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Magical Recipes- An Online course: Food, Potion, and Power in Old Norse & Folk Magic – Lena Heide Brennand – Zoom

Magical Recipes- An Online course: Food, Potion, and Power in Old Norse & Folk Magic

This one-night, fully practical online workshop is about making two complete, historically grounded Viking recipes from start to finish: a Viking herbal honey bread and a traditional-style Viking mead, prepared live in your own kitchen using simple, accessible ingredients.

By the end of the evening, every participant will have baked a finished loaf of herbal honey bread and begun a real mead preparation that continues fermenting after the session, alongside a clear understanding of why bread, honey, herbs, fermentation, and time were understood as powerful and magical in the Norse and Northern folk world.

In Viking and folk tradition, magic was not abstract. It was kneaded, brewed, heated, tasted, shared, and remembered. Bread and mead sat at the heart of both daily survival and ritual life, carrying meanings of hospitality, protection, abundance, oath-making, and community. Fermentation itself was understood as a living process, something that transformed sweetness into strength through patience and care.

During the session, participants will be guided step by step through the preparation of a historically inspired, kitchen-safe Viking herbal honey bread, using grain, honey, and simple herbs rooted in Northern tradition. Alongside this, participants will learn how to prepare a traditional-style Viking mead using honey, water, and yeast, following principles drawn from historical and archaeological evidence rather than modern commercial recipes. The bread will be fully prepared and baked during the live session, while the mead will be mixed, activated, and set aside to ferment at home.

Alongside the practical cooking and brewing, the workshop explores how these recipes functioned as ritual technologies. Participants will learn how intention was built through timing, repetition, touch, and attention; why kneading, stirring, heating, and spoken words mattered; the symbolic and practical roles of honey, grain, herbs, water, and fermentation; and how food and drink moved fluidly between nourishment, medicine, celebration, and ritual power. The session also addresses how to adapt these techniques responsibly for modern kitchens while respecting historical reality.

All ingredients are non-toxic, food-safe, and easily sourced from ordinary supermarkets. Ingredient lists and clear instructions will be provided in advance.

The workshop is designed as an intimate, hands-on experience. Participants are encouraged to bake and brew along on camera, ask questions, and share their process, though cameras remain optional. No prior baking, brewing, or magical experience is required.

Places are strictly limited to preserve a practical, interactive, and genuinely communal atmosphere.

Come knead. Come brew. Come taste the old magic.

You will leave with warm bread, living mead in the making, and a deeper understanding of how magic once lived in the hearth and the cup.

Participant Preparation

During the Workshop

The bread will be fully prepared and baked live

The mead will be mixed, activated, and set aside to ferment

Fermentation continues at home after the session

Important Notes

No prior baking or brewing experience required

Instructor Bio

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

This is a participation workshop only, if you are unable to attend please request a refund as this course will not be recorded

The Philosophers’ Stone Is Real: How Chemistry Shaped Alchemical Allegory – Sergei Zotov – Zoom

The Philosophers’ Stone Is Real: How Chemistry Shaped Alchemical Allegory

Early modern alchemists did not invent their imagery in a vacuum. It emerged from engagement with real chemical and metallurgical processes observed in laboratories. This lecture explores how such processes generated the weird and often disturbing allegorical language of alchemy: hybrid bodies, hermaphrodites, cannibalistic kings, green lions, and Christ-eagles. I argue that these strange images often functioned as visual models for thinking about matter, transformation, and causality before the modern chemical theory of elements.

Drawing on illustrated alchemical manuscripts and albums from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, the talk shows how allegory became a practical cognitive tool — a way to stabilise, remember, and communicate experimental knowledge in a world without standardised chemical notation.

Speaker Bio:

Sergei Zotov is a historian of science and visual culture specialising in alchemy, magic, and iconography in medieval and early modern Europe (c. 1400–1800). He received his doctorate from the University of Warwick and is currently an Associate Fellow at the Warburg Institute (University of London). His research has been supported by major international fellowships held in Baltimore, Glasgow, Berlin, Gotha, Wolfenbüttel, and Überlingen, and has involved extensive archival work across more than 100 collections worldwide. Sergei has published in leading journals, including Nuncius and the British Journal for the History of Science, and is the author of five books on early modern iconography, two of which have received prestigious prizes and others shortlisted for major awards.

Curated & Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Dwell with Osiris – Death and Rebirth in Ancient Egypt – Dr Chris Naunton – Zoom

Dwell with Osiris- Death and Rebirth in Ancient Egypt

What happens when you die?

