runes.pdf

The Skeptics SA guide to

Runes, Vikings and the New Age

Browse any New Age Bookshop and you’ll

ind sets of the ancient Norse Runes whose

magical essence gives them the power of tell-

ing the future and protecting from harm. Not

many of us take this seriously, but we might

accept that it is merely popularized version of

the Norse religion. Closer study shows that the

New Age version of the Runes give us much

more reason to be skeptical. The Norsemen

were a tough race living in a violent age. The

term Viking only applies to the raiders who

burned and pillaged their way around the

European coasts in the 9th – 11th century, but

they were just the most extreme exponents of

their values. Their leaders were men like Eric

Bloodaxe and Thorinn Skullsplitter, and their

elite were the beserkers who worked them-

selves into a psychotic fury before battle. The

greatest honor was to die in battle, as dead

warriors spent the afterlife feasting in Valhalla,

and everybody else went to the gloomy abode

of Hel. The gentler, less macho virtues were

not highly rated.

The New Age wants to rehabilitate the Norse-

men and show them as people of fairness

honor and hospitality, since it is an article of

their faith that any primitive people must be

more spiritually advanced than we moderns.

This sidesteps inconvenient features of their

religion. Blood sacriices were an important

part of worship, as noted by an observer in a

festival at Uppsala: ‘Of every living thing that

is male, they offer nine heads’. This includes

dogs and horses, as well as seventy-two hu-

man captives. Prisoners of war who were not

ransomed could be sacriiced to Odin or Thor;

some were drowned, and really unlucky ones

died in a gruesome ritual called‘blood eagle’.

The runes were considered magical and were

used for divination as well as carving monu-

ments. According to Norse mythology, the

god Odin gave mankind the runes; histori-

cal research indicates that they were derived

from the Etruscan alphabet. Many of them are

recognized as direct copies of Latin letters:

Is = I, Tyr = T, Beorc = B, Sigel = S, and so on.

The runes are a recent alphabet, not appear-

ing until the 3rd century BCE, and the power

ascribed to them is perhaps a relection of a

largely illiterate peoples’ awe of the written

word. The Norse practice of ‘casting the runes’

as a method of divination was recorded by Ro-

man historians. The secret of interpreting the

runes was known only to Runemasters who

passed this knowledge on by word of mouth.

The last of them died in the 17th century, tak-

ing the secrets with him.

The modern rune craze was started in 1982

by Ralph Blum’s The Book of Runes, which

had no connection with the Norse roots, but

is derived from the Chinese I Ching and the

author’s imagination (or perhaps that should

be ‘mystical insight’). The lack of historical

records on how the runes were interpreted has

not hindered the low of books on the subject.

As Gunnora Hallakarva, a lecturer in Norse

Paganism puts it: “New Age publishers do not

generally require high standards of authority

or authenticity in the manuscripts they pub-

lish”.

The lack of any known guidelines for divina-

tion means that authors tend to make up their

own. One says that it will only work if the

runes are inscribed on the wood of a fruiting

tree, another says that the surfaces onto which

they are cast is of great importance, a third

Skeptics SA

Runes, Vikings and the New Age Page 1

that true interpretation depends on an under-

standing of the bronze-age mother goddess re-

ligion. If any of them are right, then all the rest

are wrong. Some books suggest adopting the

Norse practice of wearing or carrying runes as

protective talismans. This seems bizarre with-

out the religious context: how much protection

would a Hindu expect from a St Christopher

medallion, or a Buddhist from Jewish phylac-

teries? Pick’n’mix is the New Age style.

In this psychic boot sale you can add bits from

Taoism, Native American beliefs, crystal lore,

Chinese acupuncture, relexology, Arthurian

myths, West African voodoo, and just about

anything else. Of course you can only take

the surface elements because otherwise you

might ind contradictions to spoil the patch-

work of undemanding feelgood beliefs. This

plundering of religions and cultures, a sort of

traficking in stolen gods, leaves the Christian

King Arthur rubbing shoulders with the Saxon

invaders and their pagan runes. He must be

turning restlessly beneath the boutiques of

Glastonbury. Regardless of the underlying

theory, the important question is whether

runic talismans work. They were tested in

the ield during the Second World War, when

thousands of soldiers went into battle wearing

the double ‘Sigel’ rune: symbol of ‘good van-

quishing evil, clear vision.’ These were the sol-

diers of the SS, the Nazi elite. Himmler, the SS

commander, resurrected the old mythology of

Teutonic blood, with runes as a symbol of their

supposed Viking forebears. After their defeat

their beliefs were consigned to the dustbin of

history.

I do sympathize with some New Age attitudes.

Respect for the environment should be en-

couraged, and the excesses of the consumer

culture deserve criticism. But the bogus rune-

lore does no credit to anyone. The ancient

Norsemen, a fascinating if bloodthirsty people,

are presented as a Walt-Disney parody of

themselves. Their religion is trivialized, their

whole pantheon of gods and related beliefs

ignored. None of the sets of ‘do it yourself’

fortune-telling runes and books have any real

connection with the ancient art of casting the

runes. The only purpose served seems to be to

sell something to people who already have a

set of tarot cards, turning the runes into just

another consumer product.

Skeptics SA

The South Australian branch of the

Australian Skeptics

For further information on the Australian

Skeptics and the journal, the Skeptic, contact:

Email: <info@skepticssa.org.au>

Web site: <www.skepticssa.org.au>

The New Age is closer to its parent culture

than people realize.

This article is reproduced by permission of the

author David Hambling, and was originally

published in The Skeptic, Volume 11 No 1,

pp 8 – 9. Contact at PO Box 475 Manchester

M60 2TH, United Kingdom

Skeptics SA

Runes, Vikings and the New Age Page 2

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