Joseph S. Hopkins is an American writer, editor, and researcher. Hyldyr’s founder, Hopkins operates Mimisbrunnr.info, a resource that developed out of a reading group at the University of Georgia's Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, and edits the University of Helsinki’s RMN Newsletter.
In 1841, German historian Georg Waitz was leafing through a series of manuscripts in what is now Merseburg, Germany. There he discovered what would seen be known as some of the most important items in ancient Germanic studies: two brief pieces of Old High German alliterative verse, a traditional variety of poetry associated with speakers of ancient Germanic languages from at least the early 400s.
More referenced than ever in today’s popular culture, the Viking Age was a complex and vibrant period of history that left behind an incredibly lush landscape of imagery and literature. Yet navigating this material can be complex and difficult.
Vibrantly animistic and remarkably hypnotic, Nigon Wyrta Galdor—the so-called Nine Herbs Charm—is an Old English healing galdor that invokes nine personified plants and the pagan god Woden to defeat a serpent before exploding in a psychedelic climax.