The ancient Egyptians developed a rich and complex set of beliefs about death, the afterlife, and the journey beyond the horizon. Among the most vivid and influential of these is the Amduat — an Egyptian term meaning “That Which Is in the Netherworld.”

The Duat was the hidden, underground realm through which the sun god travelled each night, dying with the setting sun and being reborn at dawn. This nocturnal journey was not his alone. It was also the path taken by the spirit of the king, who hoped to dwell eternally within the Amduat alongside Osiris, the mythic first king — and yet also to emerge renewed, transformed, and reborn into a perfected next life.

This lecture follows that perilous passage: through darkness and transformation, danger and renewal, as we trace one of humanity’s earliest and most compelling maps of death, rebirth, and cosmic order.

Speaker Bio:

Dr Chris Naunton is a British Egyptologist, author, and public historian, widely respected for his ability to bring the beliefs, texts, and lived realities of ancient Egypt vividly to life. He holds a PhD in Egyptology and is particularly known for his work on Egyptian religion, funerary literature, and conceptions of the afterlife, including the Amduat, Book of the Dead, and related underworld texts.

He has served as Director of the Egypt Exploration Society, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious Egyptological organisations, and has been closely involved with research, fieldwork, and scholarly outreach connected to major collections such as those of the British Museum. Alongside his academic work, Naunton is a prolific communicator, appearing frequently in documentaries, lectures, podcasts, and radio programmes, where he bridges rigorous scholarship with compelling storytelling.

Naunton is the author of several acclaimed books, including Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt and The Story of Egypt, which combine archaeology, history, and cultural analysis to explore how ancient Egyptians understood their world — and how we continue to interpret it today. His lectures are known for their clarity, depth, and narrative power, guiding audiences through complex religious ideas while remaining firmly grounded in historical evidence.

With a rare talent for making ancient texts feel urgent, strange, and profoundly human, Dr Chris Naunton is one of the leading contemporary voices interpreting Egypt’s gods, dead, and eternal landscapes for modern audiences.

Curated & Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Haunted Waters: River Spirits, Drowned Ghosts & Water-Witches – Lena Heide Brennand – Zoom

Haunted Waters: River Spirits, Drowned Ghosts & Water-Witches

Where something ancient watches from beneath the surface—hungry, patient, and older than the land itself.

In every culture on earth, water is a threshold—a mirror, a mouth, a silent witness—and often, a predator. This immersive lecture journeys through the world’s most haunting aquatic folklore, from the still pools of rural China where drowned maidens rise for revenge, to the river-goddesses of West and Central Africa who demand offerings, to Japan’s kappa lurking beneath bridges with a child’s laugh and a demon’s appetite.

Meet the Slavic Rusalka whose beauty kills; the Nøkken of Scandinavia who sings travellers to their deaths; the storm-witches of the Baltic who can raise waves with a whisper; and the restless river-ghosts of Eastern Europe and East Asia, forever tied to the waters that claimed them.

Drawing on global folklore, mythic ecology, and the anthropology of water-spirits, we reveal why lakes, rivers, wells, estuaries, and shorelines are universally feared as borders between worlds. Discover the ritual offerings once cast into sacred springs, the ceremonies performed to calm offended rivers, and the bone-deep belief that the drowned do not sleep—they linger.

A night of mythology, terror, beauty, and the uncanny pull of the deep: a lecture on the ancient, living waters that have shaped human imagination for thousands of years

Speaker Bio:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Ossian 2: James Macpherson’s Epic Journey – Dòmhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart – Zoom

Ossian 2: James Macpherson’s Epic Journey

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the landscape of Scotland and the way of life of its inhabitants were changing fast, under the influence of the Enlightenment and the ingenious innovators of the Agricultural Revolution. In thinking about and trying to understand these changes, contemporary Scots turned to accounts from other lands, and accounts from history, in the hope that these comparisons might tell them about themselves and where they stood.

Lowland thinkers also looked at their neighbours in the Highlands. Some of them at least viewed the Scottish Gaels who lived there as ‘contemporary ancestors’, the original Scots, supposedly still living in a patriarchal, primitive, semi-barbarian clan-based society. But how to find out more about the mysteries of their history?

In 1760 the literary nation was electrified by the claims of a twenty-four-year-old from Badenoch in the eastern Highlands: that in his native Gaelic oral tradition he had collected fragments of an epic dating back one and a half millennia. Over the next three years James Macpherson would publish what he claimed were authentic prose translations of these ancient poems, telling of fierce, heroic battles fought by Highland warriors in a gloomy, sublime landscape. But Macpherson’s characters, women as well as men, were strangely contemporary too: noble, sensitive, emotional, even civilised. These warriors fought, and died, for love as well as for glory. With his poems of Ossian, it seemed that Macpherson had given Scotland, and all of northern Europe, literature to rival the Mediterranean classical epics of Homer and Vergil.

