On-Line Rune Lore Course
Part 2
Languages of Europe
This text was originally part of the Rune Lore course offered by the Stav Academy written by Shaun Brassfield-Thorpe with some small inclusions by Phillip Brough. It remains largely unchanged except where errors or corrections are needed. It will be offered here in smaller parts than initially published but some continuity will be attempted and each section should make sense on its own. It is presented here edited by Phillip Brough
Let us now look at just a few terms for the same concept in different European languages and see how some of these relate to aspects of Stav :
The Sun
"Sun" is a very old word. This is probably because people have always needed a word to describe that big, round, glowing fiery ball that appears to move across the sky. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the runes (Sol) basically means "The Sun".
The Sol Rune
People who spoke Indo-European six thousand years ago might have used several different words for "Sun". Even then their language had changed and evolved enough in the various places in which Indo-European was spoken that we cannot identify one single Indo-European word to mean "Sun".
Some people might have said something like "*suen", while other people said something like "*sáwel". Both these words start with similar sounds (su-/saw-), but have very different endings (-n or -l).
Both these words for sun were still used in Germanic, about two thousand years ago. People who spoke Germanic might have said something like "*sunnón" or "*suól". English (and other West Germanic languages) are descended from the language used by Germanic-speaking people who said "*sunnón". One thousand (1000) years ago, the people who spoke Old English said "sunne". Other Germanic languages descended from those used by Germanic speakers who said "*sunnón" (mostly West Germanic languages) have words for "Sun" which look a lot like the English word "Sun":
West Frisian: sinne
Dutch: zon
Afrikaans: son
Low German: sunne
High German: Sonne
Gothic: sunnô
Languages descended from those used by Indo-European speakers who said "*sáwel" (and from Germanic speakers who said "suól" (mostly North Germanic languages) have words for "Sun" which look like these:
Gothic: sauil
Icelandic: sól
Danish: sol
Norwegian: sol
Swedish: sol
Latin: sol
Spanish: sol
Portugese: sol
Italian: sole
French: soleil
Occitan: solèlh
Today we usually think of the sun as an "it". Sometimes people might refer to the sun as if it were a person, and often they will speak of it as if it were male (as in the song "The Sun has got his hat on"). However, people thought of the Sun as "she" for a very long time - at least up until the 1500s, some five hundred years ago. In Stav, the Sun itself is still generally though of as being (in some way) "female". Snorri, an Icelandic writer who wrote down the myths in the Edda, recorded a deity balled "Bil" who was evidently a sort of sun goddess (she is known about in Stav but is not a part of the "pantheon" of deities traditionally connected to the runes by the Hosling). Other Gothonic regions had other deities (often female) connected to the sun, such as the German "Sunna". In Stav, the deity/s connected most strongly to the sun are Balder and his son Forsette. Both of these gods are linked to the "Sun Rune" called "Sol" - but they are not thought of as personifications of the sun itself (which as I have said is still thought in some ways to be female), rather they are deities linked in some ways to solar functions (although how these are viewed in Stav may be a little different to the concepts of other traditions). Hopefully this simple example might illustrate how common concepts occur throughout European regions, cultures, languages and traditions - and also how these vary regionally and in different times. If one wishes to understand Stav then one must open oneself up to more than ones current viewpoint...
Shade And Shadow
Let us now look as the words "shade" and "shadow". What do we notice? You might notice straight away that they start with the same letters: "shad-". You may have noticed they have similar meanings: casting a shadow makes shade. It is no surprise to find that these words are related. Around a thousand years ago, the people who spoke Anglo-Saxon said something like "sceadu". This word basically meant "shade". Six hundred years ago the people who spoke Middle English used the word "schade" which eventually turned into our word "shade". We can find many examples of words that in modern English are pronounced either "sk..." or "sh..." having common origins - for example "skirt" and "shirt". These days a skirt is usually an item of dress only worn by women, whereas a shirt is an upper-body garment generally more male oriented. However they probably both come from an older term that just meant something like "item of clothing". There were other forms of Old English "sceadu", though, including the oblique case form "sceadwe". This eventually turned into our word "shadow". Since both "shade" and "shadow" come from one word (Old English "sceadu"), their meanings are very, very similar. They are indeed often interchangeable. Around two thousand years ago the people who spoke Germanic might have said "*skaðwoz" or "*skadwaz" to mean "shade" (or "shadow"). Around six thousand years ago people who spoke Indo-European might have said "*skotwós" or "*skotos". This in time developed into words with related meanings in seperate later languages; the Greek word for "darkness" is very similar: "skotos". Here are words meaning "shade" or "shadow" in other Germanic languages - most "Germanic" only have one word of this nature for "shade" and "shadow":
West Frisian: skaed
Dutch: schaduw
Afrikaans: skadu
Low German: schadde
High German: Schatten
Gothic: shadus
Irish: scáth
Breton: scod
Cornish: scod
Welsh: cy-sgod
Of course the words "Shade" or "Shadow" also have other connotations - for example, a "spirit", "ghost" or "spectre" - looking at how a word can have several meanings can be very revealing, and this is an important lesson in approaching the runes themselves.
