All the Rune poems are from 800–1000 CE, but may have been translated from much earlier originals. The Runes themselves were the only source and form of written script available to the Northern peoples at the time the poems were created.
Who were the runemakers? King tells us that “runes were learned and used by individuals who might have been scholars, poets, farmers, sorcerers, warriors, witches or even lawyers and diplomats, not to mention merchants. They learned their runes from someone who already knew them. Magic in the north was mostly taught by women, be they mother, wives, witches or Queens.”78 Because use of the runes required specialized knowledge, the subsequent mistress or master of the runes was a very valuable member of society. Runes were cut or carved rather than written with a quill pen and ink. They were cut into stone, wood, bone and metal. In a brief history of the Runes, King writes, “As far back as Tacitus (Roman historian) the Germanic peoples were known to have believed that a special gift of wisdom and prophesy resided in woman, and that woman’s special role in northern society was respected in a way that feminists today would have applauded. The bride-price came from man to woman, divorce was freely available, women owned property and were full members of society in every respect. They were as free to learn the runes as men, and frequently did.”79
However, the biographies of the women and men who were the rune makers over 1500 years remain largely anonymous, even though they signed their pieces with their own names. In what manner their training evolved remains a mystery too, for similar reasons. Only oral instructions were available during the runes period, and apprenticeship was probably the standard method of teaching runes, as was true of the transmission of all other necessary skills of the time. For this reason, people had the ability to learn and remember vast amounts of information, epic-length sagas, entire genealogies for generations past. But the skill to inscribe the symbols was only a small part of the runes. The real knowledge resided in a now nearly defunct area called leechraft, the science of numerology which lay behind the repetitive sequences, which show up in many of the extant inscriptions. The number of repetitions and the times one was to say them aloud in accompaniment would also have been of vital importance.80 Runes were cut with a tool, somewhat like a knife, and the inscription of runes was regarded as a traditional craft, requiring many years training before the society trusted the new runemaker, because social well-being and protection were at stake. Runes had many uses: as poems, as charms, as amulets, as totems, as markers. They were both informational and protective, giving specific facts or fending off evil spirits. Runes were inscribed on equipment of war and carried as votives or safeguards. Their major task was to evoke prayers and prophesy. As such, they were not as likely to be utilized in secular ways.
Although today one may purchase ready-made sets of runes with booklets describing their use, that ease of access has not always been true. “Runes were in use for more than 1000 years,” King says, “before a series of Christian proscriptions placed upon these overt relics of paganism forced them underground in their homelands.”81
English history included invasions after the collapse of the Roman Empire by Germanic or Teutonic people such as Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes and Vikings, who shared common cultures and traditions. Between the Roman withdrawal and William the Conqueror in 1066, the 600 years of Norwegian influence left its mark as Viking presence and re-haired children in the gene pool of Ireland, the Orkney Islands, Northumbria, Lancashire and Russia, as well as some Baltic states.
The last recorded Viking raid on the English shores took place in the 1170’s. They also occupied Norway, Sweden, Demark, Holland and Germany. Viking expeditions reached North America five hundred years before Columbus. On the far eastern front, the Byzantine Emperor’s famed bodyguards, called the Varangian Guard, was composed of 100% Viking mercenaries.82
Unlike most conquerors, there is no evidence that the Norse ever tried to convert any other peoples to their belief systems. There was accepted diversity both within and outside the Norse pantheon, without fear of reprisal or persecution. However brutal their means of physical conquest may have been, they sought no psychological or spiritual conversions. The Vikings believed in an afterlife and honored it, while essentially being pragmatic people, whether engaged in the realm of the natural or the supernatural.
Valhalla was available to both women and men, because even in this warrior world on earth, women were recognized as being an integral part of their battle-life. The unworthy ended up in Hel.
While some Britons had been Christianized at the end of the Roman period, the Norse were not so disposed and, in fact, resisted, sending their personal religious beliefs and practices underground for the next thousand years. King maintains that women in the Viking world had an influential role, both welcomed and respected. But he adds that the reason this fact has not been as widely recognized, as well as the male warrior mythology has been, is that “recorded history dealing with the times came from the pens of monkish historians, and Christianity has ever had a love-hate affair with women, either turning them into unemotional plaster saints or ultimately damned objects of derision. Certainly the one thing they were never allowed to be by these commentators was influential.”83 This culture reveals the equality of women in ways other than their ability to own property and being respected as an individual of value.
