Futhorc

*Futhorc runes in apple wood*

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.

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Then I began to quicken and be wise,

and to grow and to prosper;

one word found another word for me,

one deed found another deed for me.

.

The runes you must find and the meaningful letter,

a very great letter,

a very powerful letter,

which the mighty sage stained

and the powerful gods made

and the runemaster of the gods carved out.

.

Odin for the Æsir, and Dain for the elves,

Dvalin for the dwarfs,

Asvid for the giants,

I myself carved some.

.

Do you know how to carve, do you know how to interpret,

do you know how to stain, do you know how to test out,

do you know how to ask, do you know how to sacrifice,

do you know how to dispatch, do you know how to slaughter?

.

Better not to pray, than to sacrifice too much,

one gift always calls for another;

better not dispatched than to slaughter too much.

So Thund carved before the history of nations,

where he rose up, when he came back.

.

.

.

from Sayings of the High One, Poetic Edda, trans. Larrington

Wodhanazson

Below is a post I discovered on the internet, written by a godi, a priest of the Asatru, Troy Wisehart, who was kind enough to give me permission to republish it. I’m happy to share his personal statement, which exemplifies the virtue by which a modern Heathen may live when inspired by the Eddic texts.


"Wodhanaz is that which integrates the many into a conscious whole and describes the entire process. ~ I am a Heathen who follows the ancient path of my ancestors known as Asatru (1) and I have sworn the oath of the gothar (2). Life flows to me and through me, and I choose what remains in me. Because I am a microcosm of the multiverse, I bring from the darkest depths to the highest heights that which is needed for me to be able to receive from the realms of light what is required of the deepest abyss. I take from the dark as well as the light because I am my own master. I follow Odin's path as outlined in the Havamal (3), and Freyja (4) is my protectress. I walk between the worlds in the branches and roots of Yggdrasil (5) and sing the runes. Believing that I am my deeds, I ally myself with the Aesir and Vanir (6), whom I consider to be the forces of harmony and beauty, against that which is of chaos and destruction and each conscious choice of right action strengthens the power of my soul and positively contributes to my hammingja (7) and orlog (8). I am free of hatred and resentment because I recognize those feelings as a form of submission to the focal point of those emotions. I absolutely reject all betrayal, beginning with myself and refuse to take into myself anything whose origin is the bringer of distress, she who is the lover of the trickster and the mother of the children of Jarnvid (9). Having once lost everything, I let go of all that I fear to lose and in so doing recover what is mine. I exist tri-partite in time for I am my ancestors as well as my descendents. My soul resides in my blood and will one day return to that from which it came, bringing with me the sum total of my deeds as a contribution to the folk soul in the next cycle of existence. My destination is the journey, and its purpose is to experience and feel so that I will learn and grow and achieve personal power which is preparation, awareness, intent and the ability to focus through the vessel of the self. In this way I will not be consumed or destroyed. I have come into being, and by the process of coming into being I have established the process of coming into being."


The following notes are my additions, and I don’t mean to attribute the ideas to Mr. Wisehart, although we would, no doubt, have productive discussions using them as starting points.
1. Asatru
2. gothar, collective priesthood of the Asatru community.
3. Havamal is one of the Poetic Eddas, similar in tone to wisdom literature.
4. Odin is a god seeking wisdom. His “path” is one of honor and virtue. Freyja, as Elsa-Brita Titchenell explains in Masks of Odin, “represents the higher, spiritual faculty of intelligence.” It is to Freyja’s hall, Sessrúmnir at Folkvangr, that half of mankind ascend. She is the lover the enlightened sought.
5. Yggdrasil, the World Tree, the Tree of Life.
6. Aesir and Vanir are, roughly, the two tribes of Norse gods. The differences between them and what they represent to the Asatru is beyond the limit of space and purpose here.
7. hammingja is, roughly, individual and familial soul power.
8. orlog, roughly, primal layer of being.
9. Jarnvid, Iron Wood. “She,” “the trickster” and their “children” represent testing forces, obstacles which prevent us from recognizing and then realizing ourselves as gods, but they are also the forge fires through which we are tempered.

Man and Woman are Created

Then from the throng.....did three come forth,
From the home of the gods,.....the mighty and gracious;
Two without fate.....on the land they found,
Ask and Embla,.....empty of might.

Soul they had not,.....sense they had not,
Heat nor motion,.....nor goodly hue;
Soul gave Othin,.....sense gave Hnir,
Heat gave Lothur.....and goodly hue.


-Völuspá, 17 and 18 (trans. Bellows)

Kennings for Mead

To my visitor who was looking for a kenning for mead, here is a catalog of kennings online. Notice that mead isn't on the list, but that doesn't mean there isn't one or more. The search piqued my interest, and I will pay particular attention for them now as I read.

