I mean, runes are just awesome. They look ancient and mystical. The idea of hacking a short, imperative message into wood, stone, or bone can be emotionally stirring, no? Even if those messages were “these runes are written up high” and “this is an antler,” it still looks really cool.
There are some people who take runes too seriously. I ran afoul of one such purist on a pagan Norse forum. He immediately disapproved of me because I was putzing around in Elder Futhark, when logically, integrally, I should’ve been practicing Old Norse with Younger Futhark, since those coexisted unlike my choices. I dodged the issue, explaining that my giantess-cult studies were pre-Old Norse, of an oral tradition, and there were no resources to learn proto-Norse language but I had chronological rights to Elder Futhark, which he very grudgingly allowed. It was a stupid discussion and there’s no honor in winning it.
Other people just have fun with it. The fantastic equipment and re-enactment resource Grimfrost transliterates their store name into runes because it looks good. To that end, fire up your online translator and read this enlightening article, “How to Write with Runes in Modern Languages.”
Another educational and handy site is the Wicked Griffin, if you discover a taste for this kind of thing.
In other news, I’d been feeling kind of down because I missed out on winter. It came robustly, everything quilted in lovely thick snow, lots of subzero days. It was a fantastic opportunity to make my Old Norse studies a little more tactile, to bring a fragment of that world into my being, albeit at my convenience. Instead, mostly I stayed indoors and focused on my remote office work, until winter went away. Yes, for the first two weeks of February, the temperature rose to 50F/10C and the snow turned ugly and melted into the streets. I was crestfallen.
And then yesterday, the greater metro got hit with a snowstorm that wasn’t in the forecast. Horizontal sleet piled up and turned into thick, wet flakes that built up everywhere. Along the highway I drove past six elaborate spin-outs, but when I got home I went right back out and took a long walk around my neighborhood, reveling in the second chance at winter. I walked out onto the lake and laid down on the ice, laughing and singing, then fell still and let the cold rise into my bones as I bathed in the silence and made no moves.
The only conclusion any reasonable person can draw from this is that giantesses are real. Skaði heard my lamentations and buried my city in several inches of white fluff. The snow quality is absolutely perfect for snowballs and snowmen. I’m going to get out at least once each day and give thanks to the giantesses for as long as their blessings last.
ᛖᚲ ᛞᛟᚲᚹᚨ ᛏᚨᛏ ᚷᚢᚷᚱᛁ
Aborigen 
Leave a comment