The Goddess Freya was the prime teacher of sudr, one of the most important and least understood branches of Northern magic, with her best known student being Odin himself. In fact the entire culture was based on a fierce sense of individual freedom within a defined social context of responsibility that covered the behavior of everyone: woman, man and slaves. Outsiders were dealt with harshly but the inner society produced beautiful art objects, poetry and fine literature, with the Runes at the heart of the Northern religious Mysteries.
In Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood Merlin Stone provides additional information on women in the northern countries, beginning with the origins of their cultures. She cites two factors which are often overlooked: The first is that the population of most of the central and northern Sweden, Norway, and all of Finland was originally people who were Mongolian and Ural-Altaic speaking. Distantly related to the Arctic Siberians, these people were short-statured and dark skinned.
The other very diverse cultural group is of Teutonic/Germanic origin, physically tall, light-skinned, light-haired and blue-eyed. Stone, therefore, differentiates between the Nordic (Teutonic/Germanic) and Scandinavian (Finns plus Nordic). And she supplies the suggestion that the myths of the “dark elf land” accounts of small dark elves and dwarfs, may be the perceptions of the tall, blond Northern Germanic people’s original encounter with the Finnish people.84 The second factor in Stone’s equation is the information in early Nordic records which clearly say that the deities of the Nordic peoples had come from ancient Anatolia, land of the Goddess Artemis, Cybele, and Diana. With Prose Edda of Iceland, thirteenth century CE, as a primary reference source, Stone relates that the Assembly of Deities, known to the Nordic as the AEsir, came from Troy on the northwest coast of Turkey. Possibly this comes from the Indo-European speaking peoples who came to Anatolia in 2000 BCE. That part of Anatolia at 1500 BCE was known as Assura, or Roman Asia. Nordic references to early deities call them the “Asians” and the land where they dwelt was called “Asgard” land. The Norse god Thor is often referred to as Asa Thor, said to have been born in Troy.
The Queen-Goddess of the AEsir, named Frigga, may well have taken her name from the Phrygians, an ancient Indo-European speaking people of Anatolia. Stones says that “Just as Aphrodite on Cyprus was spoken of on the Greek mainland as Cypria and Artemis of Mt. Cynthus as Cynthia, the Phrygian Goddess most widely known as Kybele and as Mother of all Deities, may have been remembered by the Nordic peoples as Phrygia or Frigga.”85 And this may not be the only inheritance from Anatolia, home of the Neolithic cultures who built Catal Huyuk and Hacilar, who created a symbolic script for transmission of knowledge, s
o similar to the Runes. Perhaps as meaningful as the confluence of individual signs is the purpose for which they were intended: Both the Neolithic and the Runes were used primarily for spiritual processes of divination and devotional information. Most of the material providing relevant information about the Goddesses of the North comes from Icelandic poetry of 900 to 1100 CE compiled by Snorri Struluson in 1300’s. These are the epic Eddas, histories of the people traditionally kept in the human mind of those special people called memorizers, who existed in every pre-literate society.
One of the most important epics about women is the epic called Voluspa, literally translated as Wise Women Prophesy, and sometimes referenced as The Sibyl’s Vision. The story is told in the words of the volva, Icelandic for prophetess or sibyl (but also quite amazingly close to the word vulva, which is the ancient anatomical sign of the universal woman and the Neolithic Goddess). In the Voluspa, the volva reveals her knowledge of the past from the beginning of time, as well as foretelling the future and the Norse Doomsday. Stone writes, “The Norse account known as Erik’s Saga, dated to about the twelfth century CE, provides a detailed account of the physical appearance and actions of such a prophetess, and her use of magic chants that invoked the spirits that provided her with prophetic knowledge.”86 From this it is learned that the sun, Sol, was female with the moon, Mani, thought of as male. Stone notes that while this differs from Greco-Roman tradition, it agrees with the earlier Anatolian beliefs. There was a mythic war between the AEsir and the Vanir, perhaps between the Norse/Scandinavian and the Finnish people.
