I bought the second volume of this book/magazine in 2004 when I was in Seattle. I had been in doubt before doing so. The articles didn’t seem too interesting and the cd just alright. I am glad that I bought it, because the articles proved very interesting and the cd very good. Then I was in doubt whether or not to buy the first 2002 volume. When I finally decided to do so, I found out that it is no longer available and hard to get second hand, at least, in Europe. In the end I bought a second hand copy via Amazon.com for (I believe) $ 25,- including shipping, coming close to the new price. I already noticed that the prices can go way up. When I write this, Amazon has only one second hand copy for the price of $ 95,03!! Everyone in doubt, I can advise to get your copy, but look around to avoid paying incredible prices.
The first volume is a little bit thinner than the second one (286 pages) and has no cd. The cd in the second volume was a brilliant marketing stunt by the way, because it seems that every kid around, suddenly became a “radical traditionalist” like the editors of Tyr. There are some nice articles in Tyr 1. After a nice preface, an alright article of Stephen Edred Flowers about ‘integral culture’ follows. Collin Cleary then writes about Knowing the Gods, an article in which the writer shows himself very “Traditionalistic”. He sure has some points, but I don’t agree with him everywhere. Alain de Benoist has interviewed Georges Dumézil a long time ago and an English translation can be found in Tyr. There are articles about Northern mythology, such as Steve Pollington on Odin/Wodan, and Moynihan with a very well written article about the figure of Hagen and the Nibelungenlied. Alby Stone follows the footsteps of Dumézil, noone else than Joscelyn Godwin writes about Evola and there are less interesting articles about the Goddes Zisa, mountaineering and Herman Lönns. After an interview with Ian Read, Collin Cleary has a lengthy article about the 1960’ies TV-seriers The Prisoner. This name is smacked around my ears way too often but Cleary lit a burning desire in my to watch it! The journal closes off with (mostly lengthy) book- and musicreviews with not the most typical titles. So my conclusion can only be that this journal is surely worth a read and I advise you to be quick if you don’t have a copy of either volume. Since we now live in 2006 and the previous volumes are of 2002 and 2004, I can only hope that volume 3 will see the light of day soon.
(6/8/06 -4-)
Read quotes from Tyr here.