"Come on, man!” barks Wardruna’s Einar Selvik. “Get it down you!” We’ve done some weird stuff in the name of journalism, from riding on Tommy Lee’s rollercoaster drumkit in front of thousands of Mötley Crüe fans to scaling a blizzard-blasted Austrian mountain to meet Powerwolf, but we’ve never stood in an East London cemetery on a freezing winter morning, with a blond-haired, bearded Viking gazing intensely at us, about to pop a raw stinging nettle we’ve just pulled up from the base of a gravestone into our mouth.
“Come on, get it down you,” repeats Einar, as the rolled-up leaf hovers near our mouth. A grin spreads across his face, almost like he’s taking some pleasure in our discomfort. And so, literally grasping the nettle, we pop it in. Down the hatch it goes. Well, actually it doesn’t. It gets stuck in our throat halfway down, leading to a fair bit of spluttering and dry heaving.
