The answer to this stanza riddle is the word eolhx, meaning unclear. We know this is the name of the rune because this word appears in the only copy we have of the Rune Poem, printed in 1705… More
Tag Archives: Duets
Sitting to Battle
Imagine yourself sitting in a beer hall with the rune carvers, playing a game requiring strategy, skill, luck. You are feeling wlanc, proud, boastful. What are you boasting about?… More
Trust
The yew is absolutely massive compared to us, so much weight shooting up, lengthening, drooping back down to plunge into the earth, travel, shoot back up and do it again: swoop up into… More
The Future
You can’t have a society without a collective understanding of time. You can’t. Show me one. Time is the basis of everything: our idea of shared reality, what we think … More
War and Peace
During the time of the Rune Poem, a properly kitted warrior owned a decent war horse to take to battle. These were bigger horses than the usual so they could handle a person wearing heavy… More
The Water Cycle
The people of the Rune Poem were farmers and seafarers living in a wet country, and they had a much closer relationship with weather than we have. We can spend whole productive lives … More
Prosperity
When you line up the Rune Poem stanzas and bend the line back on itself into a long U shape so the runes face each other, you get fourteen pairs. This pair, Ing and Wyn, the eighth, begins… More
Imagine yourself. Now imagine yourself 1500 years ago. Can you think like that? Think in Old English. There you go. Now you belong to a people who knew the 
The By Land and By Sea
The medieval world was on the move. They traveled, all over the place and farther than you think. The Romans did it prior, they set up the whole show. They covered the lands around the … More
Axis Mundi
Archaeologists in their digging and dating trace the oldest runic alphabet back to the late second century. The oldest rune carvings are often of the alphabet itself, carved in order.… More
They’ll Cut You
Let’s worry about the thegns. We’ve worried about the thegns before, but these poor bastards have a lot on their plate. They’re the glam squad for a bunch of divas… More
Moody Joy
The rune carvers prized beaver fur and skin, their teeth made a great necklace found sometimes in the graves of women and children and once around the neck of a dog, and by church decree… More
Everything is Temporary
I am so terribly sorry for your loss. I’ll be thinking about you and will light a candle. Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you in your time of grief, while you are… More
