Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Straight from Odin's Pen

 
I found the following while looking online for the word "runes."  Straight from Odin's pen to the New Testament? The site is http://en.wikipedia/org/wiki/runic_alphabet.  The photograph was taken by Philip Hoover in West Virginia.

The poem Hávamál explains that the originator of the runes was the major god Odin. Stanza 138 describes how Odin received the runes through self-sacrifice:
Veit ek at ek hekk vindga meiði a
netr allar nío,
geiri vndaþr ok gefinn Oðni,
sialfr sialfom mer,
a þeim meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn.
I know that I hung on a windy tree
nine long nights,
wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
myself to myself,
on that tree of which no man knows from where its roots run.   

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