Hammer of Fates by G N Gudgion was published by Bookouture on 1 June 2023.
Today I have a guest post from G N Gudgion with an introduction to runes.
RUNES: VIKING ALPHABET OR MAGICAL INSCRIPTIONS?
For perhaps two thousand years, runes have held an image of mystery; that sense that they offer a glimpse into the future, or an understanding of the present. In the present day they have seen a resurgence and acquired new meanings. Some even claim that they can not only foretell the future, but change it. But what did runes mean to the pre-Christian, Nordic peoples who first carved these angular symbols into stones or the hafts of their weapons?
Unlike their contemporaries in imperial Rome, Germanic and Nordic peoples were a largely oral culture; folk learned legends of gods and heroes from wandering skalds. It would have been wondrous that words could be cut and then re-spoken by later generations. The carvings themselves would seem to be imbued with power, and their significance magnified by their rarity.
Alphabet or ideographs?
Enough runic artefacts survive to know that runes were never simply an alphabet. Runes had phonetic values, but were also 'ideographs' that expressed abstract concepts, in a similar way to Egyptian hieroglyphs. For example the rune bjarkan - ᛒ - was a phonetic 'b' but also the rune of the birch goddess, the earth mother, with connotations of nurturing, healing, caring, and rebirth. The rune algiz - ᛉ - meant 'protection'. It lives on in the palm-outwards, upright thumb and two fingers warding gesture against evil that is still used in some cultures.
Symbols or Magical Inscriptions?
So were runes a writing system, or did they have mystical meaning? Academic opinion is divided, but personally I believe they had deep, esoteric significance, at least to those who worshipped the Nordic pantheon. Their very name stems from a word meaning 'mystery', or 'secret'.
Few written records survive from before the 13th century, by when authors may have been biased by Christian beliefs. However Icelandic texts of that era include the poem Hávamál, which describes how the god Odhinn learned the power of the runes by hanging on the world tree Yggdrasil in voluntary self-sacrifice, his side pierced by a spear. Odhinn ascribes runes the power of life and death;
'if I see up in a tree, a dangling corpse in a noose, I can so carve and colour the runes, that the man walks and talks with me'.
By the time Hávamál was written, runes had been in un-documented use for over a thousand years. We find them carved into archeological artefacts, not formalised in texts. But if anyone doubts that runes were believed to have magical powers, they should look at the 6th-century Björketorp runestone, which warns;
I, master of the runes, conceal here runes of power. Incessantly plagued by maleficence, [and] doomed to insidious death is he who breaks this monument. I prophesy [his] destruction.
Stave, song, and mystery
Runes varied across geographies and evolved through time. Some are lost. Enigmatic verses have survived that are the subject of much academic debate, but the great joy of the novelist is the licence to stray into unproven territory.
Most would agree that a rune is a shape, a sound, and that what lies beyond is a mystery. Many believe that runes are windows into the warp and weft of fate that was intrinsic to the pre-Christian Nordic belief system. The water rune lœgr, for example is a stave, - ᛚ -, and a song, lœgr er vellanda vatn, ok viðr ketill, ok glömmungr grund; 'water is the eddying stream, and broad geysir, and land of the fish'. But lœgr is also a concept and a mystery, rooted in the life-giving aspects of water, the world's blood. The sorceresses of old, the seidhkonur, would say the uninitiated have as little hope of understanding its full meaning as they would have of mapping a stream's path to the sea from the sound it makes trickling over rocks.
The seidhkonur left no records, but speculating on their ability to alter fates with rune song makes for a great story.
About the Book
Adelais was raised in the far north, learning stories of the old gods and the skill of weaving runes into magic. Now, she is locked in a convent far from home, forced to kneel to a foreign god.
When inquisitors arrive with plans to torture an innocent man, Adelais cannot stand by. She aids an attack to free the prisoner and joins the raiders as they flee into the night.
Her new companions are the last of the Guardians-once a powerful holy order, now ragged fugitives, hunted almost to extinction.
The knights carry a secret treasure, precious and powerful enough to shape kingdoms. Their pursuers, desperate to possess it, will crush any who stand in their way.
Nowhere is safe-in city or chateau, on the road or in the wilds. And even disguised as a boy, Adelais draws attention wherever she goes. Is she angel or demon, priestess or witch?
Adelais must summon all her courage and all her memories of the old gods' magic as the noose tightens around her and a thunderous final reckoning approaches.
Hammer of Fate, the first novel in the Rune Song epic fantasy trilogy, will be released on 1 June by Second Sky/Hachette. The two other books in the series will be released in July and October 2023.
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