Other women/deities are detailed: Gollveig – Golden witch, mentioned as victim of the first war on earth; Heitha or Hertha – as far-seeing witch, wise in magic; and, a divine cow who is named Audhumla, Creator of Earth who disappears once she has created the first human. She resembles the Greek Goddess Hera and also Hathor the sacred Cow Goddess of Egypt. Finally, the Goddess Ostara is associated with spring festivals (i.e. Easter) in the Germanic record, but she may also have relationship to the Semitic Istar or Ashtart.87 Very fascinating are the many references to Jarnwood or Ironwood as the homeland of Giant Women. Stone tells us that “The Voluspa mentions three Giant Maidens who arrived shortly after the world was created, at the time when no lack of gold was known. The concept of giants among a people as tall and large as the Norse is certainly puzzling.”88
There were, of course, Greek writings of ancient giants who lived in Thrace, but these are also now believed to have referred to Celtic tribes in the north of Greece. Could this also be attributed to the Amazons, certainly known in both ancient Greece and in one of their homelands … Anatolia? Could the Voluspa be referring to the original homeland of the Norse and, therefore, be relating the story of the Amazon women once again?
For ancient Finnish beliefs there are very few sources. Primary are the chants known as the “Magic Songs,” and the epic poem “Kalevale.” Goddess information has been preserved from various geographic sources: In Estonia she was Earth Goddess MaaEma; in Siberia She was Muzjem Mumi. In Finland she is Ilmater, Mielikki, Maan Emoinem, and Rauni. As Raunikk she is the sacred Rowan Ash Tree, the mountain ash, sacred to May 1st and May festivals. The tiny red-orange berries were used to ease childbirth, which may have then created the alternate name in folklore, quickbaum or life tree. Long considered to be a protection against evil in Scandinavian countries, the twigs and branches are kept as amulets. The berries are also believed to restore youthfulness. Finns are related to both Siberian arctic groups and Eskimos of North America. Native Americans may owe their deeply held belief in the sacredness of Mother Earth and their reverence for the bear as an ancestor to the cross cultural interaction between these arctic peoples from which they are descended.
Tacitus (Roman historian) described the early Fenni tribe (Finns) as living northeast of the Germanic tribes and said that their women did as much hunting as their men. These ancient and shy nomadic herders gave us moderns many gifts from the North including invention of snowshoes, skis, sleds and water kayaks.
GODDESSES OF THE FAR NORTH: (adapted from Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood by Merlin Stone.)
Ilmatar–Sky Mother/Water Mother, Mother Creator
Freyja–Queen or Mother Goddess of the Vanir, Finnish Elves are part of her people. She rides on a golden boar through the forest with her twin brother. The boar is a major emblem of the Mother of All Deities. From Achterberg we learn further that Freyja was leader of the Vanir matriarchal/agricultural goddesses, represented on earth by shaman women practicing seidhr or seior, traveling from town to town in wagons, with women providing music (like the processions of Cybele). These shamans were dressed in finery, sitting on large feather-filled cushions. While others sang and chanted, the shaman women went into trance state, spiritually transported to other times and places with the aid of spirit animal helpers. Their cures and predictions of future events were said to be highly reliable.89
Nerthus and Urth–Nerthus is eldest of the three Norms (similar to the Greek Moriae or the Roman Fates), related also to the Anatolian sisters who spin destiny. Urth had knowledge of the past, and sister Skuld foretold the future. “So powerful were the three, it was they who appeared at each birth, allotting the fate, decreeing the future, for each new born babe, spinning the threads of destiny …”90
Iduna–she is possessor of the golden apples of immortality, imaged as in eternal youth and springtime. Iduna and the Finnish Rauni may both be the Fairest/Earth Mother symbolized by the Rowan, mountain ash tree. Mielikki-She bears a surprising resemblance to the Goddess Artemis, as protector of animals of the woods and as Goddess of the Hunt, and She is deeply associated with the bear, which this Goddess nurtures. There is an ancient Finnish custom of placing a bear skull in the forest as a sacred totem. “Delighted by the magic sound of flute, Meilikke then dons Her golden bracelets, slips golden rings into Her ears, threads golden beads around Her throat and takes Her seat in the mansion of golden windows where She watches over the creatures of the woods, providing game only to the worthy, directing the maiden spirits.”91
Frigga–She and Freyja may be two aspects of the same Goddess as we have seen in the double-headed goddesses of the Neolithic. She had a magic necklace similar to Harmonia, Aphrodite’s daughter. The amber for this necklace may have come from Denmark. The account of the death of Frigga’s son has been repeatedly linked to that of Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz, and Damuz – the dying son/lovers of previous near eastern Goddesses.
