Viking mythology and all that goes with it

[Bates]

First off... Happy birthday, Tyra May you have many, many more happy ones. Hope the thesis isn't melting your brain too badly.

I ween that I hung on the windy tree,
Hung there for nights full nine;
With the spear I was wounded, and offered I was
To Othin, myself to myself,
On the tree that none may ever know
What root beneath it runs.

None made me happy with loaf or horn,
And there below I looked;
I took up the runes, shrieking I took them,
And forthwith back I fell.

Which translation is that? Not quite the same as the ones I have, I like the flow of it.

 

[Erzebeth.Rouge]

any constellations in Hel?

 

[Erzebeth.Rouge]

i was looking abit more about norse symbolism, searching towards runes. is there a rune for Hela? i read something about her, her association to constellation or something like that. It was said shes associated to the scorpio constellation. being a scorpio myself, i know its both a good and bad sign : death and renewal. i understand it fit perfectly to Hela this way. and then i read the meaning of each runes, and i wonder, is there one for her too? according to your previous posts about this subject. if yes, im guessing maybe it may be Berkana rune? meaning Renewal, rebirth, new beginnings?
but then wouldnt it need to be associated to a more negative rune too? like Nauthiz? meaning Pain, confinement, limitation ? because you were saying Hel wasnt necessarely a bad place, its lonelyness etc.
so if i am right with associating these 2 runes with Hel, how put them togheter? is there some sort of drawing code? or is it simply like writing? one rune beside the other? then which one comes first?

thank you for answering

 

[Erzebeth.Rouge]

hmm.. doing further researches... this first site where i took infos about runes doesnt match that much wikipedia.. and i think wiki is more trustable.. ><

 

[Bates]

What site have you been looking at? I've found http://www.runemaker.com/runemaker.shtml to be pretty decent, has about the same information as the Wikipedia with a lot more on the mystical part of it. I have no idea of how accurate the mystical part is, that's not my department.

 

[Erzebeth.Rouge]

It is verrrrry interesting Bates, thank you!!
i amused myself in drawing runes of my first name and Hel, and Baldr, and Hermod lol
but ive read the meaning behing each runes and found none specific to Hel, sadly, but there is one for Baldr : Sowilo. ill use that.
the only one that seemed more like Hel IMO was the Isa one :

Translation
Ice

Meaning
Ice, cold, freezing. Lack of change. Stagnation. Lack of emotion. Storing binding. Bridge across danger

the associated god is Verdandi, which is a Norn..
can i still associate it to Hel???

otherwise, playing with the runes, Hela gives these 4 : Hagalaz, Ehnwaz, Laguz, Ansuz.
(Weather, damaging natural forces. Disruption. Interference. + Horse, beast of burden, steed or mount. Momentum, Speed.+Water, sea, ocean, river or lake. Cleansing, tide + Knowledge. Wisdom. Communication. The mouth. A message. )

im prolly not going through the right way.. there is a lot of water in this though.

but but but!! this is soooo passionating

 

[Bates]

I don't know, sorry. I'm just a guy with a bad reading habit and good people to point me at the right books. When it comes to what's proper, appropriate and permissible, well... I'm clueless.

But on a totally unrelated topic, I came across this while reading the news (American news rarely has any actual news, IMO, so I read the BBC news) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6283907.stm
This struck me as slightly amusing...

The president of the Association of Greek Clergymen, Father Efstathios Kollas, has described the followers of the Olympic gods as a handful of miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion who wish to return to the monstrous dark delusions of the past.

I swear, that has to be the absolute worst case of pinning your faults on the other guy I've ever heard. Seriously... that's about how I think of, well, a lot of people in this country. I'm seriously shaking my head in awe at the pure gall of the man.

 

[Vikingkid3]

I was looking at amazon.com trying to buy a copy of the eddas and a bunch of results came up and i have no idea which would be a good one to get.
http://www.amazon.com/Everymans-Lib...=pd_bbs_2/102-5489763-6300905?ie=UTF8&s=books
http://www.amazon.com/Prose-Edda-My..._bbs_sr_1/102-5489763-6300905?ie=UTF8&s=books
http://www.amazon.com/Poetic-Edda-O..._bbs_sr_3/102-5489763-6300905?ie=UTF8&s=books
They all seem to be ok but i don't want to buy something that doesn't help me learn all this stuff. I have the Icelandic sagas which is sick, and i've read alot about mythology online but it hurts the eyes after awhile, ya know what i mean?
thanks

 

[Bates]

The Everyman's version of the Prose is the one I have for a hardcopy. The way they do the kennings in the book is somewhat annoying, but it's supposed to be a fairly good translation.

