Viking Dress in red linen, handsewn by me. Photos: by Varg ❤
2021 is going to be a strange year. I’ll be going through the rawest rituals of all; Child Birth, and my partner and I will be raising our first born child together, during a Pandemic. Though the year looks like it’s going to be spent socially distancing, we will be making the most out of it by working further on our art, both in fashion and music. We are currently in the process of writing two new albums, one for Fedrespor and one for Voluspá – And I am researching how to open a web shop – … Somehow, I feel like this baby has given me a new kind of creative spark, and my intuition has also grown stronger. The strengthening of these abilities have come with great cost, but I feel like it will be worth it in the end. After all, everything worth doing in life is hard. I remind myself of that whenever I feel like giving up or talk myself down. I hope you all remind yourselves of that too.
This Yule was spent doing a small but important Winter Solstice ritual by ourselves in the forest. We’ve just bought and moved into our first and most of the time these days is spent right here, in our nest. I’m kind of an introverted person by nature, so that’s actually fine by me, though I must say that I miss my family terribly.
These are the first pregnancy photos we’ve taken, shot right outside our door, (unfortunately without snow). I think there will be one or two more shoots before the baby’s arrival to Midgard (hopefully with snow) (:
My life changed dramatically in 2019, and 2020 hasn’t been any less strange and unusual (But that’s a story for next blog post;)
I’ve added a few videos that I think sums things up pretty well. My blog has been very quiet, and I’ve been dreading coming back simply because I didn’t know how to do it. I finally figured out how – I need to get this out there, and move onwards. Here we go:
About Hooked on The Look: I was quite nervous about joining the show – as I knew it would mean leaving all control to the editors, and I had no idea about how I would be portrayed. That being said, I am really glad I agreed to do it, because I feel like they showed me as I am- my personality in all its awkwardness shone through the screen. The cameraman was such a nice guy- I think I owe much to him, because he made me feel comfortable enough to really be myself. Also the people behind the show were a true pleasure to work with! Other than that – it has come to my attention that most people who have commented (there are over 3000 comments on youtube) have been super nice! I made the decision not to read comments on this video early on, as I know how toxic the internet can be, (Also – who has time to read that many comments?? It’s insane) but some of my friends have sent me screenshots of really nice remarks from people. I must say that this truly warms my heathen heart… I’m only human after all.
But I have to say – Like all reality shows – this interview has been edited and some of my answers have been left out/cut short. Nothing wrong with that – it is what it is. I’m just saying that some bits of it can be confusing when you don’t have the whole picture. The o.n.l.y thing that bothered me about the way it was portrayed is that how Varg and I met wasn’t explained properly. The way I answered it seemed like I was confused about my own feelings about him – and I want to set that straight. I can handle reading stupid rumors about shallow things- but I can’t have that I am not straight forward about my feelings. That’s not me. So I’ll set just that straight: Varg and I met after agreeing to collaborate musically, and I wasn’t looking for a man. That’s why I didn’t expect to fall in love. BUT once I actually met him – I felt at home looking into his eyes. Truth to be told, I am a hopeless romantic – but I had stopped believing that I would meet someone who actually understood me, I’d given up on love, so to speak.
All in all it was a really good experience, and I am glad I agreed to doing the show, mostly because I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, and that has been good to me. There is no way you can be on the internet without getting a lot of shit, and I needed to let go of my inner control freak and just let people stand for their own words. What I’m saying is that agreeing to do interviews like these come with a price – the few times I’ve fallen for temptation and read comments on youtube and facebook, I’ve learned that some people have made really fucking nasty comments and tried to spread rumors about me and Varg. How these dimwits come up with half of the shit they type – I dunno, and I’m not going to go into explaining anything that falls for its own stupidity. So folks – if you ever join the hooked on the look family – prepare yourselves for trolls. Just don’t fall for the temptation of diving into their wormholes. You’re better than that ❤ Okay… I can’t help it – I have to smack the trolls with something – I’m not a spoiled brat, everything I have I’ve worked hard for. I have a higher education, and I am a self made badass business woman. Also, I’m a clinical psychologist (must hurt to know that I have brains too). Lastly: I’ve never had surgery. You can go cry about something else now.
