The wait is over! The first episode of my new long-form podcast series, The Æsir–Vanir War, is now live.
Originally, I intended this to be a single episode covering the beginning of the conflict. Once I sat down to write, though, the story simply…kept flowing. The characters found their voices, the world grew larger, and before I realized it I had written far beyond what could comfortably fit into a single episode. Rather than rush through those moments—or ask listeners to sit through a several hours-long recording—I decided to let the story breathe and divide it into multiple parts.
Part 1 Introduces Gullveig and her family, follows her arrival in Ásgarðr, the growing tensions between the Æsir and the Vanir, and the events that set one of the greatest conflicts in Norse mythology into motion.
As always, this series is rooted in the surviving Old Norse sources—including the Poetic Edda, Skáldskaparmál, and Ynglinga saga—while using Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG) and informed speculation to bridge the many gaps those texts leave behind. My goal is not to rewrite the lore, but to explore one possible way these events might have unfolded while remaining true to the spirit of the surviving traditions. I took quite a few liberties in relationships as that is how they translate for me, but YMMV.
I want to be open and offer a trigger warning right here. Sometimes the stories that come through to me reflect the brutality of earlier times. The people who listened and composed these stories didn’t water them down in the retellings. Snorri’s versions were designed to maintain a specific type of talent the Icelanders possessed when it came to poetry while still keeping a Christian bent to the material. However, what gets dumped into my brain when asking how they want the story told can often be very difficult to write, let alone hear. In light of this, dear reader and listener, please be aware that this episode (and subsequent series) contains graphic descriptions of violence, war, and the deaths of both adults and children. While nothing is included for shock value alone, some listeners may find portions of this story emotionally difficult. If you have PTSD due to violence or abuse, and would still like to listen, please exercise self-care and proceed with caution in small increments throughout these particular episodes. I would not allow children under 18 to listen.
I hope you’ll join me as we begin this journey into one of the oldest and most enigmatic stories preserved in the Norse corpus. Skál!
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