The Larrington translation of the Poetic Eddas is supposed to be solid. I have the Hollander version, but do a lot of cross-checking with the Thorpe translation too. It makes my brain hurt, a lot, but poetry doesn't translate well, and I figure 2 different takes on it will get me closer to the original.

http://www.northvegr.org/lore/main.php#eddas was recommended to me when I was trying to figure out the same thing, hopefully it will help you as well.

 

[Tyra]

Vikingkid, go back just a little bit in this thread, and I think there's more to read there regarding the differences between the different translations etc. I have really ancient copies myself, so I can't tell you if one book is nicer than the other. You know, you could try to go into google booksearch, because they give you free previews of a lot of books. Then you can sort of weed through a few pages and see what you think.

E.R., you could make a bindrune for her. There isn't really a specific way to do that, you just have to figure out a way to combine the runes that looks good to you. By making a bindrune you combine the powers of each rune with the other. Go into Google images and look up "bindrune" and it gives you some examples. You probably know by now that I have a bindrune, an AEgishjalmur, tattooed on my shield arm. That's a very sort of standardized, commonly used, bindrune.
It's more difficult for you to write things in runes in the sense of actually spelling out her name, as it'd be an anachronism, since we don't pronounce things the same way these days (and over here). I don't think there is one specific rune associated with Hel (I'd have to look it up, nothing pops out in my mind just now), but regardless of that, there is nothing wrong with making up your own bindrune with the runes you associate with her.

Sorry Bates - we were posting at the same time! If it makes any difference, that's exactly what I do, but I skip between Thorpe, a Swedish translation and the ON. Found a really neat facsimilie of the Codex Regius on line, where you can read the original text in the original book. Now that's cool (and anal retentive, but I need to be for my thesis...).
Oh, and I am just speechless re that quote from the Greek clergyman. I have to think on that for a while, I think... Holy Hannah...

 

[Bates]

Unfortunately, I can't read Swedish or ON yet. Dunno if I'll ever learn Swedish, but at least a minimal understanding of ON is moving up on my To Do list. It'd be fun to be able to do some SCA stuff in ON, among other things.

The bind rune thing could work, Hagalaz and Isa seem fitting, but comes out looking sorta boring

Say, I actually have a question this time... Anyone have any good sources (with good pictures) for Norse runestone art? I can find a lot of stuff on it, but most of the pictures aren't that great. Trying to come up with ideas for the tooling on the set of arm guards I'm doing... and while I don't want to totally rip Johan off, the motif does fit. Of course, if anyone has better ideas for Viking Era leather armor decoration, I'm listening. Haven't been able to find much on armor, at least not in good enough shape I could I could figure out what decorative stuff they did, if anything.

 

[Tyra]

Oh, oh, me, me, me! I do! Wait, I have to find he site...
www.algonet.se/~hkkbs/vg56_2.jpg or http://hemsidor.torget.se/users/r/runor/ (it's the same site).It has pictures of most (if not all) of the Swedish runestones. There was a really good site that had drawings of them all, so you could see the pics really clearly, but that site seems to be down. These runestones: http://www.christerhamp.se/runor/gamla/ingvar.html (click in right margin under S&#214;91 for pics) are all stones raised in honor of people that died during the same raid. You can find out what they say here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingvar_Runestones

Anyhow, those are runestones.

These, on the other hand, are picture stones from Gotland (where I dug this spring):www.gotmus.i.se/.../bild_broa_halla_a1.jpg Click on the names (under V&#228;skinde) in the right margin to go to the next stone.
www.guteinfo.com/scripts/bilder/info/1275.jpg
Click on the numbers below the pics to go to the next stone.

 

[ozmo]

Hail, long time reader first time poster. First of, this thread is great i have gotten lots of useful information and book tips in here Cheers!

