Odin and the Runes, Part Three

Odin on the World Tree by Emil Doepler (1900)

In Völuspá, Odin has hung himself, stabbed himself with a spear, and made a sacrifice of himself, to himself – all in search of knowledge that is unknowable to the living. There are many tales of Odin's wisdom-quests to the lands of the dead, and many are made on his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. The strange number of legs is understandable if one pictures a coffin being carried to the grave by four pallbearers, two in front and two in back; the corpse "rides" to the grave on eight legs, much as Odin "rides" the World Tree.

Pallbearers

In 1947, anthropologist Verrier Elwin recorded a funeral dirge sung by the Gond people of central India. The riddling lyrics describe an eight-legged horse named Bagri Maro as a metaphor for a man being carried to his grave:

What horse is this?
It is the horse Bagri Maro.
What should we say of its legs?
This horse has eight legs.
What should we say of its heads?
This horse has four heads.

The riddle's answer is that four pallbearers equal four heads and eight legs.

Compare this to what Helene Adeline Guerber calls "the oldest Northern riddle": "Who are the two who ride to the Thing? Three eyes have they together, ten feet, and one tail: and thus they travel through the lands." In this context, the Thing is the meeting of the gods. One-eyed Odin riding his eight-legged horse equals three eyes, ten feet, and one tail. These two riddles, separated by vast distances of time and space, underscore both the concept of the coffin as horse and the idea of a hereditary connection (common or originating) between the Germanic tribes and the peoples of the Indian subcontinent.

Runic inscription on Kylver Stone in Gotland, Sweden (circa 400)

Hanging on the World Tree, Odin journeys to the edge of death and, as a result, he discovers the secret of the runes, the letter-characters that were used in the Germanic world for approximately the first 1500 years after Christ. When Odin says, "downwards I peered," the image is of looking down into the depths of dead, into the void of nothingness called Ginnungagap ("beguiling void") that existed before all else in the Norse mythic universe. He pulls himself back from the brink of death ("then I fell back from there"), returning from the very edge of nonexistence. As with so much of the mythic ideas around Odin, this seems to refer to some form of shamanic initiation ritual; the wizard must undergo a trial in order to receive knowledge of secret arcane wisdom.

Runic engravings have been found in Germany, Sweden, Iceland, England, and even in Constantinople's Hagia Sophia mosque. The latter has at least two attested runic inscriptions, both grafitti with the name of the Viking adventurer – the equivalent of "Halfdan was here."

Bluetooth logo

In other words, the runes were in use throughout the entire world that was inhabited (or even visited) by the migrating Germanic tribes. Runes are still around us today. The Bluetooth technology that links wireless devices is named for the 10th century Danish king who united the disparate Danish tribes under his leadership. The communications corporation used his name as a symbolic representation of how their technology unites all digital devices under one protocol, and its trademark is a bind-rune that brings together the runes for H and B – Harald Bluetooth.

Scholarly debate has raged for hundreds of years over the question of magical use of the runes. Some argue that the runes were merely an alphabet like any other, while others argue that they were used for magical incantation, and that each rune had its own magical properties. In Hávamál, Odin himself lays out a list of runes and their magical abilities. He tells the listener,

The runes you must find and the meaningful letter,
a very great letter,
a very powerful letter,
which the mighty sage stained
and the powerful gods made
and the runemaster of the gods carved out.

In this and other Eddic passages, runes seem to be clearly described as magically-charged symbols activated by staining or coloring them with blood or other colored dye. Also, in the Saga of the Volsungs, which tells the story of the dragonslayer Sigurd and the valkyrie Brynhild, the mystic warrior imparts runic wisdom to the human hero, instructing him on specific runic rituals for specific magical effects. This all seems to point to a definite tradition of runes for magical use.

Wood runes made by Jóhanna G. Harðardóttir (2010)

For further support for the magical explanation, we can turn to the Germania of Tacitus, written by the Roman historian in the year 98 AD and examine the passage in which he describes how the Germans "cast lots": "They cut off a branch of a nut-bearing tree and slice it into strips; these they mark with different signs and throw them completely at random onto a white cloth. Then the priest of the state, if the consultation is a public one, or the father of the family if it is private, offers a prayer to the gods, and looking up at the sky picks up three strips, one at a time, and reads their meaning from the signs previously scored on them." Most notably, this shores up the argument that each rune had meanings attached to it beyond mere letter-signification, as only three are drawn; mere letters obviously could not spell out very complex messages with only three characters. Interestingly, it also provides evidence that religion was often an internal family matter, where leaders of the family led religious rites instead of attending rituals led by a priestly class.