In Stav, we often use other words which have related meanings to "shade" and "shadow". Although these terms mean very similar things, they have a different etymology - in other words they come from a different root. It is very important to remember this - sometimes if we wish to examine a "meaning" of a word or term, or the name of a rune, we can do so by looking at the etymology of that word. But sometimes the "meaning" may stay the same, but a different word altogether might be adopted. This happens with a lot of things - for example often one can compare the names of the Norse gods and find common relatives in the names of gods from other Indo-European areas (India, Greece, Rome etc). But on other occasions, while the "functions" and "attributes" of the gods may seem identical, there is no common origin for the specific name used to address them. With concepts such as "shade" and "shadow", in Stav we often use the term "Myrk" (as in phrases such as "myrk-galder"). In this sense "myrk" basically means "shadow" or "shade" and you can probably see the similarity between this and the modern English word "murky". We use the term "myrk-galder" to refer to a type of magic that is performed in secret - it is "hidden" from sight and thus metaphorically (and sometimes literally) in "shadow". This is much like the original meaning of the word "occult" which (literally) means "hidden". It is important to realise that in modern English speaking societies, some words have a sort of "cultural bias" that is very different from the mindset found in "pagan" philosophy. "Myrk galder" is performed in secret because this is "how it works"... the fact it is performed in a "hidden" way does not imply in any way that there is anything "evil" about it (to be crass, most people change their underwear away from the eyes of other people but this hardly means they are indulging in an evil act!). However, often terms that imply "darkness", "hidden", "shadow" and so on seem to conjure up some sense of "black magic" to modern people. This is basically due to the influence of the Christian teachings in Europe over many centuries. In Stav, we do not think that "secret", "hidden" or "private" in any way relate to moralistic concepts (any more than we would think something "open" automatically means it is "good"). Actions are considered in relation to their causes and effects, their motivations and consequences, and these are considered to be far more important than their manner of formation. It is again important to realise that words and terms have different meanings in different times and places and to different peoples. If one (in Stav) speaks of a "priestly" mindset one may infer something very different by drawing on Norse pagan examples than might be understood by assuming a Christian or Buddhist perspective of what it is to be a "priest". When you study Stav, one of the things you must always do in order to question the runes is first question yourself. Whatever answers you may find will thus be personal and not drawn simply from blind acceptance of things as they may at first seem to be.
The World
What in all the worlds does the word "world" mean? In modern society we mostly use it to refer to the planet Earth. But sometimes we can use the word world with slightly different meanings. We might use it to refer not only to the planet Earth as a physical ball spinning in space, but to include the people who live on it, or the plants and animals who also live on it, or even "inanimate" things like lakes, rivers, and oceans. We might use it to refer to a mental state - "the world of the computer programmer", or a spiritual state "the world of the modern pagan". We might also use it (perhaps closest to its original sense...) to mean the whole universe - "The World" not just "our world". The word "world" as such exists only in Germanic languages. The reason for this is that is actually the combination of two words. The first part of the word is "wer-", from Germanic "weraz" or "wiraz" which probably means "man - this same element gives us the "were-" in "werewolf", which means "man-wolf". The second part of the word was from "alda", which means "old" or "age". So, when joined in Germanic in the way it may have been used two thousand years ago, "werald" means perhaps something like "the age (or life) or man" - or "the state of being which is inhabited by mankind". Eventually the word came to mean "things that have to do with humanity" and the original meaning began to become less important. Later, it eventually came to refer to the planet Earth and everything in it. People who spoke Old English one thousand years ago might have said "weorold" or "worold". Here is how the old Germanic word "werald" adapted in other Germanic languages:
East Frisian: warld
Dutch: wereld
Afrikaans: wêreld
Low German: werld
High German: Welt
Icelandic: veröld
Swedish: verld
Danish: verden
Norwegian: verden