Secondly Tyra, if i wasn't sure you would behead me for implying it, you beeing a norse woman and such, I would ask you to have my babies. Note that im not! (Im very fond of my head in the location it is ) Im just amazed of all the knowledge you have obtained and are charing in this forum

Now to the question at hand.
Im getting a tattoo of a suncross made in about a week and would like it to include some runes, problem is that I want it to be as accurate as possible and want it to be in ON. What would be a proper translation of "With oden on my side" to ON and then into runes. Help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Bates]

Actually, the straight transliteration of "With Oden On Our Side" is on the CD cover, at the top of the big valknut on the front. Translation, well, hmm, I come up with something like, "Inn Oðinn hjalpa minn hlið". But that's straight word for word translation (except for 'on', I used one of the verbs for 'help'), and more then likely would actually make no sense to someone who spoke ON. I have pretty much no grasp of ON grammar, just a dictionary.
That comes out looking something like

But I'd very strongly advise you to double or even triple check my work, I'm not really good at ON at all. Personally, were I to want to do something similar, I'd start with a language I knew better. Your tag says you're from Sweden, so I'd assume you know Swedish, so you might be better off translating the phrase you want into that first, then transliterating it into runes. Remember that the runes are phonetic, so you use the rune that sounds like the letter/phenome you're writing. I'm willing to bet it would be a lot closer then my hacked translation.

And yes, Tyra rocks. Pretty much everything I answer correctly, well, I got the answers I have from books and sites she's pointed out to me. I, however, take full responsibility for any mistakes I make. I owe her many, many beers should the opportunity ever arise.

 

[ozmo]

Yeah i have seen the "with oden on our side" translation on the front cover of the CD, but as you stated it is a straigth translation from english to runes.

Cheers for your input its a start atleast, guess i have to continue read up on the matter to get it as accurate as possible

 

[Sleipnir]

I owe her many, many beers should the opportunity ever arise.

HEY HEY HEY!!!!

I got dibs on that one, she totally knows what I am talking about too , and Runesinger? If you are EVER this way you have to let me know, we can get my kindred together and hang. PM me for details.

 

[Bates]

Looks like we all need to get together and play "Last Liver Standing"
Of course, I don't think I have a liver anymore, just an additional alcohol retaining organ.

Cheers for your input its a start atleast, guess i have to continue read up on the matter to get it as accurate as possible

No problem, man. I do my best to try and pass on the wee bits of things I've learned, or maybe I just answer things as best I can hoping that someone will come and correct me, and I can learn from that.
Even I can never be really sure exactly what I mean by things.

 

[Vikingkid3]

Thanks for the websites and the help. But I had another question, are the poetic and the prose eddas basically the same thing just in poem or not poem form? I remember reading something that said something like that but I don't know if it is true.

 

[Vikingkid3]

Oh yeah forgot to say that the main reason i'm asking is because i'm not much of a poem guy so...ya know.

 

[Tyra]

Hi!
Ozmo:Although, technically speaking, I am not opposed to practicing the art of babymaking, there are two obstacles in the way here: The first one is my husband, and the second one is that I am likely old enough to be your mother. Since I have only brothers, I can&#8217;t offer up a substitute sister (although Johan is very cute, I do not think he&#8217;s like it, even if we threw an old goat skin over you, and I&#8217;ve already promised my &#8220;chosen sister&#8221; to someone else), but if you can wait a few years, my eldest daughter is a carbon copy of me, and she&#8217;s a blazing Norsewoman in the making&#8230; I&#8217;m thinking you might have to engage in battle to make your way to the front of the line for her attention, though (help!).
Re the tattoo: I do not feel comfortable enough with my ON skills to weigh in &#8211; I can understand the language, sort of, when it&#8217;s written or spoken, but I cannot make my own sentences very well. Sorry! Mind you, I can ask Johan, he might know, cuz maybe the guys in the band got the name from somewhere specific.

No, Sleipnir, you owe me nothing. I remember exactly who was there when I needed help to stand up straight. The way I see it, I am the one who owes you. And you&#8217;d love Runesinger. Wish there were more people like her. My other friend, who also knows R.,was stoked that I got your kindred&#8217;s addy, cuz she&#8217;s out your way a lot.

Vikingkid &#8211; No, they are different. Some things overlap somewhat, but you really ought to read both. Having said that, The Poetic Edda is very difficult to understand at times, and requires a deeper knowledge of the cultural context, some poetry and so on. The Prose edda, if you can find a translation you like, is a much easier read, so I&#8217;d start with that. Actually I&#8217;d start with a few chapters from Heimskringla, just to get used to the feel of the language and the culture. It also overlaps a tiny bit. Or, you can find one of the modern retellings of the Poetic Edda, like some of the stuff by Paidric Collum has written (I think that&#8217;s how he spells his first name?? He&#8217;s very good, anyhow.)

Hey Bates, were those rune stones good enough? -T