Odin and the Runes, Part Two

One name that Odin is known by is Hrafnáss ("raven-god"). He is often described and depicted as being attended by two ravens as magical familiars. They are known as Hugin and Munin ("thought" and "memory").

Silver figurine found at Lejre, Denmark (circa 900)

In the Eddic poem Grímnismál ("Sayings of the Masked One" – another name for Odin), the god says,

Hugin and Munin fly every day
over the wide world;
I fear for Hugin that he will not come back,
yet I tremble more for Munin.

Odin sits on Hlidskjalf, his high seat above the clouds, and sends his ravens out to bring him back news of happenings throughout the Nine Worlds of the Norse cosmogony.

We can read backwards from this mythic structure to see evidence of shamanistic practices in the early Germanic religion. Many cultures throughout the world have the concept that the wise man or religious leader can send out his spirit in the form of a chosen animal. This spirit animal can travel farther and gather more information than anyone in human form. The fear of the god for his ravens can be seen as fear that the shaman will not wake from his trance-state, and that his conscious mind will be lost and unable to return to everyday reality.

Ravens are an obvious choice for a war god, as they could be seen on the bloody battlefields of the North, flying to and fro to feast on the corpses of the dead. They are often seen in pairs, as they are one of the avian species that tend to mate for life. Given all this, the Christian notion of the all-seeing God – as in the traditional gospel hymn "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" – can be seen prefigured in that Germanic notion that "his (one) eye is in the raven."

Odin with wolves and ravens by Johannes Wiedewelt (circa 1780)

Odin is also attended by two wolves, Geri and Freki (both names meaning "greedy"). Like ravens, they are creatures that haunt battlefields and feast upon the slain. They may also be symbolic of a wolf-cult of Odin. The poems and sagas of the North are full of tales of werewolves, and these are generally understood to be berserkers ("bear-shirts" – i.e., wearing animal skins, perhaps meaning taking the form of an animal). These warriors were consumed with a battle-frenzy that made them act like wild animals º– a frenzy that was thought to be brought on by Odin, the Raging God.

Werewolf (Egil's Saga Exhibition in Borgarnes, Iceland)

Another of Odin's names is Allvíss ("all-wise"). Our modern English word wizard derives from wize-ard ("wise-one"). Odin is the original wizard and is the role model for Tolkien's Gandalf; Gandalf itself is a byname for Odin that translates to "wand-elf" or "staff-elf" – the mystical figure who wanders the roads with his walking-stick. One of the most central aspects of the god in the Norse conception is as a seeker after wisdom.

Yggdrasil, the World Tree of Norse cosmology, reflects yet another name of Odin, deriving from the most well-known of his adventures in search of arcane knowledge. Ygg ("terrible") is one of the god's names, and Yggdrasil is generally taken to mean "Ygg's horse." This refers to the story of Odin's self-hanging in order to gain secret widsom; he "rode" the tree.

Yggdrasil by Oluf Olufsen Bagge (1847)

In one of the most famous passages from the Eddic poem Hávamál ("Sayings of the High One"), the god says,

I know that I hung on a windy tree
nine long nights
wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
myself to myself,
on that tree of which no man knows
from where its roots run.

No bread did they give me nor drink from a horn,
downwards I peered;
I took up the runes, screaming I took them,
then I fell back from there.

Before we examine his relationship to hanging, we should note his association with the spear.

In the Eddic poem Völuspá ("Prophecy of the Seeress"), the beginning of the first war in the world is signaled with the ritualized throwing of a spear: "Odin shot a spear, hurled it over the host." As in the mythic tales, it was in life. Germanic warriors of pagan times were known to begin a battle by throwing a spear over the heads of their enemies to symbolically sacrifice them to Odin.

