The Runes: Edred Thorsson and the Elder Futhark

Edred Thorsson [ also writes under the name of Stephen Flowers].

His 'Futhark' is a standard work; also his translations of difficult to obtain works [i.e., von Lists's 'Secret of the Runes'] has done much to widen the culture of Anglo-Pagans.

Futhark, by Edred Thorsson

Edred's "The Nine Doors of Midgard" is an attempt to give a full study course in Runic Heathenism; so the Runes are central, but all other aspects such as culture, history, philosophy etc., are dealt with alongside.

It contains all the known Rune poems and also the Havamal; it also has the various exercises for body and voice etc.,

Even the detailed reading list alone make Nine Doors a great book.

The Elder Futhark

As for the primacy or not of the Elder Futhark rune row, I note that Edred intended his breakthrough book 'Futhark' to be based on the Younger Futhark [or rather von List's version of this shorter, Viking rune row, called the Armanen], but he changed his mind and adpated his material to the Elder.

Of course, the Elder is directly assimiable to the alphabet, and so can be used as a writing script with much less ambiguity than the Younger [we notice how the Vikings themselves had to later use devices like dotted runes etc., when writing in the Younger to make it more comprehensible]. But is this what the Runes are for, merely writing?
No, they are primarily symbolic, their linguistic interest being mainly in the area of root etymologies etc.,

I wonder whether there are some staves in the Elder which are just there to represent letter sounds [as in the Latin alphabet], and do not have the deep symbolic meaning?
I am thinking of Perthro, of course [Pertho has always bothered me simply because the verse assigned to it in the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem is fairly opaque.]

PERTHRO

This rune is mystifying; I have yet to hear a convincing interpretation of its meaning

The stanza which deals with the rune Perthro [or Peorth in Old English] in the Old English Rune Poem has;

Peorth byth symble plega and hlether,
Wlancum thar wigan sittath,
On beorsele blithe aetsomne.The meaning of the verse is roughly;

'Peorth is a source of play and laughter to the great, where warriors sit happily together in the mead hall'.
So what could this 'peorth' be? I've seen various meanings, from 'vulva' to 'pear tree'!

The usual translation for the Old English Rune Poem's Peorth [given by Sweet in his Anglo-Saxon Dictionary] is 'chess piece'.
Edred likes to call it 'lot box'; others call it 'dice'.

So the majority view is towards some kind of divination/game.

But this seems unlikely to me, given that the Runes themselves can be used for these purposes - so why would the Runes refer to other systems?

Of course, it is possible that the original [if there was one] meaning was lost, and later people said "the rune-stave shape looks like a dice cup on its side, let's call it that"!

The initial letter 'P' is not used much in Anglo-Saxon, and most Anglo-Saxon words beginning with 'p' are of foreign origin [like pound!]

Likewise, this wasn't a common sound in proto-Germanic either; however, the Rune-stave does occur, as we know, in the Elder Futhark.

Because it was dropped by the Vikings we have no other Rune Poems to go on except the Anglo-Saxon which has some lines missing, it seems.


The most left-field version of Peorth I heard was 'Fart'!

I feel that the answer is hidden somewhere.

Perþ



Perthro is the reconstructed Common Germanic name of this Rune. The Anglo-Saxons called it Peord; the Gothic name was Pairthra.

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The way that von List and his followers tied their version of the Younger to the Havamal gives every stave a profound resonance; also, this shorter version is leaner and meaner.


Cover of Edred's translation of von List

Guido von List suffered a temporary blindness, I think; and during that trauma had a vision of Wotan the one-eyed All Father.
It was then that the inspiration of the Armanen Rune Row was given him.
I have heard many similar stories of Folk suffering blindness and being aided by the Rider of Slider.

List's assigning of the Younger with the stanzas from the Havamal is contentious - in his book 'The Secret of the Runes' he gives the verses and his own runic interpretations of them.

To List the ancient lore of the Teutons HAD to be hidden during the rise of Christianity. He claims that our pagan religion just went underground and actually PERVADED Germanic culture unbeknownst to the Christianisers.
He uses a interpretative technique to re-discovering the Wotanist elements which are just below the surface of the everyday.



I am interested in the idea of reverse runes - i.e., where, when casting runes they fall in reverse form and then suggest the opposite meaning. On the basis of this we can invent diabolic rune rows to curse our enemies with!





Reversed Runes relate to rune-casting - we know from Tacitus that the ancient Teutons practiced rune casting. If a rune falls in a reverse position, then its meaning is reversed.
So Gibor or Gift when reversed could mean Loss or Theft etc.,

I did make a list of the Futhark on reversed meanings - you can get some fairly wretched meanings out of the reversals!
They're usually called 'Troll Runes' when reversed.

The Vikings used branch runes etc., as a kind of code - see also dotted runes and a kind of minimalist Viking rune row which just use particles of the staves.
There is also the practice of mixing the rows up and assigning code numbers to them.
The tendency was always towards abbreviation and occlusion with the Vikings.

There is a 'Standard International Futhark' [SIF for short!] which is based on the Elder and is designed to replicate the English alphabet, but this does seem to diminish the magical qualities.

Edred Thorsson

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Stephen [Edred] Flowers

I tend to think that the shorter, Younger row is the primal one [this would agree with the Armanen view, presumably].

If you look at the Anglo-Saxon row you will see that it is the longer, Elder 24 rune row expanded even further, with a kind of spare extra half row, suggesting that the tendency was to addition.
That the Vikings went the other way, towards concision, suggests that, being pagans, they wanted to take their culture away from the Christianising tendencies which used runes merely as letter symbols and thereby tried to negate their magical symbolism [see how Wulfilas earlier uses some runic letters in his Gothic translation of the Bible].
So the secretive modes of the Vikings are what you expect from a group intent not only on preserving lore, but in protecting it and in refinding it.

This may be why von List uses the Eddic Havamal as his authority for the Younger; by doing so he says this Younger row is the primal magical row that was represented in vocal chants, curses and spells of the ancient Aryan lore.

Also, more mundanely, the dubious meaning of Perthro [only in the Elder] seems to suggest that additional runes were added to fit speech sounds [hence my interest in that rune].

Of course, while I admire von List's ideas which tie the Eddas to the Younger rune row, it is still an 'argument of authority' - i.e., it is based on Faith.
But only in that atmosphere can we really get back to the ancient forests; the runes as a dry academic subject is something else altogether.

I am aware that the Elder row is so-called because it is rekoned to be the oldest, and indeed it appears first in archeological findings [although this is only down to extant sources].
So I suspect that von List's claims can be refuted in some degree by scientific evidence; but then von List's research was guided very much by the Spirit of Wotan, and through that Spirit he chanced upon many insights completely missed by science.
Take his view that Heraldry contains runic symbolism.

I tend to go along with the idea that the basic runes are root-words, and symbols of great antiquity. I see language as beginning in vast poetic symbols which gradually became refined and vocabulary became widened.
So words BEGAN in magic - as charms and curses and prayers to the gods, goddesses and wights.
Fe, Fy, Fo, Fum!

The Younger rune row reflects that primeval state of the Aryan spiritual/symbol system.