#thorraborinn

[incorrectedda]

I understand why people say these things, but you do all actually know that “no nazis in Valhalla” and “nazis go to Níðhöggr” are bullshit, right? The universe is not going to provide us with justice. We have to do that ourselves.

Týr, probably.

[fuckyeahnorsemythology]

Would you know of any English translations of Gullkársljóð? Or at least a modern language version so it can be translated?

Hello and thank you for the question. Sadly, I have never encountered an English translation and in fact have only ever seen the various scans of original manuscript (such as here and here). I believe that Gullkár’s poem used to be included in some early (pre-1900) translated editions of the Poetic Edda or perhaps you can find it in some form under the title of Eddica Minora (this includes poems not found in Codex Regius).

I would guess that if anyone were to know if such a translation exists, it would be @thorraborinn, @fjorn-the-skald or @glegrumbles so maybe they might be able to offer some help.

- @hedendom

[rudolf-rokkr]

Since my main blog, þorraborinn, is mostly linguistics and literature, I figured I would start a sideblog to dump all the shit that doesn’t feel like it belongs there. That’s basically going to be anarchist and personal religious stuff and mostly the intersection of the two and how one informs the other. Also more dumb runic graphics. Probably do a lot more reblogging too.

[fjorn-the-skald]

thorraborinn replied to your post: Hey! I want to put a tattoo in the oldest viking...

“Worth reminding the asker that elder futhark was dead before vikings were around. Also don’t spell Mathilda with a þ-rune because the “th” is pronounced like a t.”

Of course, although it seemed clear to me that the asker preferred the elder, since the asker requested “the oldest viking alphabet.” It is true that we know the difference, but people tend to use ‘Viking’ as a blanket term to refer to anything medieval Scandinavian. Besides, nearly every asker I have had regarding runes has been asking about the elder runes. 

@lovinginthedawn, feel free to ask me, or thorraborrinn, about the history of the futhark. Though, perhaps you should ask him rather than me. I also do apologize if you meant ‘Vikings’ to mean Vikings and not medieval Scandinavians in general. 

I have, in my defense, made this distinction about rune sets to people in the past (here, though these lessons have come a long way since that one, and here, although perhaps not bluntly enough). Perhaps I ought to include a disclaimer each time a person asks me about it as to not smear any more inaccuracies across the internet, eh? You are right, of course, I should have reminded the asker of it. In fact, I will edit the post for future readers.

As for the name, I was not familiar with it, nor with how it is actually spoken. That is a bit of an excuse from me, though, I suppose. I will go ahead and correct that on your merit, since I do respect and speak highly your knowledge on these matters. You are, after all, one of the people that I was referring to when I mentioned that I would tag other people who would do a better job than I can.

Anyway, I am thankful that you spoke up and corrected the matter. You do a swell job at correcting my faults, although you are not around otherwise. I never claim to know everything, nor do I ever claim to be an expert in an area that I am not. I do the best that I can with what knowledge I currently have. So, I appreciate the criticism, because it helps me to learn from your knowledge and experience. I do, of course, just wish that our encounters were not always for such a reason.

Thank you, as always.

[follower-of-odin]

thorraborinn replied to your post “How do I convince my little sister that runes aren’t evil?”

They were used more by Christians than by heathens, by a factor of like a lot.

I’ve heard they’re principally found on headstones. Is that correct?

[fjorn-the-skald]

thorraborinn replied to your photo:Old Norse Grammar - Personal Pronouns Jesse L....

1.b. should say “Hans bók var góð”

Thank you, Thorraborinn,

I will correct it immediately. I should not have put the masculine form, góðr, with the feminine noun bók. Of course they must agree. That was careless of me.

[thorraborinn]

Not sure if you’ve been asked this or not, but what drove you to become a Norse pagan? What kind of evidence that supports your belief that Þórr, Óðinn et al. exist have you encountered?