Another thing that happened in 2019 – We performed live at Midgardsblot. Varg was truly the missing piece in my life, both musically and as a partner. I know that meeting him changed my course in life, and allowed me to go placed that I didn’t know how to reach. About our performance on the Valhalla stage: We were not supposed to be on the main stage, as we were scheduled for the Gildehall. Midgardsblot asked us to change stages because another band could not make it. Standing on the main stage was one of the biggest accomplishments of my life, truly. I had dreamed of doing just that for years, and suddenly – there we were. Sure, I wished I could have prepared for a main stage show – with props and all. But we figured – why not say yes to this, nothing turns out the way you plan for it to either way. Being on that stage was surreal, like standing naked in a glass cage, but I enjoyed every moment of it. As I sung “Valfar” – a song I wrote about Odin – two ravens were circling above the stage. We had 1500 people watching us, some listened with skepticism but I noticed that the few skeptics stayed. And some of them even cried. Big biker men weeping as we were playing singing, what an absolute honor.
Varg actually had a very bad fever that day, but as the professional he is – he pulled through. Backup vocals is by my sister, actually. You might notice a bit of similarities in us, naturally so. This song is called Voluspá, and when I wrote it, I found inspiration in the Poetic Edda.
Varg and I made this song, and we made the music video. YES it is low budget. YES we did everything ourselves, and YES it could be SO much better if we had help. We’ll team up with a camera crew and leave it to the professionals next time for sure! But here it is, with all its flaws.
We released this song in 2020 and now we’re working on new material. I have so much more to tell you, but I’ll have to spare some for the next blog post.
All in all – Brace yourselves – I’m back, Viking Bitches!
The Borre grave mounds was perfect for shooting some viking boots pictures
I’ve wanted the Viking Jarl Boots for years, and was thrilled that Rob wanted to do a collaboration with me! The boots are handmade in thick leather and I love the unisex vibe i get from them. Wearing these badass boots makes me feel empowered and ready to stroll wherever I see fit. They’re perfect in every setting I find myself in- of course with viking clothes, on stage, between concrete walls, and in my natural habitat – the forest
The boots are from an online Viking re-enactment store called The Viking Dragon – which has a wide selection of other viking and larp items: www.thevikingdragon.com
You can get yours HERE
Vǫluspá – the early years
Ever since I was a wee, weird child – I’ve had a deeply rooted passion for creating music. The way it went down was usually in front of a piano, humming and trying to find the right chords to the melodies and lyrics that came to me. Growing up I took piano and singing lessons, and it is safe to say that I chose music over sports. I grew up in a small town called Risør, a sleepy town that I would perform in whenever I could – both in church and bars where I sung folk songs to whomever would listen. In 2007 I attended Voss Folkehøgskule and this is where I wrote a handful of songs, some of which became our first EP. I remember sitting in front of the grand piano almost every afternoon, singing to the spirits of the school, feeling both inspired and spooked out. Shortly after, I moved to Bergen to begin my studies. I hung up flyers at a local music store in hopes of finding other musicians to realize the songs. This is how I met Øystein, a musical potato and talented artist who plays the flutes and whistles as well as keys. A few years later Stefan and I met through a common friend who, at the time was playing drums for the project that would later become Voluspá. Life happened, and I moved to Oslo to continue my studies there. After many months of sporradic recording sessions and travelling back and forth across the country, we started to move out of the studio and spend longer sessions in Stefan’s home studio in the basement. This is where we started to assemble the EP, began learing how to mix things ouselves. This of course involved lot of trial and error, a lot of experimentation, and a lot of fun. Both of us were engaged in fairly busy work and/or school lives and could not afford to be working on voluspa full time, this was our weekends and as many holidays as we could fit in.