There are many words in modern English that are made up of combinations of two other words, just like "world" (weraz + alda) and "werewolf" (were [man] + wolf) are. In Stav, we often use compound terms to refer to different "worlds". Often the different "worlds " (more on these later) are referred to as "something-heim" meaning "The home of something" or "something-gard (or garth)" which means "The Enclosure of Something" - "-gard" or "-garth" - as in "Asgard" is a term related to the modern English "garden" and by "enclosure" it meant an area of land that was protected by a boundary. In Stav we speak of many "worlds". The Hosling originally thought of there being seven worlds, although the exact number really depends on just how much you wish to subdivide them. At a simple level, there is Midgard - "Middle-Earth", or "Earth in the Middle". This is the world of humans in which (most of us) live. Then there is the "over-world" - Asgard, or "Heaven" ("Heaven" stems in English from the Anglo-Saxon "Heofon" which meant both the "over-world" / "afterlife" and also "the Sky" - we still speak of "The Heavens" in this way). There is also the "underworld" of Hel (The English word "hell" originally referred to a hidden place that is in some way beneath or within the Earth; it had just about nothing to do with any concept of punishment or evil doing but was a place of rest where souls awaited rebirth). The old name used by the Hosling was "Niflhel" (meaning roughly "The place of cold mists beneath / within the Earth"). Niflhel is a world of ice, mists, the home of the dead and the dark-elves (Svart-alvs or Dokk-alvs). Sometimes, especially more recently, it is subdivided into Niflheim (a place of primal ice and mist), Helheim (the world of the dead) and Svartalvheim (the home of the dwarfs of dark-elves). Exactly how one divides the worlds is pretty much dependant upon what seems useful at the time. Although the Stav tradition has much lore on the subject, at the end of the day the tradition has always had the approach of "if it works, use it, if not, make it work..." All the teachings presented here should be seen as guides from the old tradition - but nothing more than that; to be useful they must be understood. If understood they can be adapted to make them more useful if there is a need. But don't either accept anything blindly or reject anything if it doesn't make sense at this point - simply open your heart and mind to the tradition and work with the concepts to reach your own understanding. Stav is ultimately a personal tradition or it is nothing at all; it is either something that you live everyday in your normal life and activities, or it will remain nothing more than a curiosity. The challenge of the Stav teachings is to explore both yourself and the universal mysteries of the runes to come to terms with an understanding of all that has been, is now, or shall be in the future - this is no easy task and something to be approached with a grin on ones face and a cheerful determination; don't take it too seriously (that way leads to madness!) but at the same time be deliberate in your approach to both life and Stav. The effort put in to the tradition will bring its own rewards.
The Earth
So, we have looked at "The World", now let us stare at the Earth... Where on Earth does the word "earth" come from? "Earth" is another word which is found almost exclusively in the Germanic languages. Perhaps people speaking Germanic around two thousand years ago said something like "erþó" or "erþâ". This word already meant "earth" even then, and no one has any certain ideas what the word might have been like earlier or what it may have meant within the context of the societies at the time (although we can make some guesses). About one thousand years ago people speaking Old English might have said "eorðe". The word "earth" can be used to mean a number of different things. It can simply mean "soil". This may have been one of the earliest meanings. Perhaps, people came to think of the whole area they were standing on as "soil" or "earth". By the time people were speaking Old English, about one thousand years ago, "earth" could already mean the world on which people live. It took longer for "earth" to come to mean "Planet Earth" - probably until around 1400 CE or so. This is how the old Germanic word "erþó" developed in other Germanic languages:
Frisian: ierde
Dutch: aarde
Afrikaans: aarde
High German: Erde
Gothic: aírþa
Icelandic: jörð
Swedish: jord
Danish: jord
Norwegian: jord
In Stav, Jord is the name or a deity who can be seen as "Mother Earth". She is connected to the rune "ar".
The Ar Rune
"Ar" is a term which perhaps translates best into modern English as "Acre" - an area of land used originally for growing food. In the past this was not a set physical measure of land but an amount of land that could support a family during the course of a year. "Ar" is also related to another earlier word "Jera" which is another name for the same rune, and basically means "A Year". At first these might seem like different concepts, but it is fairly easy to see how an area of land, a part of the Earth Mother, that could support a family for a year, all end up being inter-related concepts. Another meaning of "Ar" is "A good harvest". Again, the same pattern can be seen. Another deity in Stav is Njord. Njord is generally thought of as male, but in Stav he is seen as a gender-changer, in part both male and female. Usually Njord is linked with the sea, rivers and water. In modern thought, water or the sea is often considered almost as the opposite of the earth (as soil), but each is a part of The Earth as a whole. The name Njord can be traced back to earlier Germanic examples such as Nerthus. Nerthus was a Germanic "Earth Mother" goddess worshipped by the "Germanic" tribes described by the Roman historian Tacitus circa 98 CE. Etymologically "Nerthus" and "Njord" are identical names except that "Nerthus" is female and "Njord" is male. Njord's rune is called "Laug" which means "Water", "Lake" etc.