The Vanir War by Emil Doepler (1900)

Like so many elements of ancient religious practice, these rituals survived into later ages, but their meanings were clouded and lost. In the medieval German epic of the Nibelungenlied, Folker the Burgundian makes a strange gesture: "With that, he lifted a sharp spear and hard from the ground, that a Hun had shot at him, and hurled it strongly across the courtyard, over the heads of the folk." There is no explanation given in the text, but, in light of the slaughter that ensues, this seems a vestigial act from a bygone era, its true meaning lost.

Odin and the Runes, Part One

Who is Odin, the One-Eyed God?

He is the god of a thousand names, each one of which expresses a different aspect of his character.

Odin by Edward Burne-Jones (1883)

This multiplicity of names comes from the Nordic love of word play – of riddles, alliteration, puns and kennings. A kenning is a type of poetic circumlocution. The Icelandic poet Ulf Uggason wrote, "But the sharp-looking stiff land-rope stared over the gunwale at the country-bone-folk's tester and blew poison." This line only becomes intelligible when the reader understands the mythological references. The "land-rope" is the Midgard Serpent, the snake so large that it encircles the Earth. The "country-bone" is rock, its folk are the giants, and their tester is the god Thor. So the line could read, "But the sharp-looking Midgard Serpent stared over the gunwale at Thor and blew poison" – but that would be much too simple.

Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson (1178-1241) published his Edda in 1220 to preserve understanding of his nation's poetry. With the complicated kennings they contained, they were completely incomprehensible unless the reader knew the myths and tales they referenced. Scholars are not sure what exactly the name Edda refers to. It can mean "great-grandmother" (as in, the one who tells old stories), Oddi (the part of southern Iceland where Snorri was raised), or derive from óđr (Old Norse for "poetry" or "inspiration").

Another major source for Norse mythology is the Poetic Edda, a collection of poetry that mostly comes from the Codex Regius ("Royal Manuscript"), a ninety-page manuscript dated between 1270 and 1280. Snorri probably had access to many of these texts from other (now lost) sources.

One of the major names for Odin is Allfather. In the beginning of time, according to the Scandinavian version of the mythology, there was only fire and ice. Niflheim ("Home of Mist") lay to the north and Muspell (from the Old High German muspilli – "doomsday") lay to the South. When these two elemental forces clashed, the world was created. There is an entire tale of the giant Ymir, the cow Audhumla, and others, but the name "Allfather" is related to the creation of the first man and woman by a trio of young gods: Odin, Vili ("will") and Vé ("sacred enclosure"). In some sources, they are known as Odin, Hönir, and Lodur. Odin's two companions are minor figures, and they only appear as travelling companions to the Allfather. Odin becomes the central god of the mythology in its Scandinavian version, and he is the father of both humans and gods.

Reverse of Nordendorf Fibula (circa 6th century)

In German, Odin's name was Wodan. The so-called Nordendorf Fibula is a small brooch dating to approximately the 6th century, discovered in Nordendorf, Germany in the 19th century. A runic inscription on its reverse reads Logaþore Wodan Wigiþonar. This is generally interpreted to name a trio of – Lodur, Odin, and Blessing-Thor.

The German for Odin's name derives from the Old High German verb watan, which survives in modern German as wüten ("to rave, to rage, to be furious"). The god is a personification of the terrifying might of nature's force and of the fierce passion that pervades the natural living world. He rides at the head of das Wütend Heer ("the furious host"), his very name present here in the adjectival form of wütend ("raging"). This collection of gods, goddesses, and (un)dead warriors was believed throughout the Germanic world to ride through the skies in the most violent and darkest northern storms, sweeping up human victims who dared to venture outside of their homes. Wodan / Odin is often portrayed in the vanguard of the host, accompanied by his loyal valkyries and followed by Thor with his mystic hammer.

As the Germanic tribes migrated northwards and westwards, their languages changed and divided. Wodan was known as Odin in Scandinavia and Woden in England. Along the way, the origin of the name seems to have been lost. By the time we get to the medieval Edda, Snorri felt confident in giving a euhemeristic account of the god's origin, placing him in an almost Biblical list of names that situates him as a human king descended from refugees of the Trojan war who came up into Scandinavia from Turkey. There are too many problems with this explanation of the god's origin to list, but the character – like so many Germanic gods – seems to have originally been a concept given corporeal form.