A Pocket Guide to Runes

by Ben Waggoner

Runes. . . the very name seems to conjure up mystery. Runes appear everywhere from rock album covers to Viking and fantasy movies. But what are they, and how are they used? What do they mean? How and why are they used in magic and in divination?

This booklet presents a brief working knowledge of the ancient writing system of the German-speaking peoples. After learning about the runes' origins and their uses, both for writing mundane texts and for magic and divination, you can look up individual rune letters and explore the surprisingly complex symbolism behind them. Fresh translations of the old rune poems round out this short introduction.

59 pages, Paperback

Published February 28, 2018

About the author

I've been studying Old Norse (close to modern Icelandic) in my copious spare time since about 2006. Now I translate, study, annotate, and periodically publish Old Norse sagas (longish prose narratives that come in a great many "genres"). Why? It's fun if you like that sort of thing, and someone has to do it. . . My focus has been on the fornaldarsögur or "sagas of olden time" -- legendary narratives set in Scandinavia, some of which transmit very old legendary material.

For the record, I am *not* the Ben Waggoner who's written books on video file compression. I'm sure he's a great guy, but he's not me.

Reviews

[Roelofsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice short basic overview of the runes. Straightforward and not too much new-age stuff. Includes the Norse, Icelandic and Old-English rune poems.