As I flipped through casually, I did find in Loki's Quarrel from The Poetic Eddas this phrase in stanza 4, "mixed their mead with malice." Interesting, but not a kenning. When Sigurn joins Helgi, Second Poem of Helgi Hundingsbani, in his death mound, they share a "precious liquid," which could be mead. When I first read it, I morbidly thought the liquid was blood (after all she's sleeping with a dead man), but the commentary suggested Sigurn brought mead or ale with her.

It's an important topic because the presence of mead is indicative of symbel (sumbel), definitive if it's mentioned with other elements of the custom. In this respect, it's just as important to watch for the mention of bragarfull, name both of the draught and the ceremony. I've seen the bragarfull defined as a mix of ale and mead, but also just as mead.

Addendum: An additional site for more Eddic-type kennings is here.

The Poetic Eddas: First Impression

I finished reading both translations of the Poetic Eddas, but I am by no means finished with them. They are friggin' fascinating.

I went into them expecting warrior elite tales along the line of Beowulf and Y Gododdin, but they are nothing like that. Well, they are like that...I mean...much flashing of swords and spilling of blood, hearts on platters and honor and revenge and so forth, but the Eddas are all about...duhn duhn duhn...women. Women are prime movers and shapers of events. Females, whether goddess, valkyrie or mortal, share the role of prophecy and the knowledge of runes. Women act as advisors, the sages. Even Odin, their equal in this respect, says, "Advise me now, Frigg, I intend to journey...."* It's a seeress who reveals the nature of the beginning and the end of the world to Odin. In all these tales, women control wealth, lands, and men.

There is a difference between the role of goddesses and mortal women. Goddesses are powerful and wise, but the divine tales are primarily of the actions of gods, Thor and Odin and Loki. Gods often act on their own motives, independent of the will of a goddess. In the mortal tales, on the other hand, men do much of the slaying but they do it for and/or because of women—although women are not above killing. Women are sometimes in love, loving, ambitious, angry, vengeful, prophetic, sorcerous, betrayed, traitorous, wise, etc. These human qualities, embodied in women, provide the impetus of the storylines.

Notably, it's women who suffer. Although women possess power, they are also victims. In the Lay of Volund, for example, one of the strangest of the Eddas I thought (a mix of magic, semi-divine beings, craft and mortal regret), Bodvild is raped by Volund (Weland the Smith). "He overcame her with beer, because he was more experienced." She laments the event and the child with which he leaves her, "I did not know how to strive against him, I was not able to strive against him!"

In another tragedy as gut wrenching and sorrowful as anything Shakespeare ever wrote, Brynhild, too, suffers. This time, from betrayal. She arranges the death of the lover whom she was denied, Sigurd, in revenge against him. Brynhild's reaction is as tragic as the circumstance. She wakes in the night, Sigurd's death heavy on her mind.

...
little could they understand the behaviour of women,
now that, weeping, she began to speak of
that which, laughing, she'd asked the men for.

In the end, Brynhild takes her own life upon a sword.

Gudrun (Guthrun), especially, suffers within the Sigurd stories, yet she is also vengeful and, at one point, fights as a shield-maiden. At another, she kills her two sons in revenge against her second husband. All her children are eventually killed before her death. Her laments are excruciating.

Three fires have I known, three hearths have I known
to three husbands' houses I was brought.
Sigurd alone for me was better than all others,
whom my brothers did to death.

The men come off as brave, yet somewhat simple-minded; Atli (Attila), for example, in the Greenlandic Poem of Atli;

The prince's credulity was enough for him to believe this,
her treachery was clear if he had looked out for it.

The Lay of Fafnir, the simplest of the Eddas to my mind is, also, without a direct feminine presence. A tale of manly arms and battle with a dragon, it is most like Beowulf. The following stanza, spoken by Sigurth, is not unlike something Beowulf might speak.

My courage whetted me, my hands assisted me
and my sharp sword;
few are brave when they become old,
if they are cowardly in childhood.

Unlike Beowulf, though, it doesn't end without reference to a greater cycle of stories, all which prominently figure women. In fact, the gold which Sigurth wins from the dragon, Fafnir, whom he kills, becomes, in a way, the basis of all subsequent strife. Near the end, the nuthatches** tell Sigurth, "I know a girl, the fairest by far, endowed with gold, yet you could win her," and thus begin the saga.