Despite plenty of “real life” set backs the EP was released in 2013. A few months later we were back in the studio recording new and old melodies and guide vocals for new material. This began a very long process leading to today. Markus, our first guitarist, is funnily enough Øystein’s cousin and that has nothing to do with how he beacme involved. Stefan kept running into Markus in his dayjob and they got to talking about music fairly often, it was only a matter of time before he was adding elements to the tracks. Many of the songs went through phases of heavy full band verisons, stripped down acoustic versions and everything inbetween before finding what we felt was right for each of the songs. Since we weren’t a full band at the time, a lot of the work relied on finding guest musicians who (most of which) would eventually become a part of the band.
One day, I was contacted out of the blue by another future member. Gøran sent me an email, complimenting us on the EP and we kept in touch and ended up meeting up at a concert. It came up that Gøran played an assortment of folk instruments, and had an idea that he might be able to lend something to the new material we were working on. In true Vǫluspá style, we took him into the studio for some improvasational work, some of which layed the basis for the feel and atmosphere in Trollbunden.
Work and higher education across the entire band made it tricky to get anything finished. We were at that awkward stage where you are always waiting for someone, or something and there is always a struggle to find suitable dates. In this process we continued to change up the song’s arrangements, instrumentation and so on but we were starting to feel like we had found the right vibe for most of them.
One of the latest additions to the projects was our drummer, Eirik, who had played with Markus in the past. Most of the songs had been composed based on programmed rythms and or click tracks and he was one of the last people to add his touch to the album. Due to only having 1 day in the studio and little time for preparation Eirik had to improvise on the spot and we did not get to record drums for the song Trollbunden.
One big thing we learned on the way that working this way around is probably not the best way to make an album, it has resulted in a lot of rerecording and a lot of extra time in the studio. None of us had ever done this before, all we knew was that we didn’t have money to do it the old-fashioned way so we had to think on our feet and learn underway.
In mid 2017 Stefan moved across the country in order to study, and for the first time him and I lived a stone’s throw away from each other. Wanting to make some progress with the album we decided to begin mixing and adding a few last details in the newly created home studio. Being forced to just work with what we had and only do minor additional recordings somewhat accidentally gave us a push to finish the album. No more back and forth, just out and onwards!
We are now in the process of rehearsing together as a band, ready to take the stage in 2019. We’re also toying with new song ideas for the first time as an actual band. We hope you think that the album was worth the wait, we have learned an incredible amount regarding what to do and what not to do, when it comes to the writing- recording- and post production phases. We hope that these newfound skills will streamline the process a bit, and we look forward to getting more input from the other band members when writing new material. All of us are driven by love and passion for creating music, we just can’t help but doing this.
Where to find our music: itunes:https://itunes.apple.com/no/album/trollbunden/1450955025?l=nb Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/04sNuGpenIU7aYWLTycRN7?si=Pvzn0zYESqys3O1iR9stBQ Also available on Google Play, Tidal, Youtube Music & Deezer (Search for Vǫluspá – Trollbunden)
Music is one of my greatest passions, and I am in an underground folk band called Vǫluspá. Remember I said that I had something to reveal? I will keep it short and sweet, so – this is it:The scheduled release date for our upcoming album is January 31st! Our distributor has warned us about possible delays due to technical issues creating a backlog. Fingers crossed that everything will be okay!
I am beyond excited to share our work with you! Will keep you posted the coming days, both here and on instagram (@thevikingqueen / @voluspaband)
Hello! I’ve been away for too long, I know. The last semester of my studies required a lot of work and I needed to prioritize that. Glad I did, because I learned so much and I got good results too! Been yearning for more creativity in my life and I believe now is the time for it.
So, what’s up?
Finished my studies in December, feel vey humble and proud at the same time. Blood, sweat and tears for 6 years = Cand.psychol.
I’ve started sewing again. Got so many meters of fabric just waiting to be turned into viking creations. Started with this apron dress, that is based on the Oseberg find.