The Laug Rune
In Stav one of the ways we see Njord is as a sort of "Earth father" (he is seen as being a gender changer). In Stav if we refer to the world in which we live we usually use the term "Midgard" which means "Middle-Earth" or more accurately "Earth in the Middle". At a literal level the term actually means "The Enclosure in the Middle" as the word "-gard" or "-garth" (as in "Asgard", "Midgard", "Valgarth" and so on) really means an area that is encircled by a protection of some kind such as a wall, a thorn-hedge or similar. "-Gard" is related to the modern English word "Garden" and you can see the similarities in meaning here.
Light
"Light" is another word that is common to all the Germanic languages. About six thousand years ago, the people who then spoke Indo-European all used words having to do with shining or being white-coloured that began with the sound "*leuk-", although in different areas they may have used different word-endings for the term - even then the language was developing. People speaking Germanic about two thousand years ago probably said something either like "leuktom" or "leuksa" which again meant "light". People speaking West Germanic used "leuktom" and by about one thousand years ago the people speaking Old English had changed this word to "léoht". This word slowly changed to "leht", then "liht", and finally to Middle English "light", which was spelled the same way as our word "light". This is a basic idea of how "leuktom" evolved in other West Germanic languages:
Frisian: ljocht
Dutch: licht
Afrikaans: lig
Low German: licht
High German: Licht
And this is how "leuksa" developed in the North Germanic languages:
Icelandic: ljós
Swedish: ljus
Danish: lys
Ljós is a term that we still use in Stav today, generally as a counterpart or compliment (rather than simply as an "opposite") to "myrk". I will mention more on this a little later.
Here is how the Indo-European basic sound "*leuk-" turned out in other non-Germanic languages:
Latin: lux
Spanish: luz
Portugese: luz
Italian: luce
Occitan: lutz
In Stav we speak not only of "myrk galder" but also of "ljós galder". Where myrk-galder is a form of "magic" that is used in a hidden way, ljós-galder is a form of "magic" that is used openly, with the full knowledge of those involved. Just as we do not see myrk-galder as being in any way inherently "bad" we do not see ljós-galder as being inherently "good" - such considerations are subjective and depend upon the specifics and circumstances. It is quite important to grasp this as a concept, for in Stav terms such as "black magic" and "white magic" are more or less meaningless. We see things only as being either in accord with nature and its manifestation as Orlog (a term discussed elsewhere) or as being something that is not in accord with primal principals. We see myrk and ljós, female and male, lunar and solar, left and right, dark and light, night and day, Nifl (ice and mist) and Muspel (fire and flame), galder and seid (and so on) simply as being useful categorisations to describe complimentary but fundamentally differing aspects of existence. We leave concepts such as "right and wrong", "good and evil" and such to matters of individual, personal and subjective determination as the old philosophy really has nothing to do with human concepts of morality (even if it does indeed have a highly developed standard of ethics). I will stress this point again as anyone brought up in a modern western-type society will, consciously or subconsciously, be somewhat pre-programmed to regard certain terms as relating to certain concepts, many of which stem from Christian or post-Christian assumptions about a kind of moral order to the universe that basically is very different to traditional "pagan" views of nature and existence. In Stav we do not see the night as a time of evil, although it is a time of witchcraft (seid). We do not see "feminine" as meaning "weak" (many of the goddesses are warriors) rather simply as being a counterpart to "masculine". We do not see the left hand as being "evil" and the right hand "good" - when we perform the runic stances we do so on both sides of the body; otherwise how can one achieve balance? As ever, to understand Stav one must live it, and approach life with an open mind....
Dark
"Dark" is in some ways a strange and unusual word for what one might imagine to be such a common concept. Everyone at some point needs a word to describe either the opposite or compliment of "light", but there are large a number of different words in the Indo-European languages to describe this concept. Perhaps our ancestors regarded the dark as something more than an "absence" of light; the "dark" might be a thing in itself.
