On the Religious Origin of Runes

Source: SS Leitheft, No. 4. 1942

 

Few people imagine that the language we speak every day is not only a means of communication in human relations, but is the expression of the soul in its deepest roots. The language of the poet expresses the greatest mysteries and always influences linguistic creation. The sound of a word, its nuance, its musical content, often expresses more than logical concepts. Finally, language and writing have a religious origin, just like art. Our ancestors were aware of this. In the Edda song about the awakening of the Valkyrie, the creation of the runes, i.e. the signs that our ancestors engraved in small characters, is attributed to Odin: “Interpreted them/ Engraved them/ Conceived them Hopt”. But in Viking times, Odin was the god of warriors and scaldes and thus also the holder of the mysterious original wisdom. The myth of the essence of the runes is given to us in two verses of the Edda. Odin speaks about himself:

 

I know I’m hanging

AI ’arbre battu des vents

Nine full nights,

Sorry about a spear And given to Odin,

I myself have given,

I looked underneath,

I picked up the runes,

Screaming I picked them up,

From there, I fell back.

 

In his extreme distress, Odin delivered himself by collecting the runic characters. In the sublime poem of the Edda, The Seer’s Prediction’, there is the verse The Aesir gather .../ Remembering/ The great events/ And the ancient runes/ Of Fimbultyr’. Fimbultyr is Odin.

 

The Nobely stone, dating from around 600, attests to the same conception of the origin of the runes through the inscription: “I painted the runes from the counsellor” (Odin). For the Germans, the runes are part of creation, part of the power guiding the world.

 

The words “runes” do not only refer to the characters of the runic script, but to the sacred, mysterious signs of strength, giving divine grace, protecting from all dangers threatening body and soul, and also being able to harm and destroy. The popular belief in the immense power of runic signs continued in the northern countries until modern times, especially in cases of illness or disappointment in love. But it also lived and reigned in ancient Germany. The verb “becheren” (to give a gift) tells us this. Its original meaning was: to create or make something for someone by cutting runes. The name of the magical mandrake root (Alraun), which is endowed with mysterious powers, is also related to this. The key to understanding this Germanic folk belief lies in the questioning of fate by throwing small pieces of wood, as mentioned by Tacitus. The marks made by the spell were so powerful that the gods themselves were subjected to them; they must therefore have been powerful, sacred and come precisely from the powers of fate.

 

The ancient runes used by the old Germanic tribes.

  

 

These characters will already command respect because of their great age. For research in the last decade has probably discovered that at least a quarter, if not half, of the runes in the Common Germanic Futhark can be traced back to prehistoric symbols that have disappeared.

 

The Futhark characters cited were derived from names embracing the entire conceptual world of the Germanic people: they reflected the world of the Germanic peasants in the Germanic-Nordic settlement area. Each mark therefore corresponded to a particular word, for example the fourth rune to the word ‘anzuz’, i.e. Ase. At the drawing of lots, three small sticks were collected and a verse was written by hand from the sign-words that represented the answer to fate. But this could only be done when the sign was considered both as a sign with an initial sound, and thus as a character, whose initial sound, for example ‘anzuz’, served as the letter ‘a’. This dual aspect of the runes has only become clear in the last decade.

 

The Germans also possessed, through their predictive characters, a set of letters that could be used to communicate in writing. Who had the creative idea for this use and where did it take place are questions that remain unanswered for the time being. Some indications given by Roman authors lead to the conclusion that this art was practised very early by the spiritual leaders of the Germanic tribes.

 

However, it is clear from all this that our ancestors were aware of the religious origin of the runic script and thus also of the language. In 1938, research led to the conclusion that the runes were more than just a means of communication. Their engraving has a religious basis and a purpose similar to the ancient rock drawings: to strengthen and immortalise.