These are my brief, general impressions at first reading, but there are a lot of stories, composed in different centuries, in different languages, collected from a wide region, transmitted by various means, poem, prose, song, written and oral. So far, all I really know is that on opening the box, I've discovered "resounding gold and glowing red treasure," and I have gold-lust for the "fire of the serpent's bed." With the Edda's words, stories, history and culture, I'm in love.

*translations by Carolyne Larrington
**While I write, I hear nuthatches outside my window. I wonder what they're saying.

Kennings

In my post, Summer Goes On...a Little While , I mentioned that a sword is sometimes called a leek in the Poetic Eddas. Never was there a more reserved statement!

Leek is just one of the many referents to a sword in the Eddas. In fact, there's an entire convention of word usage found in Norse literature of which the leek/sword metaphor is only a simple example. For those not up on their Norse lit, this device is called a kenning, and it provides fascinating, sometimes confusing, reading. Fortunately, great translators do much of the hard work for me, and I'm left with mostly the fascination as I read in modern English. Here's an example from the Poetic Edda, The First Poem of Helgi Hundingsbani, stanza 7 as translated by Carolyn Larrington. I'm reading two translations simultaneously, so below that is Henry Adams Bellows' version of the same stanza.

To the men it seemed that he was a prince,
they said to one another that a good year had come;
the noble lord himself came from the tumult of battle
to bring a shining leek to the young nobleman.

The warrior throng a ruler thought him,
Good times, they said, mankind should see;
The king himself from battle-press came,
To give the prince a leek full proud.

Kennings, though, are often much more complex than a simple substitution such as leek for sword. After reading a while, it gets easier to recognize and then to appreciate kennings. I can only imagine what it must have been like to listen to the complicated, prose example (below) given in the Wiki article and understand it without the research I require to do the same.

Ulls of war-leek! We carried the seed of Fyrisvellir on the mountains of hawks during all of Hakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden the flour of Frodi's hapless slaves in the flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess.

The mental process of decryption must have been an integral part of the tale's effect. I'm fortunate to have gotten to the point that friend of the wolves means to me a warrior who slays many (thereby leaving much carrion for the wolves). As my familiarity with kennings and the mythology and the customs of these people grows, I am curious to return to earlier reading, especially Y Gododdin, in which I anticipate new worlds to open, both in meaning and in effect.

I'm also beginning to appreciate this literature (read in a deceptive form in high school) as the general expression of a larger culture. Kennings are at their most complex, their height, in Norse and Icelandic literature, but only a peek into the Northern European literatures and pre-Christian culture. I'm getting a feel for the immigrations of Germanic people to the north and west. I also see how once the Celts had migrated to Ireland, Wales and northward to western Scotland, there was a great deal of traffic between the Celts and the Norse. There are loan words from English and Irish in the Poetic Eddas, for example. If only we had literature of the Picts, we'd likely see the same pre-Christian exchanges with northern and eastern Scotland. The Orkneys and Shetland, Isle of Man, the Western Isles, of course, were occupied by Scandinavians, and their footprints are all over that region.

The kennings, by painting images, by engaging me in the riddle, by invoking my knowledge of myths and customs, have the power of putting me in the seat of the native listener nearby the great fire at the middle of the mead-hall. Often, as a consequence of all this, I have, as I'm reading, an irresistible urge come over me, that is, to drink a lager!

For a last taste of this engaging literature, here are six stanzas (from Larrington) near the end of Second Poem of Helgi Hundingsbani, Poetic Eddas. This scene in which the valkyrie Sigrun sleeps with her dead lover must be one of the most poignant in literature. Briefly, Sigrun has returned to the burial mound of Helgi, and she says to him:

First I want to kiss the lifeless king,
before you throw off your bloody mail-coat;
your hair, Helgi, is thick with hoar-frost,
the prince is all soaked in slaughter-dew,
Hogni's son-in-law has clammy hands.
How, lord, can I find a remedy for this?

You alone, Sigrun, from Sefafell,
cause Helgi to be soaked in sorrow-dew;
you weep, gold-adorned lady, bitter tears,
sun-bright southern girl, before you go to sleep;
each falls bloody on the breast of the prince,
cold as dew, burning hot, thick with grief.

We ought to drink this precious liquid,
though we have lost our love and our lands;
no man should sing a lament for me,
though on my breast wounds can be seen;
now the lady is enclosed in the mound,
a human woman with us, the departed.

Sigrun made up a bed in the mound.

Here I've made you, Helgi, a bed all ready;
descendant of the Ylfings, now free from care
in your arms, lord, I'll sleep,
as I would with the prince, when he was living.

I say that nothing could be less expected,
neither early nor late at Sefafell,
that you should sleep in the arms of a dead man,
white lady, in the tomb, Hogni's daughter,
and you alive, and royally born.

