elder futhark runes meaning for divination

Traditionally, one should make a set of runes for yourself. This is a natural progression and personally links you to your runes. You can use the ‘traditional’ interpretations as a rough guide (such as those in Ref 2 below are a good starting point), but you will find that some of your own interpretations start to deviate from the widely used norm. As such the both the translations and interpretation of the Rune Poem is very subjective.Īs such, I believe it is best for anyone interested in learning this system to acquire a translated version of the Rune Poem, which resonates with you and to interpret its exact meaning for yourself. Therefore, it is postulated that both copying error and translation errors could have crept into the (re)documented versions of the Rune Poem. Additional oddities arose due to hand-copying, translation efforts and comparisons of the Elder Futhark with the reduced Younger Futhark (9th century, Scandinavian origin, 16 runes) and expanded Futhorc (5th century, Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Frisian origin, 33 runes). IX sparked scholarly debate as to whether the Rune Poem was recorded in the original manuscript. Similarities of the Thesaurus to the MS Cotton Domitian A. X) perished in the Cottonian library fire of 1731, thus George Hickes’ edition became the only copy of the Rune Poem.

The original manuscript (MS Cotton Otho B. The first edition of the Rune Poem was contained in a historical manuscript, the Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archæologicus by George Hickes during 1703.

The Elder Futhark was recorded throughout history by hand, usually carved with a knife, hence the linear and angular properties of the script. Therefore, clear linkage of the Elder Futhark to the Rune Poem is lacking and there is much scholarly debate as to the translation of both the script and the poem. The Old English Rune Poem is of Anglo-Saxon origin, dating (8th – 9th century) well after the Elder Futhark and is used as a proxy for the rune meanings.

Elder futhark runes meaning for divination