Re: Edred Thorsson's books

Heill Selvarv!

>Nothing, which is why I don't recommend the vast majority of
>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.

There we go! I haven't seen the book but I trust
Selvarv on this. So here we have the recommended
popular book on runes. Go to the next book store;
find "Runelore"; tear it apart in the middle, go
to the counter and ask to buy the first half :þ :)

> I've read several of R.I. Page's books on the subject, and I think he
> 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.

Yes. And not all of those are actually talking about
magical uses of runes. The rune poems, for example,
have never seemed to me like the have much to do with
magic.

Hagall er kaldastr korna
Kristr skóp heiminn forna.

Hail is the coldest of grains
Christ created the world of old.

The first half just tell you what hail is,
in poetic language, the second half is just
some random piece of wisdom.

> For that matter, the "common" names used for the runes (fehu, uruz,
> 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).

I'd be interested in hearing the loopy theory :)
I see your point on not using the reconstructed names;
though even real scholars do - and often without the
asterisk.

Regards,
Haukur