Ben Hellman
Fright Club: On the Equality of Monsterkind
“It’s no use, dear boy. The shadmocks aren’t going away. We have to learn to live with them.” My impression of how the fictional world of...
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Ben Hellman
- Oct 31, 2021
Her Undying Love; Gothic Viking Zombie Mayhem
Hild, unable to bear the deaths of her lover and father, raises their bodies with the bodies of their warriors, leading to an endless...
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Ben Hellman
- Sep 19, 2021
Teaching Gluskabe: Wrestling with American Values
Gluskabe turning man into a cedar tree. Scraping on birchbark by Tomah Joseph 1884. (Image from Wikipedia). I never read a piece of...
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Ben Hellman
- Sep 6, 2021
Timely Lessons from the Land of the Coming of the Light
Just before dawn, Rockport, Maine August 26 (photo by author). The Native tribes of New England formed the Wabanaki Confederacy....
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Ben Hellman
- Jul 14, 2021
Summer has Come; A Folklorist’s Notebook
A summer hare enjoying clover in my yard in southern New Hampshire. (Photo by author.) Summer has been here for a couple of weeks now and...
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Ben Hellman
- Jun 28, 2021
Into the Mouth of American Kitsch: Wisconsin’s House on the Rock
The author contemplating another round of phantasmagorical excess at the House on the Rock, Spring Green, Wisconsin. Photo by Rachel...
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Ben Hellman
- Jun 1, 2021
Sons of Earth and Fire; The Strange Case of the Narts’ Metallic Men
Batraz blasts down from the heavens, landing in the hearth of the Narts, the force of it burying him to his thighs, by artist Andrew...
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Ben Hellman
- May 9, 2021
Too Much of a Good Thing; Epic Burnout in the Jangar Cycle
Too much of a good thing isn't always fabulous. A hero of Jangar drinks a bowl of wine it would take sixty men to lift, a common...
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Ben Hellman
- Apr 24, 2021
Beyond Beowulf: Curses, Shapechangers, and Doomed Love
The Saga of King Hrólf Kraki features two warriors, man and son, who fight as bears. The father is cursed to roam as a bear by day. The...
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Ben Hellman
- Apr 11, 2021
To Catch a Catoblepas by the Tail
Detail of Sludge, the Catoblepas, a wall-mounted sculpture by author, paper mache and mixed media, inspired by an illustration by David...
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Ben Hellman
- Mar 29, 2021
Stealing Fire: John Colarusso and the Tales of the Narts
A fountain in Vladikavkaz, Russia with the Nart Sosruquo, dancing on the edge of a magic bowl. (Image courtesy Lhiten Hatko.) A range of...
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Ben Hellman
- Mar 7, 2021
One Sad Woman; Reclaiming Hildeburh’s Tale from her Men
“The lady lamented, sorrowed with songs...the greatest fire of the slain, roared before the mound” (Beowulf, 1117-1120; Benjamin Slade...
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Ben Hellman
- Feb 18, 2021
Look to the Light; A Folklorist’s Notebook for February
Dawn in southern New Hampshire, the first week of February. The light is returning. Every day the afternoon seems to last longer and...
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Ben Hellman
- Jan 25, 2021
Toying with Ancient Stories; Uncovering the Tales of the Old English Poem “Widsith”
Danish King Hrothgar with his nephew Hrothulf, cutting down the Heathobards as Heorot Hall burns, following the failed wedding union...
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Ben Hellman
- Jan 12, 2021
Beauty in the Beast: Photographer Charles Fréger and the Wilder Men
A winter festival performer from Christiansand, Norway, playing a Julebukk, a figure who goes door to door between Christmas and New...
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Ben Hellman
- Dec 24, 2020
The Farmer from the Barrow: an Unusual Christmas Story
My Christmas eve recording of the traditional Norwegian Christmas carol "Haugebonden." A farmer and a gnome meet on a cold evening on...
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Ben Hellman
- Dec 8, 2020
Seldom Told Tales; Unraveling Viktor Rydberg’s Norse Mythos
Freya and Svipdag, by the illustrator John Bauer. This is one of several stories I had never read about before reading Viktor Rydberg's...
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Ben Hellman
- Nov 23, 2020
Discovering the Dawnland
The Abenaki's Promethean Gluscabe, outside the Millbrook Heritage Centre in Nova Scotia, Canada, part of the ancient lands stretching as...
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Ben Hellman
- Oct 27, 2020
Dracula Revisited: On my long-ago journey to Romania
My original article, published in the Eagle Tribune about my search for the historical Dracula, and the author, twenty years ago this...
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Ben Hellman
- Oct 22, 2020
A Roundup of Mythology News; Folklorist's Notebook
An avenging Medusa, Abenaki Folklore, a new Beowulf, a fascinating take on Norse Mythos, and the 2020 winner of the Nobel Prize for...
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