Somewhere East of Midgard
This article later became the first chapter of my book, Tales from the Ironwood: The Spiritual Journey of a Modern-Day Heathen . The initial draft was written on 10 November 2017. It has gone through substantial editing and rewriting since that time. It is presented here to introduce my very personal adventures along the road from the Ironwood to Midgard. ********* THE IRONWOOD IS A DARK and frightening place—a forest located somewhere east of Midgard —inhabited by mythical monsters. It is the home of troll women and giantesses and wolves of tremendous stature and hunger. In the Eddas, the author of the Voluspa (The Prophecy of the Seeress) mentions the Ironwood: The giantess old in Ironwood sat, In the east, and bore the brood of Fenrir; Among these one in monster's guise Was soon to steal the sun from the sky. ( Henry Adams Bellows trans., The Poetic Edda: The Mythological Poems (New York: Dover Publications, 2004), 18. Snorri Sturluson also recounts in h