and the culture and language, as I can get my little pixelated hands on. (Which has resulted in a reading list that’s nearly 300 items long. Why do I do these things to myself?)

I have also found some promising kindreds to look into and get involved in, which should also help me cover the community involvement requirement. (I’m not sure how that’s proven, and a signed spreadsheet feels outré, but I’d rather not lie about it anyway.)

This has kept me from maintaining the blog as much as I had hoped, especially considering my plan was to track my journey/progress, but there’s a few drafts ready to go that I might publish soon. Not saying “watch this space,” just that I’m not dead. Not even remotely! I feel more alive than I have in a while. Actually sleeping will do that for you.