Runes and the Origins of Writing by Alain de Benoist

Author:Alain de Benoist
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: runes, old norse, runor, runic writing, rune history, Jean Haundry, edda, futhorc, writing, rune stones, havamal, rune, magic, futhark
ISBN: 9781912079100
Publisher: Arktos Media Ltd.
Published: 2018-04-17T07:00:00+00:00

25

The Rune for The Word “Year”

JEAN HAUDRY WRITES THAT: “curiously, the Germanic rune for the year, the one designating the phoneme /j/ and named after the word *jēr(a) which means year, has the shape of a Janus,”236 that is to say the dual-faced god who, in Rome, notably patronized the transition between years (his name is also found in the name of the month “January”).

This rune is the rune number twelve, 2 or 1 (*jēran or *jæran, which are derived from *ieran but there are also the forms *jāra *jēra-, ár and ger), and it indicates the semi-vowel j. Made of two juxtaposed curves or semicircles, one being convex and the other concave, its meaning is both “(good) year” and “good times (season),” which corresponds to the dual meaning of its Indo-European root. Runic poems gloss ár with “bountiful harvest,” a notion that is also found in ōra in Greek and jarŭ in Old Russian “spring, good year.”237 The runic inscription on the Stentoften runestone (Sweden, early 7th century), gives it the ideographic value of “prosperity, prosperous year.” It’s quite possible that the two elements that make the rune Il indicates the two parts of the year (or even the dual moon, ascending and descending), especially since its position is right in the middle of the Fuþark. “It could be,” writes Wolfgang Krause, “that its shape symbolizes the two semesters of the year, if we go by a symbol with a similar shape found in numerous materials, for instance on the clay container found in Havors (Gotland), which dates to the 4th century.”238 So it seems that the rune twelve splits fuþark letters into two equal parts, and corresponds to some sort of equinoctial axis (the year begins at the fall equinox, so at the beginning of the dark period). The first half of the runes denotes by their acronyms some rather “varunian” aspects, meaning nocturnal and dangerous, and the other half some rather “mitrian” aspects, associated with good and light. Incidentally it is also very interesting to note that this rune is one of those which does not have an equivalent in any Mediterranean alphabet that could have inspired runic writing.239

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