Today I had landed in Michael Ende’s the NeverEnding Stort. I visited the THE VIKING SORCERESS exhibition at the National Museum in Copenhagen. The feeling of the first part of the exhibition was an installation that made me feel I was a character in the 1984 movie adaptation.
You get a headphone and listen to a voice of a Sorceress – the Völva- while you walk through various audiovisual installations. The sorceress talks mostly about the end of the world… but the end of the world – Ragnarok- is not the last room. It ends with a hopeful reminder.
The installation was also a reminder that the past is the presence is the future.
Unsurprisingly, plants, growing in the ashes of the Ragnarok, were the seed carriers of hope and rebirth. They were present in the room before and the room after the Ragnarok.
The Sorcerer reminded me that the End of the world(s) happens when the cycles of the (micro)seasons are broken.
When everything becomes the same (and from plastic) and we stop questioning and protecting diversity in bodies, transformation paths, places and communication ways … (hello fascism), that is when all the worlds will end.
I had to think about a book from an expert in death and victim disaster identification that I read a half year ago. She explains methods to preserve bodies, including a process which -simply explained – is making the body into plastic.
That chapter made me again think about plastic surgery, anti-aging product marketing and how some forces try to make us all look the same (which means stopping transformation of our bodies), write the same, read the same, think the same… turning us all in plastic.
This image makes me recall old myths from different worlds warning us for what happens if we want to stay the same and want everything to stay the same. If we want to stop the wheel of time … no, I want to keep transforming… and not be afraid for what comes after (tomorrow, after what humans call death…) .
While walking in Copenhagen, perhaps after seeing Pride Month advertisement, I got this thought: we are all trans, baby. We are all transforming the whole time. Nature is transforming the whole time. Gender, age, sexuality, religion… are just human ideas. Just stories to make sense of an ever changing never ending story. But not the absolute truth.
After the Ragnarok, I met a bog body. I am always fascinated by the phenomenon of bog bodies. Some years ago I encountered some in a museum in Dublin. Bog bodies are formed when human remains are submerged in peat bogs. The unique, highly specialized environment of the bog (lack of oxygen, high acidity, tannins and low temperatures) naturally “pickles” and mummifies the corpse, preventing normal decomposition.
I know that the Vikings like to be remembered after their death … but would they have been liked to be remembered in this shape? I wonder if I might end up as an exhibition item or into ash for plants. I hope the second fate. I do not want to become plastic.
After the exhibition, I walked in the shop and had some reflections about a teddy bear version of Fenrir and what I believe is a teddy bear version of Tyr’s hand. It felt wrong. We should not kawaii-fy / cute-fy all stories. We peel away a meaning from these stories. These stories are there to remember we have to sacrifice and transform … and have respect for our part in the world. Not throw a sauce of hug-ability over it. But perhaps this is some sort of Danish humor that I do not understand.
I walked a bit further in the museum shop and found then this book about a calendar… and some information that I was looking for a while (e.g. when people carry hot stones to melt ice, something I heard once and want to mention in my next fiction book Tussenzee, now I know it is 22 February).
In this book, time is represented as a wheel, yes. I bought it. In the future I might refer more to this book. Keep an eye on the EcoMythology newsletter.
Back in Denmark
I will be in Denmark for four more days. My main reason is the Rooted Festival in Aarhus, bringing together plants, people and arts: https://www.rootedfestival.com/. Perhaps see you there this weekend?
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