Tree of Salvation: Yggdrasil and the Cross in the North by G. Ronald S.J. Murphy

Author:G. Ronald S.J. Murphy
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780199948611
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013-10-24T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Yggdrasil and the Sequence of the Runes in the Elder Fuþark

Fascination with the poetic use of runes carved on the Ruthwell cross in the early eighth century as staves that can talk, “bearers of speech,” to enable the normally silent cross to raise its voice in speech, naturally leads to curiosity about them and their unique alphabet. For over a hundred and fifty years or more scholars have attempted to interpret the meaning of various runic inscriptions on wood, horn, metal, and stone. Just as in the case of the stave church and the interpretation of the tree shape and the serpents on the roof, interpretation has been impeded, I believe, by an appeal to an unnecessarily restricted, literal, and nonmythological notion of religious magic. As the renowned English runologist, R. I. Page, advised in the conclusion of his Introduction to English Runes, the scholar must avoid the further restriction of the library and the study, and “go outside to meet archaeologists, numismatists, art historians, craftsmen.…”1 This good advice will bring us in the present chapter to the examination of gold medallions.

One of the important places where the fuþark is first found is on c-type bracteates from the fifth to eighth century AD, the period of the migrations of Germanic tribes.2 A bracteate is a small gold disk, stamped with an image and runes on one side, with a small tube at the top so it can be worn as a medal.3 The c-type constitutes almost half of the number found and has an unusual iconography with Woden on his horse, with birds whispering in his ear and occasionally trailing the whole fuþark behind them. Occasionally there are also birds perched as well on the “limbs” of the “horse,” making it suspiciously treelike. The most dominant view is, as with the stave church, that these images have primarily a magic purpose—in the case of the bracteates, not apotropaic, but rather that of healing. Thinking of the Merseburg charms, the bracteates are read as Woden curing a horse. I believe, however, that just as in the case of the stave church’s serpents, the image of Woden riding his horse is there to give identity. It is Yggdrasil in kenning form, and identifies the wearer of the medal, like Woden, as one capable of understanding the runes of the fuþark. Before exploring the bracteates, however, it is necessary to attempt to interpret the fuþark itself.

This is a task made quite difficult by the lack of textual evidence of any length, except perhaps in the Dream, and thus, understandably, the effort has been attended with varying degrees of success. Even more tantalizingly resistant to interpretation than the second to the eighth century runic inscriptions has been the elder fuþark itself. Just why, in a writing system whose letters have shapes that seem highly indebted to the letters of the Greco-Roman-Etruscan alphabet, is the sequence of its letters so different from them? The Semitic sequence aleph, bet, gimel, and daleth, led to the

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