The Gang's All Here

an anthropomorphic mandrake being dug up with the help of a dog tied to its feet/roots

in "pseudo-antonius musa: de herba betonica", latin manuscript, late 9th century

source: Kassel, UB, 2° Ms. phys. et hist. nat. 10, fol. 34v

Velkominn, blíði vegfarandi, til Jǫtunn-Halla háva, þar sem sálir várar reika, en aldregi týnask.

Velkommen, blid vegfarende, til den høye Jotnerhallen, der hvor våre sjeler vandrer, men går aldri seg vill.

welcoming greens

The Changelings, from Cyrus Graner's Among Gnomes and Trolls 7 by John Bauer (1913)

Man with Two Rainclouds, Richard Cartwright.

(by Andrei R. Popescu)

Kehoe art

In reading direct anecdotes from people who believed in vættir, back in the 1800s, there is this sense that the vættir were already endangered before these people were born, and that the vættir are all but gone now. They speak of their grandparents' experiences, of things they saw in their childhood and stories that everyone knew about, but which took place a generation or more ago. They talk about how vættir "used to" live in that hill over there, or how the old house down the road "had" a vættr in the attic before it was torn down. It feels post-apocalyptic. Like they lived through an extinction event and are left to tell the tales of mammoths and aurochsen. The great enlightenment lit up the dark woods and farms and hills of rural communities and killed off the vættir en masse, forcing the last ones to retreat to the attics of madmen and storytellers.

1600’s anatomical engraving with alchemical symbolism /// by Gerhard Altzenbach