It is time for me to ride along the blood-red roads,
to set the pale horse to tread the path in the sky;
I must cross the bridge in the sky-vault,
before Salgofnir awakens the victorious people.

Summer Goes On...a Little While

Red bell peppers, the inspiration for using red coloring instead of green in my hot pepper jam this year. Breathtaking, aren't they? I also picked eight pounds of jalapenos, but what to do with them all?
My white morning glory blooming quietly.
These fantastic snake gourds have begun to appear along the length of two hundred feet or so of vine. So far, there are only around six of them, but I was beginning to think there would be none! In hope and then growing trepidation, I watched hundreds of flowers bloom and produce nothing and then finally...a few.
Stunning blue-gray leaves of leeks spearing up through the pink impatiens. The bright red stems to the left are Swiss Chard. In the Poetic Eddas, a sword is sometimes called a "leek." My leeks are in semi-shade and not as tall and true as they should be, but the resemblance is still there. Notice that if a leek blade was a sword, it would be fullered. It's interesting that Viking Age swords were fullered blades.

The Death of Beowulf

*deep sigh* Well, I finished Beowulf again, read the translation my uncle so generously sent me--thank you again--Seamus Heaney's words, richly illustrated with photographs of the very swords and helmets and byrnies and gold torques so vividly portrayed in the epic. No matter how many times I read this story, I'll always be left feeling as though I've been stabbed by the dagger of Grendel's mother right in the chest. Beowulf, generous king, brave hero, a man who lived life boldly and well, who won fame for his name, his death is noble and poignant, and his storyteller is masterful at wrenching our hearts. Here are a few selections in Heaney's version to illustrate.


[Beowulf's last words, spoken to young Wiglaf, the only one of his retinue to stand with him against the dragon that killed Beowulf.]

"You are the last of us, the only one left
of the Waegmundings. Fate swept us away,
sent my whole brave high-born clan
to their final doom. Now I must follow them."


[A portion of the messenger's report of Beowulf's death]

"...................His royal pyre
will melt no small amount of gold:
heaped there in a hoard, it was bought at heavy cost,
and that pile of rings he paid for at the end
with his own life will go up with the flame,
be furled in fire: treasure no follower
will wear in his memory, nor lovely woman
link and attach as a torque around her neck--
but often, repeatedly, in the path of exile
they shall walk bereft, bowed under woe,
now that their leader's laugh is silenced,
high spirits quenched."


[Beowulf's funeral]

The Geat people built a pyre for Beowulf,
stacked and decked it until it stood four-square,
hung with helmets, heavy war-shields
and shining armour, just as he had ordered.
Then his warriors laid him in the middle of it,
mourning a lord far-famed and beloved.
On a height they kindled the hugest of all
funeral fires; fumes of woodsmoke
billowed darkly up, the blaze roared
and drowned out their weeping, wind died down
and flames wrought havoc in the hot bone-house,
burning it to the core. They were disconsolate
and wailed aloud for their lord's decease.
A Geat woman too sang out in grief;
with hair bound up, she unburdened herself
of her worst fears, a wild litany
of nightmare and lament: her nation invaded,
enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles,
slavery and abasement. Heaven swallowed the smoke.


[The last lament of Beowulf's people.]

So the Geat people, his hearth companions,
sorrowed for the lord who had been laid low.
They said that of all the kings upon the earth
he was the man most gracious and fair-minded,
kindest to his people and keenest to win fame.

More Words of Havamol

The son of a king shall be silent and wise,
And bold in battle as well;
Bravely and gladly a man shall go,
Till the day of his death is come.

The sluggard believes he shall live forever,
If the fight he faces not;
But age shall not grant him the gift of peace,
Though spears may spare his life.


-Translation by Bellows (1936)

2 Stanzas of Havamol

The Poetic Eddas were committed to paper in the 13th century. Their date of original composition is unknown but represents oral tradition predating the Christian conversion of the Norsemen around 1000 A.D. The Eddas provide a glimpse into the culture of these fascinating people, who both influenced and were influenced by the Celts, whom they frequently contacted among the "Western Islands." One of these poems, Havamol, is somewhat of a jumble. The portion I've chosen to copy below is from the first section, constituting the largest part. I chose to share these two stanzas because of their relationship to my post, Honor and Courage, but there is much more to be learned from a full reading. This translation (1936) is by Henry Adams Bellows from the Old Norse.


Cattle die, and kinsmen die,
And so one dies one's self;
But a noble name will never die,
If good renown one gets.

Cattle die, and kinsmen die,
And so one dies one's self;
One thing now that never dies,
The fame of a dead man's deeds.