Songs of Holy Darkness | Valkyrie Poetics | Swan Saga | Völsung Saga Translation

By The Light Of The Axe is the project of various texts. It is inspired by Hélène Cixous‘ 3 Steps in the Ladder of writing. These texts evolved out of a critique of western heroics in “The Archive”, and its lack of female/feminine warriorship. The existence of Amazons, Nordic shield-women, Japanese onna-musha, Dahomey mino, and others around the world, has been denied, challenged, obscured, or ignored by archeologists since the foundation of this discipline. Since then, new technology conducting genetic tests has revealed that these women did, in fact, exist. The most astonishing proof has been that of the Birka Warrior (2017), whose DNA & more thorough forensics reveals that she was a tested and honored leader of Norse warriors. Her grave is the most complete of any other exhumed warrior burial. By The Light Of The Axe is dedicated to my lineage as a woman, a warrior, a poet, a shadow-worker.

Valkyrie Poetics

Talk delivered in 2021 to the Heathen Women United Conference examining the Valkyrie as metaphor for eco-feminism. A revised version was printed in 2022 as part of The Wisdom Body Collective’s work-in-progress series. Available in print and digital download Purchase here.

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Brynhildyr’s Rune poem

7 stanzas translated from the Völsung Saga (Old Icelandic); 2016. Hand set on tracing paper, gold ink, white cotton paper backing. Printed by the author in the Harry Smith Print Shop.

Songs of Holy Darkness

Contemporary poetry collection utilizing eddaic themes, Nordic animist philosophy, and ancestral regeneration. Image taken at monthly reading Punketry (the profane math of punk + poetry), Mutiny Information Cafe. Listen to an excerpt from “Völva Spell”

Swan’s Saga

Mythobiography. Reflections on lineages of heredity, war, twinness, matriarchy, agape, erotics. Photo taken by Fiona Small.