I’ve been making semi-regular attempts to answer this since you asked it months ago and honestly trying to analyze my religious beliefs as a whole feels kind of like trying to pick up one of those water weenie things that keep slipping out of your hand. This is still a mess but I’m just going to call it. I’m never going to have an actual complete response to this.

If I talk about “believing” in heathen gods this is an entirely different kind of “believing” than one does in things like evolution, the Big Bang, string theory, or even Creationism, and for most people, God.

I can’t help but feel limited by the vocabulary available to me, needing to use “believe” for both of these, though the distinction that we heathens like to make between orthodoxy and orthopraxy is related to this. Our whole ideological apparatus for discussing religion has mostly revolved around Christianity, wherein belief is the identifying feature (for most Christian religions, anyway) leaving us (or at least me) with relatively fewer tools for discussing religion where that is not the case.

I think the vocabulary and ideological tools I’m looking for are probably well-represented in the field of anthropology, but unfortunately for me, that’s well outside of my jurisdiction. I’m going to put the rest of my struggling to describe some of my ideas behind the break.

The literal existence or non-existence of heathen gods is not very important to my religion; what I do seems to be some kind of an expression of an underlying capacity for religion that probably could have manifested differently if I were raised in a different context, and which was apparently unsatisfied by Christianity. I came to heathenry because it didn’t require me to make claims about things I couldn’t possibly know or understand. I find myself motivated (for whatever reason) to pray to heathen gods, make offerings to them, and otherwise perform manifestations of religious beliefs, so I conclude that I probably have those beliefs, since it suddenly becomes very difficult to explain my thoughts and behavior otherwise.

I am not here expressing literal nonbelief either. That is also just beyond my ability, as inaccessible to me as literal belief. Nor is it agnosticism, which (at least as far as I know) accounts for a literal truth which is unknowable. I’m asserting that applying these to religion is just not applicable.

I will admit to some vague, not particularly useful, sort of Spinozan religious feelings with relation to objective reality; I am not interested in declaring it to be “one” thing or drawing borders or boundaries within it, I mentally call this regin but without any claims to its association with specifically Norse gods or any other gods but rather because regin seem to best reflect my own reception of it through my own cultural lens (meaning that even this gets processed through this religious apparatus that I’m describing).

This is also not a denial that some things might be literally knowable or believable, just that once something is identified as such it ceases to be the same things as what I’m otherwise talking about. Even supernatural beliefs like, for example, belief in ghosts, can at least theoretically be incorporated into evidence-based literal belief. If this is true of gods, I find it highly unlikely that what we would discover about them would be identical with the “beliefs” produced by this capacity for religion that I’m talking about.

I have more thoughts on this than I am prepared to really talk about right now. I’m interested in exploring this capacity for religion as the “real”/objective thing but which is incapable of expression without being populated with some kind of substance.

Although I think that most pre-Christian heathens did literally believe in gods, I don’t think this is the factor that identifies them as heathen. I think this is reflected in the “might and main” (mátt ok megin) figures from the sagas. These are people who are not heathen even though they do literally believe in the objective existence of gods. Hrólfr kraki even stands face-to-face with Óðinn but he still does not “believe” (in a religious capacity) in him because his knowledge that he exists does not motivate worship. Admittedly, we should keep in mind the usefulness of this trope (related to or part of the greater “noble heathen” literary device) to a Christian audience which weakens the case for them actually having existed. However its exact opposite (a figure whose heathenism is identified in its performance and not in what he believes is literally correct) is reflected in the story of King Hákon góði Aðalsteinsfóstri, who was Christian but still performed blót (making him functionally heathen with relation to his reception by others).

