Banshee

Solitary enjoyer of quiet, moonlight, sunshine, and air.

[Banshee @Noldonil]

Scottish actor Brian Cox reading a stanza about Thor

From J.R.R. Tolkien’s New Lay of the Volsungs

[The Aureus Press @Trad_West_Art]

"The Silence of the Forest" (Das Schweigen des Waldes), by Arnold Böcklin, 1896.

[Diomedes Appreciator @HomericFuturist]

“Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.” Glaucus, Iliad

[Bandy @bandy1803]

Moonlight in South Texas, Julian Onderdonk, 1912

[Banshee @Noldonil]

Ever remember, ruler of men,
That fortune lies in the hero's life;
A nobler man shall never live
Beneath the sun than Sigurth shall seem.

— Grípisspá, Bellows translation
Giovanni Caselli illustration:

[Banshee @Noldonil]

Jeff Jones

[Banshee @Noldonil]

Hugo Höppener
1910

[Banshee @Noldonil]

Walter Stanley Paget

[Banshee @Noldonil]

Beowulf
Illustrator: Rockwell Kent

[Banshee @Noldonil]

@WadeRog92024938 Melkor, “he who arises in might”

[Banshee @Noldonil]

The wonderful dimorphism of Frank Frazetta’s man and woman

[JDSauvage: Fabulous PRIZES Contributor @jd_sauvage]

I shot my inner puritan with a wheelock horse pistol.

[Banshee @Noldonil]

”Guard well the broken pieces of the sword. From them can be made a good sword, which will be called Gram. Our son will bear it and with it accomplish many great deeds, which will never be forgotten.”

—The Saga of the Volsungs (Jesse Byock tr)

[Banshee @Noldonil]

Sigurd Fafnesbane, 2016
oil painting by David Still

[Banshee @Noldonil]

Dragon-helm of Dor-lomin, made by Telchar

The verse is from “The Lays of Beleriand”

[Banshee @Noldonil]

Grey-gleaming steel, || with gold adorned
wrights had wrought it, || with runes graven
of might and victory, || that a magic sat there
and its wearer warded || from wound or death,
whoso bore to battle || brightly shining
dire dragon-headed || its dreadful crest.

—JRR Tolkien

[Banshee @Noldonil]

Ymir in Ginnungagap by Katharine Pyle

“Out of Ymir's flesh
was fashioned the earth,
And the ocean out of his blood;
Of his bones the hills,
of his hair the trees,
Of his skull the heavens high.”

—Poetic Edda (Bellows tr)

[Banshee @Noldonil]

“Ha! there comes he, with sweat, with blood of Romans,
And with dust of the fight all stained! O, never
Saw I Hermann so lovely!
Never such fire in his eyes!”

— Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, “Hermann and Thusnelda” 1752

[Banshee @Noldonil]

…Angantýr answered her:

Why do you hail me,
Hervör, daughter?
To your doom you are faring
filled with evil!
Mad you are now,
your mind darkened,
when with wits wandering
you wake the dead.

-Christopher Tolkien translation of Hervarar saga

Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein-Stub: