From: Haukur Thorgeirsson
Message: 1587
Date: 2001-10-20
>Nothing, which is why I don't recommend the vast majority ofThere we go! I haven't seen the book but I trust
>Thorsson's books - however, I have to agree with the positive
>assessment of *half* of _Runelore_. The first portion, "Historical
>Lore," is excellent, and my only disagreements are a few spots where
>I think he presents theory as fact.
> I've read several of R.I. Page's books on the subject, and I think heYes. And not all of those are actually talking about
> goes a bit far in thinking the runes were not heavily used for magic,
> as it seems all evidence points towards regular magical use. Also,
> while agreeing with many of his points, I found his writing style
> incredibly tedious.
> The major point I agree with, though, is that we
> know very little about what any possible magic uses would have been.
> What has survived consists of: the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem, the
> Norwegian Rune Rhyme, the Icelandic Rune Poem, the Rúnatals portion
> of Hávamál, a few stanzas in Sigdrífumál and Gróagaldr, the
> Abecedarium Nordmanicum, thousands of engravings (but few complete
> fúÞórk sets) and a few references in sagas and poetry to the use of
> runes.
> For that matter, the "common" names used for the runes (fehu, uruz,I'd be interested in hearing the loopy theory :)
> etc) are rather poor Proto-Germanic reconstructions, and I don't even
> see the point for them when the poems give actual names: the
> Anglo-Saxon poem gives names for 29 runes in their set and the
> Norwegian and Icelandic poems give names for the 16 runes in the
> younger set. Since all 24 elder runes are also part of the
> Anglo-Saxon version, it doesn't take much effort to simply translate
> the other 8 eight into Old Norse (except peorð, for which I can't
> decent evidence regarding what it should be, although I have a loopy
> theory).