Skadi–The goddess of winter, her name literally means the “dark one.” She wears white robes, carries icy crystal arrows and has been compared with the Sythian Scathach, “wise in weaponry.” She is later translated into Hans Christian Anderson’s Snow Queen.
Hella–She rules the land of the dead, described as treacherous and frightening. The Germanic form of Her as Holla, is Queen of the Elves or Queen of the Witches. The name has connections to positive aspects such as holy, hallow, heal, whole and holly, and also as Holla, relating to many names given to elves, Valkyries and Giant Women. Originally, she is Goddess of the Hearth. Later, she is transmuted into the burning fires of hell.
Still situated in the far north but located east of the Scandinavian peninsula is Denmark, ancient Jutland. Here Jeanne Achterberg briefly details the role of the woman from the Bronze Age to her status as shaman/healer during this same period. The bogs and mound graves of Denmark have recently yielded archeological treasures in the form of perfectly preserved bodies in mound graves from the Bronze Age, which began in Europe about 2000 BCE. The women of high status were buried in the graves, but the peasants are unceremoniously put into the peat bogs along with those murdered or sacrificed.
So it is only the women of privilege about whom we have any details, but they are quite interesting. First of all, they were tall, very tall at five foot seven inches. They were slender, with blondish-red hair and perfect teeth, indicating good nutrition and protection from disease. Her clothes were embroidered and decorated. She had gol
d earrings, twisted in spirals coiled around her ears, similar to descriptions of Kurgan priestesses in Asia and Minoan palace women in the Mediterranean.
Around 500 BCE, these graves offer evidence that women served as shamans and priestesses. Then the magical objects found in the graves of men before that time, such as amber beads, conch shells, dried roots, grass snake skin/tails, falcons’ claw and small animal jaws, are included in small numbers of women’s burials. What Achterberg calls “mind medicine” is also found. “Botanicals containing high levels of alkaloids, such as henbane, which play a major role in women’s medicine through time, were known to the ancient Danes. These plants have psychoactive and narcotic properties. In careful measure, they are useful for pain and suffering. In larger doses, they are poisons, causing delirium and even death. The effects of the mushroom Amanita muscaria were also understood by the Danes as well as by many other tribes throughout the northern hemisphere. They are used in healing ritual and by those wishing to establish contact with the supernatural (i.e. shamans).”92 These mushrooms may have been eaten by Northern soldiers of the Danes, Vikings and Celts before battle, creating in them the frenzy that historians note created terror among the enemy. Women of this time used various other herbal remedies prepared from yarrow, chamomile, chervil, fern, which sometimes were even placed with their bodies in burial.
About 1200 BCE a new Goddess entered the northern cosmology. She was Nerthus, descended from Sumerian Innana and Ishtar, depicted on a barge carrying with her a coiled snake in one hand as the other is outstretched in greeting/blessing. She was considered the Mother of the Earth. Nerthus as Earth Mother was already well known (but not by that name) from the ancient Paleolithic through the Stone Age when she was carried as amulets for protection and carved on pendants of crystalline rock to be worn around the neck. As a Healer, Nerthus granted her skills to women. She had a consort and celebrated the sacred union to ensure gracious plenty to the earth people. Each spring, people from Scandinavian and Germanic tribes met together to feast, drink and celebrate the sacred union in peace, with weapons laid aside.
Daughters of the Inquisition Page 27