Believe it or not, I have actually updated. I have had other things going on lately and struggled with being interested in working on this. Hopefully future updates will come somewhat quicker.

I posted a page about the dotted fé rune. I don’t suspect that this will be of much interest to most of my readers, but I hope that this gives an indication of the scope and detail that I’m aiming for. I hope that I managed to find a balance between including necessary details and explaining it so that non-specialists can understand.

Over the last couple days I wrote a post explaining what rune kennings are and how they were used. Jón Ólafsson called these dylgjur (singular dylgja) and I have elected to take up the word as well, as not all of them are well-formed kennings. I also wrote a page about the *fehu rune and its later reflexes. I have a couple of concerns about the format but I haven’t figured out how to address them yet. Feedback would be appreciated.

One thing I meant to do but forgot was include a few more inscriptions that make use of the rune. I did it only to show somewhat specific phonological things. It’s kind of weird on my end because there are thousands of them and picking a few is completely arbitrary. I will update at some point, but fortunately with that particular rune it isn’t very complicated and I don’t think much is lost by not including it.

I did include a bunch of images of actual inscribed and written f-runes. One of the things that bothers me about modern use of runes is that they’re always so incredibly ugly. People seem to believe that runes are ugly by definition. I’ve encountered people who claim that runes are an important part of their religion who can’t even recognize them if they don’t look like the ones on the Gallehus horn. I have more to say about that but I’ll leave it at that for now.

I’m just getting started here and figuring out my next moves. I’ll be straight-up and let everyone know that ultimately I’m trying to write a book, or series of books, about runes. The content of this site will be determined by what I’m researching for that. The long-term goal is to contribute to a critical reevaluation of runes and their relationship to heathenry. I don’t think it’s enough to point to all the racist influence and just say “stop doing that” without at least dropping some hints about how to do better.

My current big project is transcribing and translating Björn á Skarðsá’s essay about runes written in 1642. In his day, Björn was considered one of the most knowledgeable people about runes in Iceland, and his essay has shaped the way we discuss runes, yet it has never been translated. As far as I can tell, he seems to be the source of the word ætt to describe subgroupings of runes. Much of what he wrote is incorrect by modern standards, but it’s an important example of how runes were considered before modern academic runology. For example, he and his contemporary Jón lærði really believed the gods were deified historical figures.

My first tangible goal for this site is working on pages for each of the runes, one-by-one. I’ll probably follow younger futhark order with stungnar rúnir (dotted, marked with a diacritic) probably immediately following the base rune. I will include big lists of rune kennings, using Grunnavíkur-Jón Ólafsson’s Runologia as the base text. These lists of kennings vary wildly by manuscript but Jón’s lists are fairly representative. It’s okay if it isn’t clear what I’m talking about, I’ll explain fully.

I am thinking about ways to passively monetize some of this. I don’t want to withhold anything important from people who can’t or don’t want to pay. Maybe early access. I’m not sure, and I’m open to suggestions.