Amina and Mathias sit down and talk about elves, fairies, hidden folk, dwarfs, and all the different "minor" entities in Nordic and Gaelic mythology and folklore. They dig deep into folktales about elves, what the names of these categories of beings mean, and how people have related to them in pre-Christian times.

It's a new year and a new season. Amina and Mathias sit down and chat about ancient Nordic sun cults. Did people really worship the sun that much and what is up with the claims that all the rock carvings around Scandinavia, Ireland and the British Isles are depictions of a sun cult?

Amina and Mathias continue their conversations about Yule traditions in the North. This time they are talking about spirits and other beings that we encounter in the folk traditions from the Alps and all the way through Scandinavia and Britain. They talk about Krampus, Santa Claus, Mari Llwyd, the Nisse and much more. After this episode, the Sacred Flame takes a break until the beginning of 2026!

Amina and Mathias dive into Yule traditions in the North. first, they talk about some aspects of pre-Christian Scandinavian jól -including if it even really existed, its place in the calendar, and what rituals took place in the period- and then they branch out to Celtic traditions. At the very end the pair derail themselves and get sucked into a conversation about Germanic and Celtic loans, the origin of things we think are Celtic and Germanic, and the stereotypes about Celtic and Germanic peoples. This is part one of two episodes on Yule.

Amina and Mathias sat down with author Gregory Amato. He is the author of the book series Spear of the Gods, which takes place in the Viking Age. Gregory Amato has strong opinions about how authors represent the Viking Age and Vikings. He is not fond of the stereotypes and toxic masculinity that are often a part of contemporary narration of the Viking Age. Instead, Gregory writes Viking Age fiction from a perspective that respects the diversity of the time and selects period specific values that he aligns with to promote through his characters.

Amina and Mathias are diving deep into the myth of the Wild Hunt in different European cultures. They explore the connections between the Wild Hunt and Odin, local folklore about trolls that invade your farm, the southern German Krampus traditions, transcendental rituals and witchcraft, the secret cult of the Benandanti in northern Italy, and stories about berserkir in Scandinavia. They of course also get deep into Irish lore about Cuchullain and Pwll, and why the Brits are afraid of geese!

Amina and Mathias sit down with Alexandra (Sasha) Zavyalova to talk about Slavic and Northern European pagan fall traditions. Sasha is from St. Petersburg, Russia, and belongs to the Modovian minority called Erzya, a Finno-Ugric people. She has been raised in the pre-Christian Erzyan traditions, and is herself a student of northern paganism. Along with Sasha, the two hosts go far and wide in conversations about connections between Germanic, Slavic, Celtic, and Finno-Ugric autumn and early winter traditions across the northern European expanse.  

In this episode, Amina and Mathias discuss underworld mythologies and how they seem to link up with ancient fall traditions in the European North. The conversation takes our two hosts from pumpkin spice and licorice through conversations about (and mispronunciations of) the ancient Welsh hero Pwll, the Franco-Danish hero Ogier the Dane, the Swiss-Lombardic hero of Dietrich of Berne, over the founding of Czechia and the founding of Krakow and the Czech-Polish cultural hero Krok, all the way to Odin and his retrieval of the mead of poetry. They also circle round the conversation about journeys to Hel by sailing to the far North --and there's a little bit about Freyja, Isis, and the sparsely known Minoan snake goddess.

Mathias Nordvig and Amina Otto discuss fall traditions in the pre-Christian North on The Sacred Flame Podcast. They manage to cover the entire North Atlantic region in a conversation that takes us from the origin of modern Halloween traditions in witchcraft trials between Scotland and Denmark to pre-Christian Nordic rituals, and folktales about the Wild Hunt.

Mathias Nordvig has a PhD in Old Norse mythology and teaches at University of Colorado in Boulder, USA.

Amina Otto has an MA in Old Norse and Gaelic studies from Cambridge and is doing a PhD in Old Norse-Gaelic studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

What is madness? What was madness back in the Viking age, and what is madness today? The concept of madness may seem clear to us, but at the end of the day, it is certainly always dependent on cultural context. In this episode, I discuss western madness and where it comes from. I depart from Carl Jung's attempt to blame the atrocities of Nazi Germany on Wotan/Odin and dive into a cultural examination that takes us from Serbia's Iron Gates national park and Kosovo to gold mining in Nevada's Mt. Tenabo, while navigating through indigenous homelands, nations, and internment camps -a ride that takes us all the way to the underworld and far into the sky with the Blue Star Kachina prophecy.