Act!vated Stories

When you hear the thunder roll across the heavens, you're hearing Thor, the blacksmith of the gods, wield his hammer in Asgard. So said the ancient Scandinavians, and they told of a time when his thunder was stolen by the lord of the giants, an unpleasant fellow named Thrym. Like the Greeks and Roma...

“The Rainbow Crow” is a Native American nature myth from the Lenni Lenape tribe of New Jersey. It's quite unusual for a nature myth in that it simultaneously explains the origins of four phenomena: fire, the rainbow, the crow's black feathers, and the crow's croaky voice...

To mark the beginning of winter, we present “Batcha” a dragon story from the region formerly known as Czechoslovakia (it recently split into Slovakia and The Czech Republic). A shepherd strays away from home, discovers a serpents' lair, sleeps all winter like Rip Van Rep...

Long before Marvel Comics created Spiderman, a spiderman was created by the Ashanti tribe of western Africa. The frequent trickster (and sometimes victim of other animals' tricks) has appeared in many aliases, and in many other parts of the world, including the Caribbean, Central America and the U.S...