Some people will undoubtedly notice a relationship between my description of my religious beliefs and linguistics, which seems like a pretty natural comparison to me given that they are both possibly uniquely human and seem to be universal among humans (that is, not everyone is religious, but I don’t see any reason to doubt that everyone has the capacity for religion). I think we should consider that there is nothing about the word god (or any other word) that has objective or universal meaning and if Earth disappeared tomorrow the word god would not exist (one might argue that the particular arrangement of sounds could still be produced, but on the level of physical reality no two utterances are ever identical and the parsing of those sounds into phonemes and those phonemes into a word cannot exist in isolation of the human capacity for language), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist; its existence is reaffirmed and renewed every time it’s spoken and every time it’s heard and processed (and sometimes even transformed). It seems possible to make similar claims about reaffirmation and renewal with regard to heathen ritual, sacred space, and oral poetry.

Though all of this is extremely speculative and subject to change as I learn more, there are two things that I think are important and which I’m unlikely to waver on. First, it’s individualistic – it envisions a religious community as a lot of individuals with their own unique worldviews who choose to freely associate with each other as a result of each others’ perceived shared values. Second, it’s relative and changeable, but not arbitrary – I would much sooner describe a process of religious discovery for myself than of construction (though construction also plays a role, it must ultimately be subject to acceptance or rejection).

Of course, above I mentioned that I don’t want my religion to involve making assertions about things I don’t understand, and this speculative description of my religious “apparatus” is that, but it isn’t the religion itself – it’s operation generates religion (there, I said it).

[havamal120]

So I’ve made the top image to show exactly what my research into the runic Ale formula of Sigrdrifumal looks like. For context, it is called the Ale formula because it takes place in the abode of Mimir, who is taking the runes from natural places throughout the cosmos, and shaving them off into a sacremental ale. Furthermore, given the count in the picture above, if you add the numbers of A L and U, a magick formula composed of the word for Ale, together in this arrangement it equals 24, the total sum of elder runes, which further mystically enforces the connection between ALU and the futhark. A discerning eye will observe that there are many kennings here that are well suited to what we know about the runes, but that some seem overtly mismatched. For one, number 4 and 5, raido and ansuz, appear to belong in place, but with alternating descriptions. There is a profound mystery to this seeming inconsistency, and anyone interested in the details may enquire further. Suffice it to say that the wheel of Thor’s cart is a kenning, and not a physical cart, or a reference to the function of a cart, despite the actual appearance of the word “reid” in the next line. The wheel of hrungnir’s bane is actually a stationay constellation, but in particular the star polaris. The horse Alsvith, however, refers to something dynamic, the ridding of the firmament, from the dynamic wolf. Future experimentation will of course be required to establish a better understanding of these kennings. Likewise Tiwaz’s association with healing may take many by surprise, but its symbolism is consistently represented in every Eddaic rune poem, either in healing cattle, amputating limbs etc; only once in sigrdrifumal is Tyr ever associated with battle, and then only in conjunction with the sig rune probably to aid in severing opponents limbs. Many of these kennings will require your full attention, and research, to confirm, deny, or ascribe meaning. For some of the kennings that appear unique there are simple, and even humorous, associations. My favorite is “on Bragi’s Tongue,” perhaps you already get the joke, but this rune is on the tongue of anyone who talks too much outdoors. Another actually the proceeding rune, “on the paw of the bear,” is a well known kenning for Norway, which is where your “estate” would be found if you were the original demographic for this poem. The Sig runes “on glass and on gold” is another obvious reference to the way the sun illuminates valuable reflective surfaces. The reference to glass is actually rather odd. Finally, now that you see the fixed position of some of these runes, it becomes obvious that there is a fixed order, composed of the backwards rearrangement of the Aetts. What we do understand, projected upon what we don’t teaches us new mysteries of the runes. For this reason I would caution people not to disregard this new lore just because it contradicts many poorly established norms In runosophy and runology. If this find is accepted then it means that there is lore for the elder futhark, as was previously unrecognized, and that many of our impressions of the elder runes, gleaned from the Anglo-Saxon rune poem, are incomplete. Feel free to ask about any given kenning. It is my greatest desire to benefit from sharing this, and I hope that my followers will discover, share, and elaborate on the poem, as any additional insight will be much appreciated.