Sometimes people develop special words to describe concepts which are frightening or disturbing. But what, when we examine the issue, is usually the cause of our fears? In general most people are afraid of the unknown, something unseen or not understood. As a species we tend to both be drawn toward and terrified of the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplained and the hidden. And yet the unknown is the source of all knowledge, a mystery is a question awaiting and answer, a rune is a riddle lurking in the unexplored regions of our minds. The night is where day is born, the dark is but waiting its turn to become light. In any event, about five hundred years ago people who spoke Middle English said "derk", which was changed from the word "deorc" used by speakers of Old English circa one thousand years ago. In Scandinavian languages we also find the word "Dokk" as in "Dokk-alfar" (Dark-Elves or Dwarfs) who are spirits of the night, of death, and of the hidden realms beneath the earth. No one knows exactly where the Old English word "deorc" came from. There is a similar word found only in Old High German (which was spoken in southern Germany about one thousand years ago) "tarchanjan", meaning "to hide" or "to conceal". This is related in concept to many other terms such as "myrk" and also "hel". One can see how the start of this word, tarch-, is similar to "dark". Perhaps speakers of Old English described the opposite of light as that which hid things or concealed them; thus, as we use the term "ljós" in Stav, the "light" was something open but the "dark", murk, shade or shadow was something that either hid or was hidden. It is possible that both "tarchanjan" and our word "dark" come from a West Germanic word like "darknjan" which was used around two thousand years ago.
Day
Let us ask an obvious question - how do we know when it is day? When the Sun is visible in the sky. This may explain the origin of our word day, which seems to have come from an Indo-European term "*dhegh-" or "*dhegwh" which indicated concepts to do with heat, burning, and times when it was warm. For example, the Sanskrit word "dah" means "to burn" and Albanian "djek" means "burnt, while Lithuanian "dagas" means "hot season". About two thousand years ago, the people speaking Germanic at the time said "dagoz", meaning "day". People speaking Old English around one thousand years ago said "dæg". There were many different forms of this word used by speakers of Middle English about six hundred years ago, including "dag", "daw" "daig", and "dai". Eventually these were simplified into our word "day". Here is how the Germanic word "dagoz" or "dagaz" evolved in other Germanic languages:
Frisian: dei
Dutch: dag
Afrikaans: dag
Low German: dag
High German: Tag
Gothic: dags
Icelandic: dagur
Swedish: dag
Danish: dag
Norwegian: dag
Some other Indo-European languages have a word for "day" which sounds similar to our English word "day". Actually, these other words are unrelated to English "day", and the similarity seems to be merely a coincidence.
Latin: dies
Spanish: día
Portugese: dia
In Stav we use the Scandinavian, 16 rune or "Younger" futhark (sequence of runic symbols). There have in the past been other futharks, the Anglo-Saxon's employed one with between 28 and 33 rune-staves, while in continental Europe a 24 stave futhark - usually called either the Common Germanic or "Elder" futhark was used (actually it is not totally certain that the Elder Futhark is the oldest form but more people think so than support other theories). Very very little is known for sure about the Elder futhark, which is perhaps why most new-age writers on the runes favour this system above the Scandinavian or Anglo-Saxon futharks (as no-one can say for sure that they are completely wrong about anything, no matter how speculative a theory may be...) but as the Anglo-Saxon futhark certainly seems to have developed from the 24 rune futhark, it is often used as a basis for applying the little we do know backwards to try to guess the meanings and names of the Elder futhark runes. The Anglo-Saxon futhark contains a rune known as "Dag" which means "Day". People assume therefore that the Elder Futhark rune corresponding to this stave would have been called something like "*Dagaz" (although this is just an educated guess, it could have had another name altogether. When a term or name is marked with an * symbol this means it is reconstructed. In other words no one can be sure whether this word was really used or not, but it is a good educated guess that something like this word was used). "Dag" is a name found either on its own or as part of other names (such as Svipdag) to describe various gods and / or heroes of Gothonic myth and legend. In Stav, because we do not have the rune Dag as part of our futhark, and because we do not have Dag as part of the pantheon of deities that belong to the Stav tradition, there is very little that could be said for sure about this rune. But one can perhaps see how concepts adapt and alter, evolving with time. "Day" is obviously a concept very closely tied to that of the "Sun". In Stav, the main deity associated with the rune of the sun, Sol, is Balder. Balder was evidently known by many other similar names at various times and in differing regions. One of the other versions of his name is "Bældæg" or "Bal-dag". In all probability, if the 24 rune futhark is indeed older than the Scandinavian futhark, then the rune Dag and the deity associated with it perhaps became absorbed into the Stav rune "Sol"...