In this talk we’ll investigate the life, work, and legacy of James Macpherson. How did he create his epics – and who helped him? What poems did he draw upon for inspiration, from his own Gaelic culture? What impact did Macpherson’s poems have, in Britain and beyond—and on Scottish Gaelic culture too? And, of course, how did the fierce Ossianic controversy over the epic’s authenticity first begin?

Speaker Bio:

From the Isle of Lewis, Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart is a leading scholar of Scottish Gaelic language, folklore, and oral tradition. He is Associate Professor at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, University of the Highlands and Islands, where he lectures in Scottish Highland history and material culture, and Gaelic literature and folklore. He has written numerous academic articles, and is often interviewed on radio and television.

Curated & Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

The Dead Who Walk in Dreams: A Global History of Dream-Ghosts – Lena Heide Brennand – Zoom

The Dead Who Walk in Dreams: A Global History of Dream-Ghosts

When the dead step into your sleep: messages, warnings, and mythic encounters.

Across millennia, the dead have visited the living in dreams: to warn, to guide, to accuse, to soothe—or simply to remind us they remain. Drawing on her upcoming book Dreamwalking, Lena Heide-Brennand explores dream-ghosts from ancient Mesopotamia to Viking Age Norway, from Arctic spirit-visitations to Victorian séances held entirely in sleep.

Travel through the shadowy terrain of hypnagogic visions, ancestor-dreams, revenant-warnings, and the strange psychological landscapes where love, grief and the supernatural blur.

Discover why so many cultures believed the dream-soul leaves the body at night, how the newly dead communicate through symbolic dream language, and what it means when someone you’ve lost appears at your bedside at 3am.

This lecture blends folklore, anthropology, psychology, and the occult—illuminating the secret nights of humanity.

Speaker Bio:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Ossian 3: Ossian’s Last Stand? – Dòmhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart – Zoom

Ossian 3: Ossian’s Last Stand?

For over a century after the publication of James Macpherson’s Ossianic epics, controversy raged over their authenticity. Had the young man really discovered precious heroic poems handed down in Highland oral tradition for nearly 1,500 years, or was Macpherson nothing more than a forger, a chancer guilty of an audacious literary confidence trick that misled readers across the globe?

In this concluding talk, we’ll look at how the literary battle lines were drawn on both sides, and how the controversy was fought out, in books, magazines, letters, and reports. We’ll examine the arguments and evidence used—especially how some supporters tried to convince themselves and others that Macpherson’s claims held water. For them, nothing less than the reputation of the Scottish Gàidhealtachd and its people was at stake.

In this talk, we’ll meet a motley cast of characters, including Church of Scotland ministers, a forgotten female Gaelic writer, Agricultural Sir John Sinclair, an emigrant bishop, an enthusiastic Canadian student, a high-flying civil servant, and a penniless Highland aristocrat—before trying to answer the enduring question: ‘how much of Macpherson is the real thing, and how much of it an epic hoax?’

Speaker Bio:

From the Isle of Lewis, Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart is a leading scholar of Scottish Gaelic language, folklore, and oral tradition. He is Associate Professor at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, University of the Highlands and Islands, where he lectures in Scottish Highland history and material culture, and Gaelic literature and folklore. He has written numerous academic articles, and is often interviewed on radio and television.

Curated & Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Ossian 1: The Scottish Highlands: Epic Mode – Dòmhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart – Zoom

Ossian 1: The Scottish Highlands: Epic Mode

In this opening talk we’ll investigate the heroic stories and ballads of the Scottish Highlands telling of the adventures of the warrior band known as the Fèinn, and their leader Fionn mac Cumhail or Finn MacCool. These exciting, complex, and often moving stories are part of the common heritage of Scotland and Ireland. The earliest texts of the ‘Finn Cycle’ were composed well over a millennium ago, and the tales have been told and retold, written and read (and filmed!), added to and adapted, from then till now.

The stories can sparkle with life and creative energy. The Fèinn fight enemy invaders: mortal kings of Lochlann, or Greece, or even of the Entire World. They struggle to defeat otherworldly hags on land and sea. Again, disagreements among the heroes themselves can sometimes lead to quarrels and even murder. But these tales are about far more than violence alone: they tell of romantic encounters and love-affairs, of hunts and heroic quests, of romance, enchantment, and foolishness.

For previous generations, these tales were not counted as fiction, but as historical fact. The stories of these warriors were entwined with Scottish Highland genealogies and local landscapes, with proverbs and everyday life. Looking beyond the performances of the tales, we can appreciate just how deeply the lore of the Fèinn was woven into Scottish Gaelic culture.

