Customer Reviews

Nordic Runes: Understanding, Casting, and Interpreting the Ancient Viking Oracle

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This is a very adequate book for people new to the runes, and in fact, I would even recommend it for those who have limited experience. The author gives solid, traditional descriptions of the runes and does a good job of explaining where he derives his meaning from by presenting the rune poems and applicable lore. In that regard, it is an excellent teaching tool for anyone who wants to delve into the primary sources.

The problem that I have with this book is that the author breaks no new ground whatsoever, aside from a few spreads he explains in the final section. Thus, for those with even a little experience, everything you'll find should be old hat. As a previous reviewer stated, reversed runes are explained very poorly.

The Author has established a niche for his trilogy on divination techniques from the ancient Celts, Norse, and western Europeans and he has kept within that niche with this book. It does not provide an elaborate discussion of the history of the runes and the different systems in use. He takes the Elder Futhark, using dagaz and othila as the twenty-third and twenty-fourth runes, respectively and provides the pronunciation guides, poetry, lore, and more needed to develop an understanding of each of the individual runes. I have a fair-sized collection of rune reading books but the spreads and casting techniques provided in "Nordic Runes" were new to me.

Two problems: (1) reversed runes are not well explained initially, however, the Author clarifies them in the spreads and casting section; (2) the Author denies any significance to the aettir - i.e. he believes that their order does not have any hidden meaning.

For folks new to rune work, the final chapter provides an overview of the major books and authors from the past 20 years.

"Nordic Runes" is a good platform for further runic studies for folks drawn to this kind of work.