Night
Compared with the word "dark", the word "night" is a surprisingly common one. Words very much like "night" appear in many Indo-European languages. Six thousand years ago, people who spoke Indo-European may have used a word like "*nokt". By the time people were speaking Old English one thousand years ago, this word had only changed a little, to "neaht" or "niht". People speaking Middle English (about six hundred (600) years ago had changed the word to "nyght", which is very similar to our word "night". Here is how the Indo-European "nokt" turned out in various Germanic and non-Germanic Indo-European languages:
Frisian: nacht
Dutch: nacht
Afrikaans: nacht
High German: Nacht
Gothic: nahts
Icelandic: nótt
Swedish: natt
Danish: nat
Norwegian: natt/nott
Latin: nox
Spanish: noche
Portugese: noite
Italian: notte
French: nuit
Occitan: nuèch
Russian: noch'
In Norse mythology, Night gives birth to Day - darkness is the forerunner of light. This might seem a little odd when we look at how we see a "day" (in the sense of a 24 hour period) in our modern world; we normally think of a day beginning when we get up in the morning and ending when we go to bed at night. But to our ancestors, the reverse was the case. A "day" (24 hour period) began at sunset (for a rule of thumb, say 6pm) and continued until the sunset of the following day. Again it is very important to remember that when two people, especially two people from different times, places and cultures, view or describe exactly the same thing - often they will perceive concepts that can be almost at odds with one another. When we look at the runes and read the words of a rune poem or a myth, one must think of what was in the mind of the original author and his or her audience, as well as what is in our own minds today - both are necessary as the one without the other will be a very incomplete picture...
Time (& Tide)
Runes where once used for measuring time
What is time? It's a thing which is in some ways perhaps so basic to our existence that it is easy (like so many things) to think we understand it without ever bothering to consider it... In modern western societies it is perhaps most normal to think of time as a sort of line, with the past at one end, the present in the middle and the future further along the line. But is this how time is really perceived in nature? We tend to think of the seasons as being a cycle, we may "know" that the earth goes around the sun although it usually looks as if the reverse was the case; the moon waxes and wanes in regular phases. Does any of this seem much like a line? Or like a circle? Or a spiral? It tends to depend upon perception... We tend to think of time as being the "thing" which a clock measures - but what it is, really? Physics explains things in terms of the effects of gravity but maybe the simplest way of describing time is to call it the system of sequential relationships between given events - or if that doesn't seem very simple, how about a web of moments, joined by common threads? We might also call time a period of continued existence (or even a cycle of events). Explanations such as these have to do with dividing up a sequence of events into sections. Most of the time, people in our societies concentrate more upon the bits that have been divided up and less on the threads of time that bind all the pieces together... Not surprisingly our word for "time" goes back to an ancient Indo-European form used something like six thousand years ago: "dai-". By the time people got around to speaking Germanic, about two thousand years ago, "dai-" was being used in (at least) two Germanic words: "tídiz" (meaning "a division of time", and "tímon" (meaning something like "an appropriate time [to do something]"). The "tídiz" word in time became the Old English "tíd" and from this comes our word "tide". In modern English we most usually use "tide" to mean the way the ocean rises and falls over periods of time (as in "high tide" and "low tide"). But it is easy to see how this tide and time relationship has a common origin. We even find the two words linked in expressions such as "tide and time wait for no man". One thousand years ago, or thereabouts, Old English had no single term for the ocean's tide - people referred to "flód" (flood or high tide) and "ebba" (ebb or low tide) as well as numerous other divisions and subdivisions. A few centuries later when people in England were speaking Middle English, Northern Germany (where the people then spoke Middle Low German) had become an important centre for sailors, traders, shipping, and naval development. At this point there was a Middle Low German word "getîde" which had acquired meanings which originally belonged to the ancient Germanic word "tímon" : "a fixed period of time; correct time; opportunity". Middle Low German "getîde" also developed to refer to times of the ocean's tides (which happened at regular and predictable times, and were opportunities to use their tidal power to aid in moving a ship). This new meaning was borrowed for the regular Middle English word "tide" (meaning "time") in the early 1300s, when "tide" in English was used to refer to the time at which the ocean's tides took place. Within the next hundred years, by around the 1430s, the English word "tide" had come to mean the tidal motions of the ocean themselves, rather than just the times associated with these tidal motions. The meanings alter somewhat with the passing of ages, but the key concepts remain at heart ever the same (if one really looks). Middle Low German "getîde" evolved into modern Low German ""tîde" and Dutch "tij", both referring to the tides of the sea. But the word "tide" did not entirely lose all its old associations with time, even after adopting this newer meaning. Some antiquated expressions still use "tide" to mean "time" - like "Yuletide" or "eventide". "Tide" also survives in the slightly archaic word "tidings" (as in the Yuletide song "Glad tidings we bring, to you and your king") which means "news" (in the sense of "timely reporting"). This modern English word "tiding" (Middle English "tídung") seems to have been borrowed almost a thousand years ago from the Old Norse word "tíðendi", which meant "events". This word "tíðendi", comes originally from the ancient Germanic "tídiz". It is perhaps interesting to note that words related to "tiding" can be found in other Germanic languages with similar meanings (which suggests a somewhat common way of viewing the world), such as Swedish "tidning" and High German "Zeitung", both meaning "newspaper". Most other Germanic languages use a word that changed from "tídiz" to mean "time":
West Frisian: tiid
Dutch: tijd
Afrikaans: tyd
Low German: tid
High German: Zeit
Icelandic: tíð
Swedish: tid
Danish: tid
Norwegian: tid
By the time our ancestors were speaking Old English, about one thousand years ago, the old Germanic word "tímon" had changed to "tíma", which could mean "time" or "opportunity". About six hundred years ago, when the folks were speaking Middle English, this word had changed to "tyme", which is very similar to our spelling of "time". The North Germanic languages do have a word that changed from "tímon", as did our word "time". They, however, do not mean "time", but have a meaning that is related to the concept of time:
Icelandic: tími (meaning "hour",
OR "appropriate time", "lucky time" or "prosperity")
Swedish: timme (meaning "hour")
Danish: time (meaning "hour")
Norwegian: time (meaning "hour")
All North Germanic languages have in time changed the meaning of their word descended from Germanic "tímon" to "hour" - only in Icelandic can be found an alternate meaning very similar to the original meaning of Germanic "tímon". Why is this the case? Originally, the Scandinavians (who are the people who speak the North Germanic languages) had their own system of measuring time, and some remnants of this (along with many other things of course!) are preserved in the Stav teachings.
The old Scandinavians did not use hours as we understand the term, instead they other systems of measurement (these varied a little from region to region and time to time). One of the oldest used three-hour divisions of time called eyktar or ættir. The word "Aettir" can mean "a division of 8" or "group, family" and this term is also used to describe the way in which the 24 rune futhark is divided into 3 groups (or families) of 8 runes. Although the Scandinavian 16 rune futhark obviously can't be divided quite so neatly into 3 groups, the division of the 16 staves into 3 groups called "Aetts" or "Setts" was still maintained.
In Stav, we usually divide the futhark (using the most common reading - there are several) into 3 Aetts or Setts; Fe's or Frey's Aett, Hagl's or Heimdal's Aett, and Tyr's Aett.
Fe's or Frey's Aett
Hagl's or Heimdall's Aett
Tyr's Aett
The Kreft Rune
There is a surviving tradition of rune use within Hafskjold Stav that perhaps relates back to either the 24 stave futhark or the division of the 24 hours day into eight, three hour periods. One of the divination methods employed in Stav involves taking 24 staves of wood and carving on these each of the 16 staves of the Stav futhark - as you can probably see 16 x 3 = 48, which means that one rune is carved on the front and one on the back of each wooden stave. This means that in divinatory methods that employ choosing three runes, it is possible to choose the same rune three times (as long as one is sure to carve different runes on the front and back of each stave and never the same rune on both sides). This is one of the many ways that the numerological system of the 16 rune futhark clearly shares common features with that of the Common Germanic futhark - both ultimately stem from the same origin. There is much the divinatory method mentioned here but that will be examined later in the course.
After the Scandinavians were forcibly converted to Christianity (well, most of them), the Roman system of time-keeping, as used by the Christian Church, was gradually introduced into their culture. The Roman method, which used 24-hour days, is the basis of our modern system of time-keeping. The Scandinavians needed to find a new word for the concept of an "hour" (a sixty minute period), and instead of borrowing the Latin word (as the English did from the Latin "hora", through the Old French "oure") they altered their word which meant "appropriate time" to mean "hour". The Roman and Church method of time-keeping was at this point just the academic, educated and upper-class method, and (as one often finds in other areas also) the older native method of time-keeping survived side-by-side with the imported Church method for some centuries, at least in more remote Scandinavian regions. But in England, their word "tíma" adapted to a new meaning as a general word for time. It's older sense of "appropriate time" only survives in expressions like "It is time to eat," or the dreaded "Time, gentlemen, please!" when a pub closes. When people were speaking Middle English, about six hundred years ago, they sometimes used "time" to mean "hour" (as Swedish/Danish/Norwegian do) but "time" could also sometimes mean "year". In the Stav tradition, there are various traditional methods still employed in forms of time keeping. As with almost everything in Stav, these are based around the Hagl rune.
