RUNEWORLD - Part I
An overview of the project.
The introductory slide deck presentation for my research on the Elder Futhark runes is now available on my Patreon.
This is a controversial topic.
Mainstream historians have largely fenced the runes off: from a historical perspective, it’s considered a closed case.
In terms of semiotics—how meaning continues to be created with these cultural elements, not just how they were used in the past—the runes are practically radioactive.
On one end of the cultural spectrum, political extremists have spent the last several decades following the example of the Third Reich, appropriating Norse culture generally and the runes specifically. On the other side, modern mystics and New Age revisionists have been cheerfully reinterpreting the runes for their own purposes. Mainstream academics see themselves as the last line of defense against this kind of misunderstanding and abuse.
In other words, any non-expert trying to make use of the runes—not just studying them as a historical curiosity, but actually using them as a semiotic system—is walking into an academic and political minefield.
And I do love a good minefield.
This one ran a bit long (don’t they all?) because I was at pains to define how my project is different. I’m obviously not a Neo-Nazi apologist. I’m hoping to steer wide of the purely mystical symbolic revisions that show up on WitchTok. But I’m also not signing up to man the ramparts of the Academy, insisting that the runes are just over-hyped, thoroughly mundane, archaeological relics.
Now that I’ve gotten all the disclaimers out of the way in this presentation, Part II will focus on what the Elder Futhark runes actually are, getting down to the mysteries and “damned facts” that the mainstream historical interpretation would prefer to ignore.
But that presentation will be for Patreon subscribers only.
If you’d like to follow along and genuinely don’t have the coin for a subscription—send me a message, and maybe we can work something out. The final form of this project could use some extra hands.
Enjoy.