My name is Calogero Nicosia. I am Belgian, I have no Norse ancestry, no university degree in Old Norse studies, and no institution behind me. What I have is twenty years of following this subject, one rule I do not break, and a habit of saying so when I do not know something.

This page exists because a site that asks you to trust its sources owes you the same courtesy about itself.

Where this started

A documentary, more than twenty years ago. I do not remember which one, and I have stopped pretending I do. What I remember is the effect: a world that was clearly not a fairy tale, with gods who lost, wolves that ate the sun, and an ending everybody involved already knew was coming. It did not feel like a story invented to comfort anyone.

That interest never went away, and it deepened by stages. First the myths as stories. Then the Eddas themselves. Then the commentaries, then the archaeological reports, then the arguments between scholars, which turned out to be the most interesting part of all. Twenty years is not a qualification. It is just long enough to have watched several confident certainties fall apart.

Mythic Harmonies itself is more recent. The site has been running for a little over a year. The idea behind it is much older, and it came from frustration rather than ambition. Every time I looked for something on Norse mythology online, I found the same three things: Marvel, fantasy, or a shop trying to sell me a pendant. The Eddas deserved better, and nobody seemed to be doing it.

What I actually do here

The research and the writing

Every guide on this site is written by me, starting from the primary sources and checked against modern scholarship. Nothing is published until I can point at where each claim comes from. Where the sources contradict each other, both versions go in. Where a popular claim turns out to have no basis, it gets named as modern rather than quietly repeated.

That last habit is the reason the site exists. It is also why some articles run longer than they otherwise would, because saying “we do not know, and here is why” takes more words than saying “the Vikings believed”.

The music

I write every lyric and compose and direct each track. I am not a formally trained musician: everything I know about the tagelharpa, modal harmony, and what a lur horn can and cannot do, I learned the same way I learned everything else here, by reading and by trying.

The lyrics are mine. I draft them in a modern language, then adapt them into a stylised Nordic register informed by Old Norse sources. I check the vocabulary against dictionaries and published texts, and distinguish literal translation from singable adaptation.

Old Norse has no living native speakers, so composing new lyrics in it inevitably involves reconstruction and interpretation. Each track begins with a human-sung vocal source that I record. Modern production tools then assist with rhythmic transformation and arrangement; I compare, reject, revise, and select the results. Isabelle Depasse is credited as co-producer. The research, lyrics, creative direction, and final responsibility remain mine.

Everything else

I also run the site, edit the images, handle the technical side, build the rune oracle, answer the messages, and do my own accounting. Before Mythic Harmonies I ran a French-language site on personal finance, which taught me how to research a subject I had no formal training in and how to write about it without claiming authority I did not have. Same method, different century.

The rule

One rule governs everything published here, and it is the only one that matters.

In practice, that means:

• A comic is not a source. A film is not a source. A video game is not a source.
• Where the Eddas disagree, both readings are shown rather than merged into one tidy version.
• Claims that come from Snorri Sturluson, writing two centuries after the conversion, are attributed to Snorri rather than to “the Vikings”.
• Modern interpretations are labelled modern, including the ones I find convincing.
• Reversed runes, the sword in the dying hand, the burning ship pushed out to sea: named as later additions, with what the sources actually say beside them.
• When a reader shows me I got something wrong, the article is corrected in the open, not quietly edited.

None of this makes the site authoritative. It makes it checkable, which is a more useful thing for you to have.

What I read

These are the editions and works I return to. Listing them is not name-dropping: it lets you check what I have written against what they actually say.

For the runes specifically, the three rune poems, Old English, Old Norwegian and Old Icelandic, do most of the work. None of them describes the Elder Futhark, which is the kind of detail this site exists to point out.

What I am not

What I am is someone who has read the sources carefully for a long time, who checks before publishing, and who tells you where the checking stops. If that is not enough for a given question, the bibliography above will take you further than I can, and it should.

Corrections

If something on this site is wrong, I want to know. Point to the passage and, where you can, to the source that contradicts it. Corrections are made to the article itself, and the article says what changed.

Write to me through the contact page. Every message reaches me directly. There is nobody else here.

Elsewhere