The Hagl Rune
Winter
What is winter? It is the cold season, the dark season, the snowy season and often the frozen season - and if it isn't quite cold enough for snow it can be the wet season as well. In fact, our word "winter" is related to the words "wet", "water", and "wash". All these words come from an Indo-European basic term "*wed-". People speaking Germanic, around two thousand years ago, used a word "wentruz" to mean "winter" (or "wet season"- for comparison, the Germanic word for "water" was "watar"). By about one thousand (1000) years ago, people speaking Old English had changed this word to "winter" which is just like our modern word. Although it was sometimes spelt slightly differently (wynter, wintir, wintur, etc.), the word has scarcely changed at all in the past millennium. This is how the Germanic word "wintruz" developed in other Germanic languages (and you can see many of them have words which are very similar to the English word "winter"):
Frisian: winter
Dutch: winter
Afrikaans: winter
Low German: winter
High German: Winter
Gothic: wintrus
Icelandic: vetur
Swedish: vinter
Danish: vinter
Norwegian: vetter
However, many of us don't necessarily think of winter primarily as a wet season. Nevertheless, in some places the most noticeable thing about the winter season is that it is wet! The words people use for seasons, and their folklore about those seasons, can vary depending on what the local weather is like. In Stav, the year is divided into only two season, Winter and Summer. Winter gives birth to Summer and vice versa, just as Night gives birth to Day and back again. Winter in Norway and the far north is a time of cold, darkness, snow and ice, while summer is a time of light, heat, sun and warmth. The cycle of the winter and summer seasons, the movement of night and day, and the forces of Nifl and Muspel (ice / mist and fire) can all be seen as inter-relating. In the Stav tradition, winter in considered to be the time of the god Ull and goddess Skathi, both of whom are deities presiding over snow and ice, skiing, skating, hunting and archery. Ull's Rune is Yr (meaning roughly "Yew", an evergreen tree that is green in winter) and Skath's rune is Is (which means "Ice").
The Rune Yr
The Rune Is
Although winter and summer are the two halves of the year, the year is considered to start (or "turn" into a new year) not at the start or end of winter but at midwinter - yuletide. This is the darkest part of the year and from this point on the sun is reborn, growing in brilliance until midsummer. Thus while the year is divided into winter and summer, it is also see as dividing between darkness-going-into-light and light-going-into-darkness. These changes happen at the points of the solstices, the lowest and highest points of the sun, the darkest and lightest times of the year.
Summer
Summer is the warm and sunny season of the year, when the sun is up more than at other times of the year and doesn't set until late in the evening. In the far north, the sun is still in the sky at midnight at midsummer. Not surprisingly, people have needed a word for summer for a very long time. In fact, of all the words for seasons used by the people who spoke Indo-European about six thousand years ago, only one of them is still used in English: summer. The Indo-Europeans used a basic word that started "*sem-". By about two thousand years ago, people speaking Germanic had taken this basic start and turned it into "sumaraz". People who spoke Old English about one thousand years ago said "sumor". People who spoke Middle English about six hundred years ago used a word like "sumer" or "sommer", which has become our word "summer". Here is how the Germanic word "sumaraz" changed in other Germanic languages:
West Frisian: sommer
Dutch: zomer
Afrikaans: somer
Low German: sommer
High German: Sommer
Icelandic: sumar
Swedish: sommar
Danish: sommer
In Stav, Summer is considered to be "ruled" by the god Heimdal and the Nornir (the three female weavers of Orlog). As I mentioned earlier, Heimdal's rune is Hagl.
The Hagl Rune
The rune of the Nornir is Nød.
The Nød Rune
The midpoint of Summer, mid-summer, is called Baldersvaki which means "Balder's Wake" (i.e. the celebration of his death).
Sol - The Rune of Balder
Balder is considered to have been slain at midsummer, and at this time the year changes; until this point the days grew longer, the sun shone brighter. Now the year moves toward darkness again, but at midwinter or Yule (a time linked to Frey, another god of the sun, whose rune is Fe),
The Fe Rune
the sun will be reborn just as Balder will one day return from Niflhel to re-enter the world. Stav celebrates six major traditional festivals; these are all solar festivals (lunar festivals are a little different and have perhaps more to do with Seid than Galder; galder is a largely solar tradition while seid relates more to the moon). These are in winter - Winter-Day, Yule and the Winter-Thing; and in summer Summer-Day, Baldersvaki and the Summer-Thing. In traditional Stav the vernal and autumnal equinoxes were not recognised because they really meant nothing in the far north.