![]() ![]() In the coming days I’ll be sharing some pieces from DDG here on my blog as they go up. We’re in the process of putting most of DDG into Creative Commons, like we have with the rest of the Level Up line. ![]() If you want to pick up a copy, head over to the enworld store! Richard Davies, Jane Hughes, Mike Myler, and Walt Ciechanowski, with additional consulting/editing from Phil Glotfelty and Peter Coffey, and the incomparable William Fischer as lead editor. While we’re talking DDG, let’s mention DDG’s contributors: Brandes Stoddard, Cassandra Macdonald, Mike Myler, Morrigan Robbins, Peter N Martin, Rory Madden, Sarah Madsen, William Fischer, Will Gawned, Anthony Pryor, C. In fact, I’ve been developing it and testing it – on this very blog, even – for years. I’m particularly proud of DDG because it’s such a personal project: I pitched the idea, assembled the team, and did a heck of a lot of writing for it. His paradigmatic sacrifice was likely symbolically imitated in initiation ceremonies during which the candidate learned the lore of the runes, but, unfortunately, no concrete evidence of such a practice has survived into our times.You love to hear when people like your work, so I was thrilled to see my Dungeon Delver’s Guide on Polygon’s best-of-the-year list for TTRPG books. Presumably, then, after Odin discovered the runes by ritually sacrificing himself to himself and fasting for nine days while staring into the waters of the Well of Urd, it was he who imparted the runes to the first human runemasters. We, therefore, have a clear association between the Well of Urd, the runes, and magic – in this case, the ability of the Norns to carve the fates of all beings. These “three maidens” are the Norns, and their carvings surely consist of runes. Three from the lake that stands beneath the pole. This is also suggested by another Old Norse poem, the Völuspá (“Insight of the Seeress”):įrom there come the dews that fall in the valleys. The runes themselves seem to have their native dwelling-place in its waters. Directly below the world-tree is the Well of Urd, a source of incredible wisdom. The tree from which Odin hangs himself is surely none other than Yggdrasil, the world-tree at the center of the Germanic cosmos whose branches and roots hold the Nine Worlds. This tale has come down to us in the Old Norse poem Hávamál (“The Sayings of the High One”): The runes were never “invented,” but are instead eternal, pre-existent forces that Odin himself discovered by undergoing a tremendous ordeal. It is said that the runes came from no source as mundane as an Old Italic alphabet. ![]() This explains their sharp, angular form, which was well-suited to the medium. Runes were traditionally carved onto stone, wood, bone, metal, or some similarly hard surface rather than drawn with ink and pen on parchment. On some inscriptions, the twenty-four runes of the Elder Futhark were divided into three ættir (Old Norse, “families”) of eight runes each, but the significance of this division is unfortunately unknown. 750 CE) and eventually replaced that older alphabet in Scandinavia and the 33-character Anglo-Saxon Futhorc, which gradually altered and added to the Elder Futhark in England. There are three principal futharks: the 24-character Elder Futhark, the first fully-formed runic alphabet, whose development had begun by the first century CE and had been completed before the year 400 the 16-character Younger Futhark, which began to diverge from the Elder Futhark around the beginning of the Viking Age (c. The runic alphabets are called “futharks” after the first six runes (Fehu, Uruz, Thurisaz, Ansuz, Raidho, Kaunan), in much the same way that the word “alphabet” comes from the names of the first two Semitic letters (Aleph, Beth).
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