Speaker Bio:

Dòmhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart is a leading Scottish scholar of Gaelic language, folklore, and oral tradition. He is Associate Professor in Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh and has long been associated with School of Scottish Studies, where he has contributed extensively to research on narrative tradition, belief, and vernacular culture.

His work focuses particularly on Gaelic storytelling, popular belief, charm traditions, and the cultural worlds of the Highlands and Islands, combining rigorous scholarship with a deep respect for living oral heritage. Stiùbhart is known for his ability to bridge academic research and community knowledge, often working closely with tradition bearers and archival materials alike.

In addition to his academic publications, he has played an important role in public folklore work in Scotland, including education, heritage projects, and the preservation and interpretation of Gaelic intangible cultural heritage. His scholarship is marked by clarity, cultural sensitivity, and a strong commitment to keeping Gaelic voices central to the study of Scotland’s past and present.

Curated & Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Good Dragons are Rare: An Inquiry into Dragons Old and New – Professor Thomas Honegger – Zoom

Good Dragons are Rare: An Inquiry into Dragons Old and New

Prof. Tolkien once noted: “There are in any case many heroes but very few good dragons.” (M&C 17) Modern readers may wonder what he meant by ‘good dragons’ – certainly not virtuous or ‘morally good’ dragons, which are, basically, a modern invention. As Tolkien himself points out, a ‘good dragon’ is a beast that displays the typical characteristics of draco without becoming a mere (allegorical) representative of draconitas (i.e. the vice of avarice). Yet ‘death by allegory’ is not the only danger literary dragons have to face. My talk looks at the symbolic and narrative functions of dragons in Germanic literature throughout the ages. As will be shown, most dragons before (but also after) Tolkien do not live up to their full literary potential as protagonist, but remain either allegorical figures of evil, devices for testing the hero’s qualities, steeds, or Disney-pets. It is only such dragons as Smaug in The Hobbit or Chrysophylax Dives in Farmer Giles of Ham who live up to Tolkien’s idea of what a ‘good dragon’ should be: a dangerous protagonist in its own right partaking in the rich symbolism of the different traditions without being reduced to these ‘symbolic’ functions only.

Speaker Bio:

Thomas Honegger is Professor of English Medieval Studies at the Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. His research focuses on medieval English and Germanic literature, myth, monsters, and the afterlives of medieval narratives in modern fantasy. He is internationally recognised for his work on dragons, legendary creatures, heroism, and the complex relationship between symbolism and storytelling from the Middle Ages to Tolkien and beyond. A gifted lecturer and sharp cultural historian, Honegger is particularly interested in how medieval imagination continues to shape modern fantasy worlds, refusing simple allegory in favour of richly ambivalent, intellectually challenging interpretations.

Curated & Hosted By:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Egyptian mythology – Garry Shaw – Zoom

Egyptian mythology

To the ancient Egyptians, mythology was more than tales of past heroes and the activities of gods, it was something lived each day – mythology explained the world around them, and made it understandable. In this lecture, we’ll explore the fascinating myths and legends of ancient Egypt while travelling along the Nile from Aswan to Alexandria. As we stop at key locations, we’ll meet the gods and goddesses worshipped there, learn about their mythology, and see the monuments associated with them. We will delve into creation myths, featuring the divine craftsman Ptah and the sun god Re-Atum; myths of the world around us, explaining how divine forces influence the sky, sun, moon, and the Nile; and myths of the afterlife realm, demons, and ghosts. As well as stories of famous divinities, like Re, Horus, Thoth, Isis, Osiris, and Seth, the talk will also recount lesser known myths, such as those from the Book of the Faiyum. This lecture is based on Shaw’s book: Egyptian Mythology: A Traveller’s Guide from Aswan to Alexandria (Thames & Hudson, 2021).

Speaker Bio:

Garry J. Shaw is an author and journalist, covering archaeology, history, world heritage, exhibitions, and travel. He writes on the latest research and breaking news, and has written features on diverse topics, from the world’s most mysterious manuscripts and the Near East after the Bronze Age collapse, to heritage destruction in Yemen and heritage crime in post-revolution Egypt. He has a PhD in Egyptology, and is the author of eight books including Egyptian Mythology: A Traveller’s Guide from Aswan to Alexandria (Thames & Hudson, 2021) and The Story of Tutankhamun: An Intimate Life of the Boy Who Became King (Yale University Press, 2022). His newest book, Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries, the Story of the World’s Mysterious Manuscripts (Yale University Press, 2025), is a New Yorker best book of 2025.

Curated & Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day