Moose Edda

Moose Edda is a cycle of eleven works recounting the mythologized deeds and memories of the Heathen community of the Ottawa Valley. Its people are cast into an epic world of Eddic imagery. Here, Gods move among them, the dead remain near, ravens bear thought and memory, and ordinary lives are raised into heroic remembrance. The collection was composed purely from the Skald’s memory during his yearly moose hunt, over three days from September 29 to October 1, 2025. After contributing to the harvest of a majestic bull moose, Erik witnessed the Great Moose give up its life. Deeply moved, and feeling an unnatural stirring of his spirit, he withdrew alone to a remote marsh several hours from civilization. There, without internet connectivity or outside references, he composed from memory from dawn until sundown, stopping only to wash, eat and sleep. The welling of Óðr urged him furiously onward until the end of the third day. He kept his vow to the Great Moose that nothing would later be added to the verses; only grammatical and formatting corrections were thereafter made. Soon after returning from the bush, Erik performed Bláinhjálmsdrápa at a handfasting feast, where it was well received and bore witness to his skaldcraft. Thereafter he hesitated whether the collection should ever be published, until, through unmistakable signs, the Gods urged him to do so. The collection’s governing form is Mikilelgsháttr, the “Meter of the Great Moose”—a compact, strongly cadenced verse built from short lines, repetition, inversion, kennings, epithets and formulaic speech. The individual titles—saga, kviða, spá, mál, drápa, þulr, ljóð and others—describe the character and spirit of each work rather than separate metrical systems. A saga recounts deeds, a kviða evokes the heroic lay, a spá prophecy, a drápa praise-poetry, and so forth, while the Moose-meter remains the common poetic vessel throughout. The result is ancient in inheritance yet rooted firmly in the modern Heathen landscape of the Ottawa Valley. Moose Edda is ultimately an act of near-apotheosis and paramount preservation: an attempt to make memory durable, so that the names and deeds of one small age of heroes may still be heard after those who lived them are gone. Those who possess the memory and ears to hear will surely know the events described therein. To those from far beyond, its people may instead seem like the figures of an ancient saga—half-remembered, yet fully felt.