On New Years Eve I started planning upping my game here. (FINALLY, I know. Believe me it’s been in my mind a lot). Since then I’ve been photographing content that I will share on here.
This monday I will reveal something here on my website that I have been aching to tell you about! It’s related to music, I can tell you that much;)
Got a few collaborations coming up that I am very excited to reveal as well.
Other than that, I’ve spent much needed time with family and kept myself busy working out and preparing for the future. Everyday life happens.
Dear readers: Hope everything is going great for you.
Thanks for sticking around, it truly means a lot! Please tag along, I will make it worthwhile.
There is this thing on instagram where one can ask one’s followers to answer a poll. I wondered whether you would like some derpy pictures from Midgardsblot, and 98% of you did.. so here you go! I thought I took hundreds of pictures of really cool things, but after coming home I realized that I got so caught up in the festivities that I forgot to bring my camera to several of the concerts…. Instead, I had loads of these glorious bits photos….. Enjoy.
The plastic tent camp is a lot of fun. I really dig this lazybag.
At my happiest and laziest.
On our way to the festival area, I forced my partner to take many pictures of me in front of a tree. I stroke several badass poses…but they all turned out useless due to poor photo quality (stil don’t know why). My hair was on point so that kinda sucked. This is what a fail photoshoot looks like.
….Oh well who cares. I was silly happy, just look at that stupid smile.
Mandatory cheesy festival picture time
So is getting tattooed. Yes, that happened.
Luckily, I was in good hands. I mean, who wouldn’t trust this man? Look. at. his. face. (Also – the chain for my necklace broke during some random headbanging, and I had to use a hair tie to hold it together. Some kind of duck tape fixes everything solution….Ugly but silver saving.
I wasn’t drunk when I decided to do this, I was just ready for a change. The design is something I’ve had in mind since last Midgardsblot, and Sean Parry is talented and pretty goddamn cool. I’ll show off my first tattoo on a later occasion.
All in all it was a pretty good festival. I had a blast and forgot about my worries for a while. Right now, I am working hard on my master thesis and my worries are back. Hahaha…. Oh well, that’s life right now.Sól, The Viking Queen
Midgardsblot Metal Festival was fantastic, as always. I saw Garmarna and Dimmu Borgir and those are amongst my top ten favourite bands. The latter almost cost me my voice, sorry not sorry to those of you standing next to me during that concert. I met so many interesting, talented and kind hearted people, and I laughed more than I have done in months… Post festival blues are inevitable, wish the festival lasted a whole week. More photos to come!
This summer hit us northerners hard with its’ immense and unusual warmth. Borrekaupangen was filled with sweaty and drowsy vikings, and I felt a bit lightheaded myself. I wondered if it was ever this warm during the Viking Age, remembering a gist of something I read somewhere. As I strolled through the marketplace I though of what it was really like back then, in every way. There are so many questions and so few answers… The thought of living to see felt both stressful and calming at the same time. The more I thought of it, the weirder it got until I just had to lay it aside and do something grounding and physical, like squeezing my boyfriend’s hand (“hey, we’re here, right now”). You see, I can easily get tangled up in thought experiments, backtracking and overthinking. On one hand it feeds my creative processes, but if I feed it too much energy, it kills them. All of us have creation and destruction forces within us – order and chaos is completely normal, but normal is utterly surreal. Life is so strange and at times it feels as if everything is moving in circles. This train of thought came and went as I greeted friends at the marked and picked up shiny object to behold. So…what was it like during the Viking Age? We won’t know for sure, but somehow, I feel sure of this- There’s nothing new under the sun. The human race is not that innovative and my reoccurring thoughts are not that original, in any way. So…What is the moral of my random common sense life lesson? I hope the archeologists dig up more viking graves that will make us ask more questions. I want to know more, and I am sure you do too.
My hair was on point so that kinda sucked. This is what a fail photoshoot looks like. 
TheVikingQueen 