A documentary film about Finnish student, Yrjö von Grönhagen, who decides to leave University of Sorbonne and walk from Paris to Helsinki in the spring of 1935. On his way, in Germany, he meets Heinrich Himmler, who is attracted by a traditional Finnish instrument, kantele. Himmler employs Yrjö as researcher to the Ahnenerbe institute to find the Aryan roots from the runic singing culture of Finnish Carelia.
"A Second World War historical documentary, following the story of French volunteers who signed up to fight for the Axis alliance.
In a France, traumatised by such a rapid defeat, follow these youngsters in their unusual and very different journeys, which led them to volunteer for the Reich.
Through previously unreleased interviews from some of the last survivors, relive their experiences, from the defeat of France in 1940 to the Waffen SS, from Resistance to the Charlemagne Division, from the maquis to the defense of Berlin..."
Årsgång is the Swedish tradition of a solitary, night-time walk in the forest.
Picture a dark, gloomy forest on a winter’s night, silent aside from the delicate crunch of crisp snow under your feet. Imagine being alone, without technology, far enough from your village that you couldn’t hear a rooster crowing or dog barking. You’ve spent all day in darkness, avoiding eating, drinking, or socializing, and told no one of your plans.
Now it’s midnight, the only things separating you from your objective are the woods and a handful of threatening creatures who want to lead you astray.
That is, according to folklore, how some adventurous Swedes have spent the first moments of a new year.
Participating in the ritual known as årsgång, or “year walk,”, promised information about the future—if a walker followed the rules and reached the local church or graveyard. This form of divination is recorded in documents dating back to the 1600s, according to a chapter by Swedish folklorist Tommy Kuusela in the anthology Folk Belief and Traditions of the Supernatural,* but many such records refer to it as “ancient,” making it unclear exactly when Swedish people began performing the ritual.
A Swedish Christmas Card showing St Lucia in the snow.
Picture a dark, gloomy forest on a winter’s night, silent aside from the delicate crunch of crisp snow under your feet. Imagine being alone, without technology, far enough from your village that you couldn’t hear a rooster crowing or dog barking. You’ve spent all day in darkness, avoiding eating, drinking, or socializing, and told no one of your plans.
Now it’s midnight, the only things separating you from your objective are the woods and a handful of threatening creatures who want to lead you astray.
Årsgång is far from the only form of supernatural divination in Swedish folklore, but it is one of the more extensive. While rituals like circling the house three times counterclockwise with a porridge scepter before eating Christmas dinner were supposed to provide a limited glimpse of things to come, the year walker had the potential to learn not only his own fate but that of the entire village.
With greater reward, however, came greater risk.
The walk took place on New Year’s Eve or another winter holiday, when Europeans believed dark forces and supernatural beings were active and the dead mingled with the living. This let the walker tap into the prophetic power of the season, but it also meant opening oneself up to frightening encounters.
Cemeteries were particularly active. Walkers reported songs coming from open graves, dead spirits walking about, and fresh graves that did not exist before, according to Kuusela.
They could also expect to encounter frightening entities like the brook-horse (bäckahäst) and the huldra, as described in an account of årsgång added to the University of Southern California’s Digital Folklore Archives by student Cameron Steurer.
A brook-horse, from Swedish folklore.
The brook-horse, she learned from a Swedish friend, would invite children to ride on it and lengthen its back to accommodate more and more children. “When the horse felt it had enough riders, it would jump into a body of water, drowning all of its riders and taking their souls for its own,” wrote Steurer.
The huldra, on the other hand, was a beautiful, tree-like nymph. “Said to be the forest guardians, they would lure people to their homes to either marry them or kill them,” Steurer wrote. “Either way, the victim would be lost forever.”
Other creatures did all they could to distract a year walker. Talking, laughing, or being afraid was forbidden during the somber walk, and those who broke these rules sometimes sacrificed their sanity, lost an eye, had their heads distorted, or simply disappeared, according to 18th-century records of failed walks translated into English by Kuusela.
A hatch stood open, a rider appeared. A cold mist had lain upon the field. Nine black horses and nine armed men. An eye stared furiously down from a flag.
Silence fell, as the company stopped, They stopped in a circle around the stone. Silently they rode towards it, and disappear when they arrived For stones were a thought filled with power.
Stars on a sky, that never fall down. Lightning in a night that lasts forever. A thousand cold winters, with only chill and hatred. There is no summer without winter.
In an old forest, where trolls and gnomes wandered, There was a stone that moved and came to life. Nine armed men, on nine grey proud horses, Bore a flag upon which the eye appeared.
Each night is a new darkness. Each winter I freeze, And yet never shall I cry, For proud I did ride times behind
Out of the deep forest
Written for Darkthrone by Greifi Grishnackh 31/12/1993
IN A HALL WITH PORK AND MEAD
In an old ash hung a nosecold man. Under a black sky from where the rain poured down. None went thither to cut the corpse down, For no one could know whereat the hanging took place.
Lonely man he was when he went to Allfather's place, he arrived clothed in a body armour to a marvellous, grim palace. A thousand year had passed since last man went thither, They cried in a gloomy happiness when at last a son there came.
North of the trolly cape was a place of mist far down. Rows of Norse sons wandered thither north and nie. None in lack of grave and none in lack of sons, For they went by fire and pestilence there to the beds of the coldhouse.
Only few of the guardian's children came to the rich row of their father, For cunning deceit bore most of them far down. Yet one can hear the song each heathen old feast Aye! still the feasts are held among the faithful sons of Od.
Written for Darkthrone by Greifi Grishnackh 31/12/1993
Christopher Lee reads the disturbing Victorian ghost stories of writer MR James.
Horror legend Christopher Lee reads the disturbing Victorian ghost stories of writer M.R. James. A century ago, it was James's habit to read one aloud by candlelight every Christmas Eve to a select group of students in his study at King's College, Cambridge. In this collection Lee tells the chilling tales "The Stalls of Barchester", "The Ash Tree", "Number 13" and "A Warning to the Curious".
