#galdralag

[w-y-r-d]

Hail to Sól!

Hail to the Shining Goddess

Hail to her wonderful warmth

Mundilfari's bright daughter

Máni's radiant sister

Bringer of light

And giver of life

[ek-vitki]

A galdralag on galdralag:

So, for homework for my Seiðr apprenticeship, I was assigned to write a poem in galdralag, the traditional norse poetic meter used for spellcraft and speaking of spellcraft.

i Grasp at Galdralag,

Great meter, Gargantuan power.

Always An Alliteration here.

Note Now which lines alliterate,

Know Now these six lines are ljoðahattr.

Another Alliteration ends ljoðahattr.

Additional Alliteration Adds power.

Great Galdralag Always Alliterates Although Adding Eighth lines are Optional.

So as this galdralag I wrote explains, galdralag is an alliterative poetic meter focused on parallelism. Also, as the poem suggests, the first part of any galdralag is actually the format called ljoðahattr, another poetic meter used by the old norse. The first two lines alliterate with each other as much as possible, the more the better (my example is basic and in my native English), followed by a third line which alliterates within itself. Then, two more lines alliterate with each other, followed by another line of the same type as the third line. Then another (now seventh) line of the same type as the third and sixth line, followed by an eighth of the same type. You could experiment with adding more lines, of the same type as the third and sixth through eighth, although I’m unaware of examples of this. Galdralag can be found in the Rune song portion of the Havamal, the majority of the Havamal being written in the previously mentioned poetic meter of Ljoðahattr.

Galdralag can also be broken down in this way, to aid in understanding the meter’s structure:

1: always alliterates with 2

2: always alliterates with 1

3: always alliterates with itself

4: always alliterates with 5

5: always alliterates with 4

6: always alliterates with itself

7: always alliterates with itself

8: always alliterates with itself

There are also examples of Ljoðahattr consisting of just the first three lines, and becoming galdralag when adding another line of the same type as the third, for a shorter poetic verse.

Feel free to message me if you have any questions. I hope to see the Norse art of Galdralag spread and evolve, and I hope my English speaking audience finds some inspiration to work with this style of both traditional spellcraft and poetry (Galdralag is both). Of course, I likely won’t reveal all I know about Galdralag as it would be very unwizard of me to reveal ALL my secrets, but I hope this is helpful or inspirational to some of you.

[ek-vitki]

Aye so I’m less than 25 followers away from finally breaching 1,000,

after over a year blogging, and as my birthday is at the end of April, I’m hoping the internet will help me achieve my dream of extremely mild internet fame. 1,000 followers is a huge milestone and I never really expected my page to get as big as it has (or as fast), but anyway, this has been a shameless self plug.

Follow me if you like:

-poetry (especially in old norse meters, or in shitty tumblr meter)

-magick (especially anything norse, although I do also delve into the occult generally pretty heavily)

-the Asatru Community (I became very involved there in the past few months

-Asatru/ paganism/ heathenry

-traditional norse magick, such as Galdr, Galdralag, Galdrastafir, Seiðr, vardlokkr, Joik, etc

-Runic magick using the Futharks

-anything norse related

-martial arts (especially Wing Chun Kung Fu or Lausatök Glima, or HEMA, my main focuses)

Yeet help propel Ek Vitki to Ek Victory

[scotiaeire]

(Old Version) Norse Galdr and Galdralag

[shabbytigers]

My hunch is that tho perhaps the meter used in O.N. would not be right for English there must /surely/ be some equivalent(s) because people work magic via song/poetry/etc. in plenty of languages. ... Might have to figure it out on your own though - but who knows! Maybe mashing the O.N. meter into English would do something! DO IT FOR SCIENCE

Approaches:

Approximating the ON meter in English, which, IDK. I know nothing.

Going to an Old English-derived analogic meter in modern English. If the ON meter actually does have enough resemblance to OE to make this a useful approach, it seems plausible. I'm at least minimally functional with OE and have played with this before and even inadvertently generated energy off of it before I ever knew that was a thing.

Going to some other meter entirely in modE, one that may not at all structurally resemble the ON meter, but achieves more or less the same thing in a functionally analogic way. I’d need a lot more guidance.

I'll have to ask the excellent teacher I’m in the process of trying to apprentice with; galdr is one of the things on the syllabus we’re discussing. (As are divination, sigil magic, and a whole lot of other stuff, study aids and 101 teasers for which have been popping up everywhere since the email exchange I had with him a few days back.)